Managing IOS Configuration Snippets

[Ryan Shea <ryanshea () google com>]

Howdy network operator cognoscenti,

I'd love to hear your creative and workable solutions for a way to track
in-line the configuration revisions you have on your cisco-like devices.
Let me clearify/frame:

You have a set of tested/approved configurations for your routers which use
IOS style configuration. These configurations of course are always refined
and updated. You break these pieces of configuration into logical sections,
for example a configuration file for NTP configuration, a file for control
plane filter and store these in some revision control system. Put aside for
the moment whether this is a reasonable way to comprehend deployed
configurations. What methods do some of you use to know which version of a
configuration you have deployed to a given router for auditing and update
purposes? Remarks are a convenient way to do this for ACLs - but I don't
have similar mechanics for top level configurations. About a decade ago I
thought I'd be super clever and encode versioning information into the snmp
location - but that is just awful and there is a much better way everyone
is using, right? Flexible commenting on other vendors/platforms make this a
bit easier.

Assume that this version encoding perfectly captures what is on the router
and that no person is monkeying with the config... version 77 of the
control plane filter is the same everywhere.