Aside from rancid, what methods do people have for doing automated backups
and diffing of router configs ?
- Jon Heise
There are some commercial config management products that provide similar..
Use search engines with keywords such as router / network
configuration and auditing tools.
Configuration and change management is a common problem, and CM
auditing requires
tools for pulling, archiving, and comparing network device
configurations to detect changes
and anomolies, so there are _plenty_ of options.
Some routers provide options for remote SCP or FTP access, then it's
just a matter
of using your favorite mass download tool.
Check your device documentation.
A popular router brand also recently had an archive function added
not too long ago.
That lets you auto-scp new configs with something simple like....
!
archive
path scp://blahblah:blahblahblahblah@configbackup.my.example.com
write-memory
maximum 14
time-period 1440
log config
record rc
logging enable
hidekeys
notify syslog contenttype plaintext
Regards,
*sigh*
Some day I'll be able to `git fetch myrouter/master`... 
-A
Formally known as ZipTie:
http://inventory.alterpoint.com/
Can't speak to great lengths on it; haven't started playing with it yet but looks promising.
This one looks nice, thanks for the link. I did try to download it but I
seem to get a 404 page for the download link (which takes me to
http://www.alterpoint.com/landing-sites/landing-pages/NAI-registration-US.html).
http://code.google.com/p/notch/ and it's assortment of tools is something
I've been meaning to look into.
Ok, so based on what's been written here, here is the list of tools
mentioned so far
RANCID - http://www.shrubbery.net/rancid/
Inventory (formerly ZipTie) - http://inventory.alterpoint.com/
NocProject - http://redmine.nocproject.org/projects/noc/wiki
Notch - http://code.google.com/p/notch/
Cisco-Conf-Repository http://cisco-conf-rep.sourceforge.net/
I've also heard of Gerty, though as far as I understand, it's still
a work in progress:
https://github.com/ssinyagin/gerty
And another solution is Netdot - http://netdot.uoregon.edu/
which will do inventory management (at least on Cisco), though
it will rely on Rancid to fetch the configurations.
... I'll try and find the time to write a short summary of features
for each (conf. backup, conf management/provisioning, inventory
management) and post here.
Cheers,
Phil
There is also http://sourceforge.net/projects/dis -- The latest version in CVS is best.
It's a project I wrote for use at a previous employer, which downloads tens of thousands of configs per night.
It also facilitates easier development of device scripts and their parallel execution, deployment of OS upgrades to cisco gear (not difficult to extend to other devices), as well as automates interactive login.
--phil