Chapter: Network Configuration Management
From Computing Project Repository
Network Configuration Management (outline)
J. Schoenwaelder
1. Introduction to network configuration management
- Terminology and concepts:
- configuration vs. provisioning
- device-local vs. network-wide configuration
- configuration state vs. operational state
- configuration partitioning and locking
- configuration distribution vs. activation
- Approaches:
- Ad-hoc configuration management
- Ad-hoc configuration management with change tracking
- Controlled centralized configuration management
- Autonomic configuration management
- Turning high-level policies into configurations
2. Network management technologies and approaches
- variable-oriented approaches (e.g. SNMP) - command-oriented approaches (e.g. CLIs) - object-oriented approaches (e.g. Corba) - document-oriented approaches (e.g. NetConf)
3. Configuration management transactions
- Impact of Configuration Transactions
- change of configuration state in the target(s)
- change of operational state in the target(s)
- change of operational state in other nodes
- Coordination and locking
- Commit and rollback mechanisms
- hard rollback via reset and reload
- smart least-disruptive rollback
- commit and rollback primitives
3. NetConf Approach
- Architecture:
- layers (secure transport, rpc, operations, config data)
- Protocol details:
- operations
- capabilities
- framing and rpc layer
- transport mappings
- Missing pieces:
- Authorization
- Data modeling
- Transition
4. Conclusion and outlook
- Robust and portable (enterprise) network configuration managers - Policy translation and translators - Integration (EPP, XCAP, ...)