[c-nsp] using RANCID in a CCIE lab

[Troy Davis]

On Fri, May 27, 2011 at 3:10 PM, Rogelio <scubacuda at gmail.com> wrote:
> I would like to make a public CCIE lab for friends and have it reset
> all the configs at pre-set times.
>
> Is a tool like RANCID a good way to do this?  I know that it can log
> in and do commands at preset times, and I thought that it's DB
> snapshots might be helpful as well.

If you're serious about offering this, I could see using a git-aware
TFTP server to make it easier for your friends (or customers) to
create and update their own reusable configs. You could even create
your own sets of configs for different topologies, then let others
fork them (see http://help.github.com/fork-a-repo/).

You'd still use RANCID (or maybe just clogin) to trigger the tftp
transfers, but your friends would tell you the path to their git repo
of config files. You'd check out that git repo into a TFTP-reachable
directory and either periodically do "git pull" to keep current, or
trigger a re-pull using a github post-commit hook.

Then your friends could add/change configs, commit them to git, and
they'd be automatically available for TFTP. They'd be able to submit
their configs via pull requests, fork other people's topologies, and
otherwise treat configs like code.

Troy

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