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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