ManageEngine Network Configuration Manager - Highlights

Network Configuration Management, Network Change & Configuration Management Software, Network Device Management

Multi-Vendor Configuration for Switches, Routers, Firewalls & Other Devices

• Network Configuration Manager Provides an integrated solution for complete Change and Configuration Management for network devices such as switches, routers, firewalls, wireless access points, integrated access devices etc., from multiple vendors such as Cisco, HP, Nortel, Juniper, Dell, D-Link, NetScreen, Force10, 3Com, NETGEAR, Foundry, Fortinet, ADTRAN, Enterasys, Huawei, Extreme, Proxim, Aruba and Blue Coat
• Device configuration through SSH, Telnet, SNMP & TFTP protocols
• Provision for bulk operations such as configuration backup and upload

» Check if your Device Model is supported by Network Configuration Manager

» Request Support for New Device Model

Discovering Switches, Routers, Firewalls & Other Devices

• Network Configuration Manager can manage network devices such as switches, routers, firewalls, wireless access points, integrated access devices etc., from multiple vendors such as Cisco, HP, Nortel, Juniper, Dell, D-Link, NetScreen, Force10, 3Com, NETGEAR, Foundry, Fortinet, ADTRAN, Enterasys, Huawei, Extreme, Proxim, Aruba and Blue Coat
• It discovers network devices, builds up an inventory database and allows IT administrators to take control of configuring the devices from a central console.
• Discovery of SNMP-enabled devices can be initiated through the 'Discover Devices' link in the web interface. The devices discovered through this process get added to the inventory.
• Network Configuration Manager provides the option of manually adding the devices to the inventory too.
• In addition, there is provision to import devices from a text file.

» More Info in Help Documentation

Configuration Change Detection & Management

Whenever there happens a change in configuration of devices, Network Configuration Manager makes it possible to detect the changes in real-time. One of the ways to detect configuration changes in a device is by monitoring syslog messages. Many devices generate syslog messages whenever their configuration undergoes a change. By listening to these messages, it is possible to detect any configuration change in the device. This comes in handy for administrators to keep track of the changes being made and to detect any unauthorized changes.

Network Configuration Manager leverages this change notification feature of devices to provide real-time change detection and tracking. A syslog server comes in-built with Network Configuration Manager. It occupies port 514.

Besides the real-time change detection, configuration changes could also be tracked through scheduled, periodic backup of device configuration.

• Real-time configuration change tracking through syslog and scheduled backup
• E-mail notification on detection of changes
• Detailed device configuration history providing who changed what and when

Configuration Versioning & Management

Network Configuration Manager maintains the entire history of configuration changes as configuration versions. Besides mainitaining changes as versions, device configuration is saved as startup and running configuration. Look at the definitions below to have an insight into configuration versioning in Network Configuration Manager.

• Current Configuration: this reflects the currently available startup & running configuration in the device
• Baseline Configuration: As the name itself indicates, the Baseline configuration refers to a trusted working configuration. You can keep any version of device configuration as the Baseline Configuration. When you want to revert to a safe configuration version or while doing disaster recovery, Baseline configuration would come in handy
• Labelled Configuration: For any version of configuration, you can associate a label - that is, a unique tag. As configuration versions keep on changing, you will have difficulty in remembering the version number of a particular good configuration. To avoid that, you can associate the version with a label for easy identification
• Draft Configuration: As the name indicates, this is a new configuration created by you. For creating a draft configuration, you can take up any version of device configuration - startup or running - and save it as a draft as it is or after carrying out some changes. You can also create a new draft altogether

Configuration changes pertaining to each device are maintained as separate versions and changes between any two versions can be easily identified as changes are presented side-by-side, highlighted by relevant colours.

Automated Configuration Backup

While venturing to change the configuration of a device or a group of devices, you might wish to keep a copy of the present working configuration. In such cases, the Device Backup utility comes in handy. You can take instantaneous backup of device configuration at any point of time. Apart from this, Network Configuration Manager helps in taking automatic backup. You can just schedule configuration backup and the task will be automatically done at the required time. This automated backup would be of great help to the administrators.

Network Compliance

• Provision for examining device configurations for compliance to a defined set of standards/criteria/rules and reporting the compliance status
• Automated Compliance Check: Support for associating compliance policies to devices, thereby automating the compliance check for each change in configuration
• Option to define your own compliance policies to cater to the standards of your organization

Network Troubleshooting & Disaster Recovery

In spite of the meticulous care taken by the administrators, if something goes wrong with the configuration and results in a disaster, Network Configuration Manager helps in reverting to a previous stable version or to any version of the configuration and recover from the disaster quickly.

Besides, Network Configuration Manager helps in getting to the root of the issue and identify the cause for the disaster. It highlights the changes made to the configuration (pinpointing the precise change) and also who effected the change and when. This helps in easy troubleshooting of issue.

• Quick recovery for devices with misconfiguration
• Reverting to any safe version available in configuration history
• Automatic rollback to a safe configuration on detection of any configuration failure

Configuration Change Reports

• Network Configuration Manager provides twelve intuitive reports on Network Inventory, Firmware Inventory, Network Health Status, Configuration Changes, User Permissions, Network Compliance etc
• HTML, CSV and PDF formats supported with the option to email the reports

Automation through templates & scripts

• Templates and scripts have been provided to automate configuration operations. The templates & scripts enable applying configuration changes to multiple devices at one go. Also, the templates provide the benefit of carrying out exact changes with precision.