Cisco switch/router config storage

Hi, Ive seen a local ISP here in Santa Barbara implement custom baked solution with Rancid. Terrible name but pretty cool product. It would make regular backups of all the routers and switches plus allow differ lookups to see what changed and when. You can even configure it to grab certain command output like show version or show log. Then when the customer called in to say something wasn't working you could instantly see what they changed and let them know how to fix it without needing to gather output or do a screen share. Not sure if its possible to pull full configs from SNMP or if leveraging something like Rancid is possible but it would be really cool for customers. +1

This seems like a great use case for scripting, and something that would be a huge help for almost many customers.  SNMP cant grab configs (unless via SNMP-Write commands to dump via TFTP), but it would be very reasonable for LM to use scripting to collect configs and diff them using logic already used elsewhere in the product (such as in diffing datasources). Pretty much every switch/router out there will work with a show run or show config, and you can cover most any customer via those commands.

I notice this request is categorized as planned. Can we get some details? Will LM have ability to back up configurations?

Its planned, but is at least 6 months out. (Hard to say exactly - were planning to hire 8 more developers this quarter, but its unclear if we will be able to find all the ones we are planning on hiring.) It will backup device configurations, diff them, alert on changes, etc.

Rancid is the best opensource for this kind of thing.  http://www.shrubbery.net/rancid/

On top you use ViewVC to be able to browse and compare different versions.  http://www.viewvc.org

Coming from a very extensive network operations background, DeviceExpert is the single best Niche product available today for dealing with network configs (not just backing up). I used CiscoWorks LMS for years prior to using DeviceExpert, however theres a large market segment where this is not applicable solution (MSPs, environments with mixed vendors, etc). Rancid does the bare minimum job in some environments, but unfortunately has no support or continued development behind it.rnDeviceExpert is one of a kind in what it does, and is extremely robust for being a niche product. For the tasks it performs, the cost is insignificant (compared to the cost of administrator labor costs). Its 2 disadvantages are that its not cloud-based and not multi-tenant aware. You basically need 1 Linux server per company to use it (from an MSP point of view),rn From my perspective this functionality seems fairly far from LogicMonitors core purpose, and there appears to be several other Gaps in the LM roadmap that I would rate as higher priorities for development. For example, client-side exporting and importing of everything: Custom Reports, User Lists, and Host Configurations. rnOf course, this is just one MSPs opinion.rnAlso, to answer a question, most platforms allow an SNMP command to trigger a config copy command and the destination being a server (usually tftp or ftp). So... yes... but with an FTP server requirement).

We just implemented SolarWinds Network Configuration Manager for this exact reason. Net cost was about $50 per device, with about $10 ALR per device. Well worth the money, but its a typical SolarWindws product, both useful and powerful, but completely totally non-intuitive.

So Steve Francis @ logicmonitor said 6 months out - about a year ago. Any update? This is the last piece of my legacy solarwinds environment I cant shut down until LM supports it.

Ill second this, would be a great addition to logic monitor to collect switch configurations as Steve Francis mentioned in April 2013!

Is there a launch date scheduled already?