Re: Managing IOS Configuration Snippets

[Leo Bicknell <bicknell () ufp org>]

On Feb 27, 2014, at 7:38 PM, Keegan Holley <no.spam () comcast net> wrote:

> Putting aside the fact that snippets aren’t a good way to conceptualize deployed router code, my gut still tells me 
> to question the question here.

What I have always wanted is a way to group configuration, in particular by customer.  Ideally with the ability to see 
it both as a unified view, and also as a per-customer view.

For instance:

customer AAAAA
  interface GigabitEthernet1/2/3.10
    description AAAAA
    ip address 10.0.1.1 255.255.255.0
  router bgp 1
    neighbor 10.0.1.2 prefix-list AAAAA-in in
  ip prefix-list AAAAA-in 10.1.0.0/24
end

customer BBBBB
  interface GigabitEthernet1/2/3.11
    description BBBBB
    ip address 10.0.2.1 255.255.255.0
  router bgp 1
    neighbor 10.0.2.2 prefix-list BBBBB-in in
  ip prefix-list BBBBB-in 10.2.0.0/24
end

Then I should be able to do:

show run - Normal output like we see today, the "device" view.
customer AAAAA show run - Same format as I have above, just config relevant to customer AAAAA.

I can even see extending the tag to work with some other commands:

customer AAAAA show int
customer AAAAA show bgp ipv4 uni sum
customer AAAAA show ip prefix-list

The same functionality would work for snippets:

customer ntp-servers-v1.0
 ntp server 1.2.3.4
 ntp server 1.2.3.5
 ntp server 1.2.3.6
end

Basically this follows the two modes in which engineers look at a device.  Most of the time is configuring a specific 
customer, and wanting to be sure they are configured right; including the hard case of "no customer AAAAA", that is 
making sure all configuration for a specific customer is removed.  The rest of the time is typically troubleshooting a 
network level problem where you want the device view we have today, I see interface Gig1/2/3 is dropping packets, "show 
run" to see who's configure on it sort of operations.

I don't know of any platform that has implemented this sort of config framework though.

-- 
       Leo Bicknell - bicknell () ufp org - CCIE 3440
        PGP keys at http://www.ufp.org/~bicknell/

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