Managing Device Configuration Files

You can back up device configuration files to the Network Director server. You can perform several actions on backed up configuration files, such as restoring configuration files to devices, and viewing and comparing configuration files.

To start managing device configuration files:

Click Deploy in the Network Director banner.
In the Tasks pane, select Device Configuration Files > Manage Device Configuration Files.

The Manage Device Configuration page opens in the main window. The table lists the devices that have configuration files backed up.

This topic describes:

Selecting Device Configuration File Management Options

From the Manage Device Configuration page, you can:

Back up device configuration files by clicking Backup. See Backing Up Device Configuration Files for more information.
Restore backup device configuration files to devices by selecting devices and clicking Restore. See Restoring Device Configuration Files for more information.
View backed up configuration files by selecting a device and clicking View Configuration File. See Viewing Device Configuration Files for more information.
Compare backed up device configuration files by selecting devices and clicking Compare Config Files. See Comparing Device Configuration Files for more information.
Delete backup device configuration files by selecting devices and clicking Delete. See Deleting Device Configuration Files for more information.

Table 1 describes the information provided in the Manage Device Configuration table.

Table 1: Manage Device Configuration Table
Table Column	Description
Device Name	Device name.
Config File Version	Version number of the backup configuration file.
First Backup on	Date when the oldest version of the backup configuration file was created.
Most Recent Backup on	Date when the configuration file was backed up most recently.

Backing Up Device Configuration Files

To back up device configuration files:

Click Backup.
The Backup Devices Configuration page opens in the main window.
Select the devices to back up from the device tree.
To back up configuration files immediately, click Backup Now.
The backup job runs. When it finishes, the Manage Device Configuration table shows updated information for the devices you backed up.
To schedule the backup to run later, click Schedule Backup.
The Schedule Backup window opens.
1. Select the Schedule at a later time check box.
2. Specify when the backup will run using the Date and Time fields.
3. Optionally, configure the backup job to repeat by selecting the Repeat check box, then specifying the backup schedule using the provided fields.
  Optionally, you can specify when repeated backups will stop by selecting the End Time check box, then specifying the last date on which the repeated backup job will run using the Date and Time fields.
4. Click Schedule Backup.

Restoring Device Configuration Files

You can restore a backed up configuration file to the device from which it was backed up.

CAUTION:

Restoring a configuration file to a device is considered an out-of-band configuration change, which can cause some unexpected results. For more information, see Out-of-Band Configuration Changes.

To restore backed up configuration files to devices:

Select the devices to restore from the Manage Device Configuration list.
Click Restore.
The Restore Device Configuration File(s) window opens.
To restore a configuration file that is older than the most recent version, click in the Latest Version cell and select the version to restore.
Click Restore.

Viewing Device Configuration Files

To view the backed up configuration files for a device:

Select the device from the Manage Device Configuration list.
Click View Configuration File.
The Device Configuration Summary window opens, displaying the most recently backed up configuration file.
To view an older stored configuration file version, select a version number from the Config File Version list.

Comparing Device Configuration Files

To compare backed up device configuration files:

Select the configuration files to compare from the Manage Device Configuration list.
Click Compare Configuration Files.
The Compare Configuration Files window opens.
Select a source device from the Source Device list and a configuration file version from the Config File Version list.
Select a target device from the Target Device list and a configuration file version from the Config File Version list.
The configuration file versions you selected are displayed in the window. The file name and version appears at the top of each file. The differences between the configuration files are color-coded. The color-coding legend appears at the top of the window.

Deleting Device Configuration Files

When you delete a device’s backed up configuration, all of the configuration file versions for the device are deleted.

To delete device configuration files:

Select the configuration files to delete from the Manage Device Configuration list.
Click Delete.
The Delete Device Configuration File(s) window opens.
Verify that the correct devices are listed, then click Delete.

Managing Device Configuration File Management Jobs

Each time you back up or restore device configuration files, a device configuration file management job is created.

To manage device configuration file management jobs:

Click Deploy in the Network Director banner.
In the Tasks pane, select Device Configuration Files > View Configuration File Mgmt Jobs.
The Device Configuration Jobs page opens in the main window, listing the device configuration file management jobs.

Managing these jobs is similar to managing other types of jobs using the System mode. The advantage of accessing the jobs this way is that the jobs list show only configuration file management jobs. See Managing Jobs for more information.

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