[69077] in North American Network Operators' Group
Re: Knowledge tracking tools
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (Stephen Stuart)
Wed Mar 24 15:27:08 2004
To: Steve Gibbard <scg@gibbard.org>
Cc: nanog@merit.edu
In-reply-to: Your message of "Wed, 24 Mar 2004 10:52:15 PST."
<20040324104123.R33325@sprockets.gibbard.org>
Date: Wed, 24 Mar 2004 12:26:31 -0800
From: Stephen Stuart <stuart@tech.org>
Errors-To: owner-nanog-outgoing@merit.edu
> I like RCS better than RANCID for config change tracking, although an
> ideal system would probably involve both.
Indeed, an ideal management framework would include:
1. A tool in which to record the desired (past, current, future) state
of network devices. Bonus points for having a difference engine
capable of providing the difference between revisions in the form
of config statements.
2. A tool in which to record the actual state of network devices
(rancid falls into this category).
3. A tool to reconcile 1 and 2. Bonus points for an ability to
differentiate planned-but-yet-to-be-applied changes (i.e. the
current revision in tool 2's repository matches a les-than-current
revision in tool 1's repository) from unauthorized changes detected
by tool 2 but not documented in tool 1. More bonus points for
applying the difference engine described in tool 1 to propose the
configuration statements necessary to undo unauthorized changes.
Stephen
