12-27-2013 07:00 AM - edited 03-07-2019 05:16 PM
All,
I'm pretty sure I already know the answer to this, but I wanted to ask some of you. Suppose you have a router die in the field in another state, country, etc. Cisco replaces that router, but it's going to have a blank config when your site receives it. How do you manage that router? We've thought about a tftp server onsite for the device to boot to, but in the end, I believe you're still going to have to touch the router to bring the ethernet interface up, configure for dhcp, and then configure the device to boot from the network instead of flash. Is there an easier way around it? We're trying to avoid having a user try to get into the device, plus we may not have a console cable onsite which would cause other issues.
Thanks!
John
12-27-2013 07:27 AM
John-
We put out-of-band devices at remote locations. They are well worth their cost. We used Avocents and put the modem cards in them. We could access any device via their console and if the entire site was down we could dial in to the Avocent and still get console access for troublshooting. You can do the same thing with Cisco routers and async cards.
12-27-2013 02:45 PM
Well Cisco routers and switches support the archaic version of ZeroTouch SmartInstall.
If you take a router without a config and plug it into your network, you will notice that as soon as the router gets an IP address it goes out and look for a specific file. I forgot what that file is but that was originally how we did our router rollout. We have a "flat" config file and it populates everything but the IP address. So once we take the router off field we just enable DHCP. Contact the router and change the IP address to static and it's good.
12-27-2013 03:27 PM
Hi John,
I used to work for a large ISP. They used the method that Leo was describing. The router if NVRAM is empty will try to find a configuration file named
This method worked well and scaled nicely. Once the information is in DHCP, DNS and TFTP, staging and replacing equipment is easy.
I'm not sure if there are more modern methods but this should at least give you an idea what is possible. Here are some links describing the process:
http://www.cisco.com/en/US/docs/ios/12_2/configfun/configuration/guide/fcf002.html
http://www.cisco.com/en/US/docs/ios/fundamentals/configuration/guide/cf_autoinstall.html
Daniel Dib
CCIE #37149
Please rate helpful posts.
12-30-2013 07:17 AM
Thanks everyone! I'm looking to lab this up at the beginning of the year, and these are helpful suggestions.
John
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