RANCID is Really Awesome New Cisco Config Differ. AS its name implies, RANCID monitors network device configuration, including software and hardware and uses CVS (Concurrent Version System) or Subversion to maintain history of changes. RANCID is simple and is easy to use.

The same very functionality of RANCID can be used as a backup system for Network device config backup system or even a config change alert system as it can email changes from previous saved configurations. All this RANCID does by logging on to a network device using Telnet or SSH and runs various show commands to grab config changes (hardware & Software), send alert emails of any changes, format the info and commit to the CVS system.

Some of the devices that RANCID supports

Cisco Routers and Cisco Catalyst Switches (IOS & CatOS)

Juniper Routers

Foundry Switches

HP ProCurve Switches

Alteon Switches

Redback NAS

ADC EZT3 MUXs

MRTd & IRRd

RANCID is a Linux based software and needs to be compiled and installed (unfortunately there is no package built for specific Linux platforms)

RANCID can be downloaded from SHURBBERY networks here

RANCID requires the expect module installed on the Linux platform. A sample email notification showing changes based on the previous config versions can be found here.

Ziptie is an Opensource Network Inventory and Configuration Management framework that can discover and manage network devices such as Routers,Switches and Firewalls. Ziptie out of the box support network devices from multiple major vendors. Ziptie is java based and is built on Eclipse framework. Ziptie can run on many Operating System platforms including Windows, Ubuntu, Fedora,Redhat, Madnriva amd most other Linux Distributions.

Ziptie Features include

Ziptie plugin framework

ZipTie plugin framework allows developers and network administartors integrate their own home grown tools, scripts and even newer modules to the framework making it easy to scale application and add more network device support onto the framework

Multi-Vendor support

Out of the box support major Network Device vendors and opens an option to add support more network device using the plugin framework

The following devices are supported out of the box:

Cisco – IOS, CatIOS, MSFC, CatOS, ArrowPoint, Security Appliance (PIX, ASA, & FWSM),

Linksys

Juniper – JUNOS

Nortel – BayRS, BayStacks

Vyatta – OFR

Extreme – Summit, Alpine

F5 – BigIP, 3DNS

Foundry – FastIron

Nokia – CheckPoint

Inventory Discovery

Ziptie uses a combination of ICMP ping, SNMP, TCP, ARP, CDP, IP Address to crawl and discover network devices and perform an inventory.

Configuration History and Configuration Comparison

Ziptie uses Subversion Version Control System to maintain as many version as you need and stores an entire copy of the current version of the config and reverse difference older versions

Also, allows to compare two different version of a comfig or two different configuration files themselves (say startup-config and a running-config on a Cisco router). Also, can help check and compare two differnt device configuration comaprison.

Change Automation for Standalone or Multi device configuration rollout

ZipTie enables very simple to quite sophisticated change automation via its Tools Plugin Framework. Network administrators can roll out changes to a large number of devices transparently as ZipTie provides the end user with detailed data of all the communication between ZipTie and the device(s).

Fully Featured Scheduler for Config backups

Using cron baed scheduler, Ziptie can schedule automated config backups and can provides fine control on the scheduling where for instance, ZipTie can avoid backups during a maintenance window

Easy Reporting with tagging and searching facility

ZipTie supports tagging network devices. Admins can associate as many tags as they want with multiple devices and can also search for devices with specific tags. ZipTie also provides a powerful search feature for searching text configurations.

Integrates Nipper Security audit

Ziptie also integrates Nipper, the opensource Security Audit Tool which makes a security just a click away. Ziptie supports all the devices supported by Nipper and hence makes a lot of sense to integrate it into Ziptie.

The website for ZipTie has great informative resources including documentation, system requirements and has a great community support backed by ZONA (Ziptie Open Network Alliance). Click here for ZipTie homepage

ZONA is a group of like-minded companies and organizations interested in advancing and promoting interoperability, open management standards, best practices and value-added tools for the networking community. ZONA already has Juniper,Fortinet,Vyatta,riverbed,radware,citrix,Force10 onboard. For more information, click here

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A Reader's Toolbox

Although 70-431 is attempted right after 642-812, many IT professionals still take a sceptical view of this, suggesting VCP-310 instead. According to them, later one can go on with 70-292 as well.