[c-nsp] Tracking config changes

[Ryan West]

> -----Original Message-----
> Sent: Monday, May 24, 2010 12:34 PM
> To: 'Cisco-nsp'
> Subject: [c-nsp] Tracking config changes
> 
> Hi Gang,
> 
>     In my smallish network I am guilty sometimes of using cli to make cisco
> switch and router config changes, and sometimes I have been known to
> forget to 'wr mem' when I'm sure it's what I want. The reasons for this vary,
> but I want to be better than this disaster waiting for a power outage or other
> event to force a reset, losing something that could potentially be important
> that I may forget about later. I know there are approaches to this in larger
> envionments using config version control systems and such, but I think I want
> something simpler to at least notify me when/if I have a 'running config' that
> has been modified from the 'startup config' and not committed to nvram.
> 
>     One approach I might think of would be to poll the devices on my normal
> snmp schedule and include a check for the last date of configuration change.
> I could easilly throw an alert if it's been more than an hour since the last
> config change/write to memory, but I don't know which variables I would poll
> for that. A secondary idea might also be to download the configs and commit
> them to cvs anytime a change is detected, but some here might think this is
> backwards and that configs should only be uploaded? What do you other
> service provider folks do?
> 

Give RANCID a look.  Some users have posted scripts to trigger config downloads when a change is detected.  Personally, I download the configs hourly and commit to SVN and use websvn to view the results.

-ryan