North American Network Operators Group Date Prev | Date Next | Date Index | Thread Index | Author Index | Historical Re: Network Configuration Management Practices
Hmm, there are many approaches, starting with _what is primary_ (in Moscow's ISP files was primary, in enterprise here configs are primary). In my case, I use some hard rules: - no matter what is primary, configurations should be stored into CVS or simular system, and made available (for network engineers) on the internal web (with restricted access); - system should collect all changes automatically (or update configs from files automatically), make diffs and send change reports. - In any case, I must be able to see real configuration and see all changes, applying for last few weeks, without telnetting to the box. Without such things, I am blind ( I feel myself blind, when I come to the new network, and they have not such things in their system, making changes _on live servers_ and making 'telnet' to evaluate configuration). Few tools (opensource and commercial) allows to automate this job. One more thing. We tried to review _proposed changes_ and _changed applied_. Practice showed, that it is impossible to see errors in proposed updates, even if 3 - 4 engineers review it (not design flaws, but syntac and semantics errors), so we did not got many use from pre-change reviews (except design ones). But we got extremely high profit from post-change reviews (verifying, what really changed on the router / firewall after maintanance window) - it allows to see some unwanted changes and avoid few possible service disruptions. ----- Original Message ----- From: "Scott Weeks" <[email protected]> To: "Carl W.Kalbfleisch" <[email protected]> Cc: <[email protected]> Sent: Tuesday, September 14, 2004 3:08 PM Subject: Re: Network Configuration Management Practices > > > > On Tue, 14 Sep 2004, Carl W.Kalbfleisch wrote: > > : I am doing some independent research on Network Configuration > : Management Practices. I am trying to get information from service > : providers and enterprises on how they handle this function. I have the > : following specific questions: > : > : 1) What configuration issues most affect the performance and > : reliability of your network? > > > Fingers... >;-) > > scott >
|