Configuration management is one of those network management topics people often neglect. It’s not very exciting—but it’s incredibly important. Administrators rely on network configuration management in a variety of circumstances.

Let’s discuss what network configuration is, delve further into the importance of network configuration, and explore the benefits of configuration management.

What’s network configuration, and why is it important?

In this context, the “configuration” of a network device consists of all the commands and settings necessary to set up the functions on that device. If you had to replace the device with a new one, the configuration file contains every piece of information you need to replicate the original device’s functionality.

And that should explain exactly why network configuration management is so important.

The main purpose of configuration management is to allow you to quickly replace the functionality of a piece of network equipment after a failure. If you don’t have a recent backup of that device, you’ll be starting over from scratch to configure a new device based on whatever scraps of functional documentation you can find.

It’s best if configuration files are backed up in a human-readable format to get all the benefits I’m going to talk about in this article, but some equipment only offers binary configuration files.

Most common network devices like switches, routers, firewalls, and load balancers allow you to download some sort of flat text file that looks like the set of commands you’d type at the command line interface.

This is true of all Cisco routers, switches, and firewalls, for example. HP ProCurve devices are similar. Some other devices like Fortinet firewalls use an XML format for their configuration information.

The text files are the most useful format because you can easily copy them around, store them on file servers, read them, and write scripts that either read them for reporting or create them for mass rollouts.

Advantages of network configuration

One of the most valued advantages of network configuration management is its ability to reduce downtime. Changes being made in the network are instantly identified by system administrators. Network configuration management also improves visibility and accountability by allowing the easy identification of components and software operating on the network. In addition, you can create and customize audit policies with a network configuration that supports compliance with industry standards.

Backing up network devices

Part of the problem with configuration management is that every different type of network device saves its configuration in a different format. There’s also no standard method for downloading or uploading configuration files.

Historically, the most common protocol for backing up config files was TFTP (Trivial File Transfer Protocol). This protocol has several serious security and reliability problems that make it less than perfect for this type of task, but it’s still in common use.

Most modern network devices offer alternatives such as SSH/SFTP, RCP, and frequently CIFS/SMB. Of these, SFTP is the preferred option because it’s both secure and reliable.

The network configuration management system will be some centrally located server that automatically downloads and stores all of your device configurations. In most cases, I recommend doing backups every night, even in networks where the configurations rarely change.

Manual or scripted config backups

There are several ways to trigger a configuration backup. For devices with a command-line interface, it’s usually done by having a scripted session that logs into the device using a standard protocol such as SSH. The script issues the appropriate command to copy the configuration back to the central configuration management system.

You’ll need a suitable administrator account on your devices, so the script can log into them. This inherently represents a serious security risk. So, the security of the central server is important.

Of course, anything you can do with a script, you can do manually. However, with a script, you can automate the backups. Then you know they’re being done regularly, and you can start to take advantage of some other benefits of configuration backups like automatic comparisons.

Using a third party can help with automating backups because it tends to scale better, and will in general have already solved these security problems. A network configuration backup tool allows you to maintain up-to-date device configuration backups even as they change without having to spend the time doing it manually. Learn more about how providers like Auvik can boost your IT team’s efficiency by automating and simplifying network management.

Benefits of configuration management

I use network device configuration files for several important things, not just rebuilding a device after a failure.

1. Reports

The first use case is reporting. If the configuration management tool does a comparison between yesterday’s backup and today’s, it can immediately show you all the devices that changed and exactly what the changes were.

Is somebody making unauthorized changes to your devices? This is the easiest way to see it. And, if you’re using unique per-user login credentials, you can often see who made the change.

You can also see whether a scheduled change didn’t happen.

2. Automatic generation

One of the things that I use a configuration management tool to do is to create bulk changes. This is a highly useful benefit of configuration management tools. Suppose I need to change the administrator passwords on all my devices because somebody has left the organization (or because I think the password might have leaked). The tool is already logging into every device on a scheduled basis, so pushing out changes is an easy capability to add.

Bulk management capability can also be useful for rollouts. For example, I might need to implement a batch of new switches or turn up several new remote sites. I like to use the configuration management server as a central location for this type of thing.

For creating lots of new configuration files in bulk, I will generally create a standard template configuration. Then I’ll do a variable substitution (like a mail merge) in that template for all the locally unique values like IP addresses.

I should note that I’m often uncomfortable with making changes automatically. I worry that something will go wrong during the update, like a syntax error in the configuration file, or maybe an SSH session will hang halfway through loading the changes.

But I can still partially automate configuration updates by automatically generating the change scripts, and then manually cutting and pasting the commands into the remote devices. This way I can immediately see if there’s a problem.

And sometimes, if I have a lot of devices to update, I’ll manually input the changes like this for a few devices until I’m confident that everything is right, then have the tools do the rest automatically.

3. Auditing and reviewing configurations

When I’m asked to look at a network that’s having stability problems or might just be in need of updates, one of the first things I ask for is a set of all the configurations.

If they don’t have a recent set of configurations, the first thing I do is log in to all the devices and download them.

The configuration files don’t tell you everything. They won’t show you dynamic information like ARP tables or interface error counts or whether the CPU is running high or the memory is running low. But they do give you an incredibly useful snapshot to start with.

The information is also useful for things like security audits. They show the exact firewall rules, VPN parameters, and how the IDS/IPS inspects traffic.

4. Streamline processes

Another benefit of configuration management tools is that they allow you to streamline processes. As your network grows, you need tools that make it easy for you to schedule backups and get alerted when backups fail. You want a tool that provides functionalities so you can search past backups and restore backups quickly.

5. Reduce errors

Automated network configuration management tools can substantially reduce the number of outages caused by configuration errors. This is because these problems often stem from human error in implementation or documentation. Configuration management tools identify changes, audit configurations, and simplify tasks all while automatically documenting any changes made with the tool.

6. Roll back any changes with undesirable results

In the case where an administrator applies a change only to realize later that it resulted in a misconfiguration, configuration management tools can roll back changes to previous configurations saving time and resolving issues.

Are you ready to make the most out of your network configuration management? Auvik provides cloud-based network monitoring that offers you all the tools you need to manage today’s IT challenges. We understand the importance of network configuration and make it possible to scale your network management easily and efficiently. Start your free trial today and enjoy automated network discovery, documentation, monitoring, and config backups.

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