Network Configuration & Change Management using StableNet^®

StableNet^® White Paper

Device Configuration Backup

The configuration backup functionality of StableNet^® is a fully flexible system that supports multi-protocol access for entry into multi-vendor telecom, service provider and enterprise network infrastructures. Typically, StableNet^® is integrated with your authentication system, i.e. TACACS+, Radius, LDAP, where the access credentials are configured for StableNet^® to gain authenticated access into multi-vendor infrastructures. Device backup file formats supported include text-based configuration, typically found on Cisco, Juniper, Huawei, Brocade, and binary file formats typically found on Ixia, Bluecoat, and F5 infrastructure device types. StableNet^® also supports a number of access protocols in order to ensure every requirement access type is supported, i.e. SSH Telnet, TFTP, HTTP, HTTPS, XML etc.

Device Configuration Backup Key Feature Table:

Configuration Change Management

The management of configuration change across large infrastructures is a policing minefield as engineers will argue that ad-hoc changes will always be necessary to bypass issues, or workaround solutions in order to maintain service availability and operation. While there is an argument around the pro’s and con’s for ‘on-the-fly’ changes, the simple fact remains that infrastructures today can attribute over 40% of downtime to unauthorized change. Therefore, organizations need to transform their policies and processes to implement greater secure control around all changes made to the infrastructure.

Bulk Configuration Change

Automation is the important task in IT operations nowadays. IT managers are always looking for automating repetitive and time-consuming tasks in order to reduce operational cost and improve productivity. StableNet^® NCCM supports you in this task by automating bulk configuration and change management for network devices. Tasks can be scheduled and configuration changes can be executed for individual or groups of network devices. It is possible to alert on configuration change or policy failures and restore a known-good configuration as required.

Policy Checking

Governments and industry regulators require organizations to conform to standard best practices. In order to become compliant with these regulations such as PCI, ISO27001, FCAPS, ITIL, SOX, HIPPA, and others, device configuration should conform to these standards. These standards can range from a number of different requirements such as ensuring the presence, or absence, of certain strings, commands, or values. StableNet® assists greatly with this regulatory requirement automatically checking for compliance to the rules defined. Reports on policy compliance and violations are available out-of-the-box.

Configuration policies bring together a set of devices and apply a set of rules. This approach means that an entire service type can have specific policies applied so as to ensure consistent service delivery, change, and compliance. These rules can be based on simple text ‘strings’ to finding items present or missing in configuration files; powerful configuration snippets with ‘section’ matching and ‘regular expression’ searching; or advanced scripting languages (i.e. XML, Perl). Uniquely, the same rule can be created for different vendor hardware using the same identifier, meaning an organization can create a single corporate policy within Infosim^® StableNet^® NCCM to reflect all hardware vendor equipment simplifying reports into a single view. Whether you need to meet PCI, ITIL, FCAPS, ISO27001, SOX, NSA Security Guidelines, or other business continuity or regulatory standards, StableNet^® can help greatly with simplifying the process, drastically reduce your risk, and drive compliance consistency throughout your infrastructure ensuring sustained levels of service availability.