[rancid] Rancid for Cumulus

[Kasper Adel]

Hi

Has anyone used rancid on Cumulus?

Thanks
Kim

[Nick Hilliard]

Post by Kasper Adel
Has anyone used rancid on Cumulus?

rancid assumes one-config-file-per-device. Cumulus Linux is linux.

If you have the capacity, you are probably better off building
automation into CL on day 1 so that you don't need to back up your
device configs. I.e. if there's a failure, the canonical config isn't on
the network device.

Nick

[Nick Hilliard]

When yoy say its Linux, do you mean that rancid is mot needed?

rancid is the wrong tool for the job. Rancid assumes one config file
per device, and that single config file will provide a canonical backup
of the entire system. On Cumulus, you might have lots of different
files and they might differ from site to site.

Is there any other tool that comes to mind?

e.g. any backup system that works on linux (bacula, amanda. All you
really need is to back up /etc.

Nick

[Tore Anderson]

* Kasper Adel

When yoy say its Linux, do you mean that rancid is mot needed?
I’d like to think that rancid can capture configs of multiple files, is
that not possible today? Is there any other tool that comes to mind?

RANCID captures the output of an arbitrary number CLI commands, which
can be very well be something like «grep -r . /etc» and/or «net show
configuration» to get the active config on the box.

Nick's point is that if you've automated your Cumulus environment so
that the entire config on the box is exported from some other
authoritative system, then you don't need RANCID for backing up your
config. Instead, if your switch breaks, you can always just redeploy a
replacement device using a fresh config pushed from the authoritative
automation system.

Tore

[heasley]

Post by Tore Anderson
* Kasper Adel

When yoy say its Linux, do you mean that rancid is mot needed?
I’d like to think that rancid can capture configs of multiple files, is
that not possible today? Is there any other tool that comes to mind?

RANCID captures the output of an arbitrary number CLI commands, which
can be very well be something like «grep -r . /etc» and/or «net show
configuration» to get the active config on the box.

so, it works with any number of files/commands.

Post by Tore Anderson
Nick's point is that if you've automated your Cumulus environment so
that the entire config on the box is exported from some other
authoritative system, then you don't need RANCID for backing up your
config. Instead, if your switch breaks, you can always just redeploy a
replacement device using a fresh config pushed from the authoritative
automation system.

while I wholly support managing a network this way, in fact suggest that
it is the only acceptable way, rancid (or some backup system) still plays
a role - for any device whose config can be changed locally (during test,
debug, ???). it is useful to catch those events. also configuration is
not the only thing that rancid collects.