[161431] in North American Network Operators' Group
RE: Network Configuration Management
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (Eric Van Tol)
Wed Mar 13 10:30:53 2013
From: Eric Van Tol <eric@atlantech.net>
To: "nanog@nanog.org" <nanog@nanog.org>
Date: Wed, 13 Mar 2013 10:30:21 -0400
In-Reply-To: <20130312175813.GA27817@2bithacker.net>
Errors-To: nanog-bounces+nanog.discuss=bloom-picayune.mit.edu@nanog.org
> -----Original Message-----
> From: Chip Marshall [mailto:chip@2bithacker.net]
> Sent: Tuesday, March 12, 2013 1:58 PM
> To: nanog@nanog.org
> Subject: Network Configuration Management
>=20
> Just curious what people are using for network configuration
> manangement systems. I'm guessing most places have something
> built in-house, but before starting down that road I figured it
> would be a good idea to see if people have any off-the-shelf
> systems they like.
>=20
Solarwinds NCM is what we use. It's multivendor and even handles menu-driv=
en configurations and can easily be used to run commands on devices such as=
Linux servers for iptables firewall rules. It can perform inventory manag=
ement and do things like search for MAC addresses on your network. Moreove=
r, it can do policy reporting to ensure that your devices meet your configu=
ration standards, both custom-made and for regulatory compliance like HIPAA=
/SOX/PCI/etc.
We used to use RANCID, which worked great, but we outgrew it when we needed=
something to backup multiple vendors and didn't have the resources to modi=
fy the code to do what we needed.
As other posters mentioned, their sales force is unrelentless, even after y=
ou purchase. It took a lot of complaining to finally get off whatever inte=
rnal sales list we were on. Cost is also a concern, as it increases with t=
he more devices you need to manage, plus there's a yearly maintenance fee. =
That said, I feel the cost is somewhat justified, as they have a pretty go=
od development team that is quite active on their support forums and they l=
isten to customer feedback for features.
-evt
