In my conversations with clients and companions, there are two subjects which are completely different however considerably associated: compliance and machine configuration administration. In my newest weblog, “Compliant or not? Cisco DNA Heart will assist you to determine this out”, we mentioned compliance capabilities in Cisco DNA Heart 2.3.3. On this weblog, I’ll handle machine configuration administration.
Let me begin by saying that DNA Heart all the time has the most recent machine configuration in its inside databases. This has all the time been the case. The configuration of a tool is first collected and saved when the machine is added to the stock, it’s then up to date by periodic triggers in addition to event-based triggers. Occasion-based triggers occur when there’s a change within the configuration. DNA Heart makes use of these up-to-date configurations for all its capabilities together with, however not restricted to, assurance, machine alternative, and compliance. Community directors also can leverage these configurations so, on this weblog, we’ll discover other ways to entry them.
Visualize Configuration in Stock
For sure machine sorts, like switches, DNA Heart has the choice to indicate and export the complete machine configuration. This permits the community administrator to have fast visibility into the configuration. For safety causes, delicate knowledge is masked which implies that we will’t straight use this machine config to revive a tool.

Export the machine configuration
Configuration archive is the DNA Heart function that permits community directors to export uncooked configurations to an exterior server. Uncooked configurations are helpful to revive a tool for instance.

Gadget configuration backup could be scheduled with the specified recurrence and the configurations are despatched to an exterior server. For every configuration backup, DNA Heart creates a password-protected zip file. This zip file incorporates one listing per machine and every listing incorporates three recordsdata: running-config, startup-config, and VLAN database.


APIs to retrieve machine configuration
One other option to entry the clear textual content machine configurations is by way of APIs. The API accessible in Cisco DNA Heart permits to retrieve uncooked startup, working configs, and VLAN DB within the type of a zipper file in an analogous approach because the configuration archive functionality.
API particulars: POST /network-device-archive/cleartext
Visualize Configuration Drifts
Arguably, I’m leaving probably the most attention-grabbing functionality for final!
At the start of the weblog, we talked about that DNA Heart shops the machine configuration and updates the configurations periodically and upon modifications. Each time there’s a change within the configuration, DNA Heart will retailer and timestamp this new configuration for a most of fifty. We name these configurations config drifts. Furthermore, DNA Heart can present variations between these saved configurations to assist the community administrator determine any modifications. For out-of-band modifications, Config Drift software may also present the username of the person who made the change.
Within the instance beneath, we’re evaluating two configurations taken on September 2nd, 2022, one at 1:56pm and the opposite at 2:57pm. We will see within the latter, {that a} “description” command was faraway from “interface GigabitEthernet 1/0/10”. As soon as we determine these modifications within the working configuration, the community administrator can take particular actions to remediate the difficulty. For instance, the machine could be re-provisioned.

We will additionally determine and label a selected configuration that we deem “normal”. That approach, will probably be simpler to match the present working configuration with the chosen labeled configuration.
Within the instance beneath, we’ll first choose the popular configuration and title it with the label of our selection, on this case, “TBRANCH-Std-Config“:

As soon as we label our normal configuration, we will then evaluate it to the present configuration. On this instance, the present working configuration is recognized as “September 2nd at 3:10pm”. On this case, each working configuration and normal configurations match.

Have you ever tried these capabilities?
Are there some other subjects you’d wish to see in these blogs?
Let me know within the feedback beneath.
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