Network Device Configuration Standardization with Trigger

In this talk you will learn how to:

• Manage device configurations of thousands of network devices simultaneously;
• Report on device configurations;
• Use these techniques to manage your own network environment.

  System administration has recently taken great strides in both the use of configuration management and integration with development and operations. Unfortunately, network administration has not moved forward in the same way. Trigger is a powerful framework that allows you to execute commands on large numbers of network devices simultaneously. Using tools built on top of trigger, you can manage large pools with hundreds or thousands of devices that require standardized configurations. These approaches are not specific to any particular network hardware vendor.

  This presentation will explore in detail two tools. One that allows you to standardize device configuration and the other that provides reporting on device configuration information. Both of these tools are now part of Trigger and can be extended to address your own needs. The first tool is Normalizer; it is used for device configuration management. It validates the state of a set of devices against configuration rules and determines if changes are required to the device configuration and then makes the changes. The second tool is Report; it is used to report on the state of devices. It can update information on specific devices and also works with stored information so that reports can be updated without actively querying every device on the network. At the end of this presentation, you should have the information required to use these techniques to manage your own network environment.