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Assume I have around 50 Cisco IE2000 Switches connected together and I want to reconfigure some settings, the same settings for every switch.

Normally I would open a command line session via Putty and paste the commands. But as the number of switches is growing, even this method takes its time.

I am aware of Kiwi CatTools. Unfortunately it's not free so I'm wondering if there are other efficient ways to configure a large number of Cisco switches.

nixda
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2 Answers2

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If you absolutely must do this in only Windows, I'd see if you can get a decent command line ssh program installed. Google showed me one that looks like it'll do what you need it to. With this and cmd.exe (or a unix/linux box with ssh and bash), you should be able to write a little for loop into the command line and have it do all the commands. I have a similar problem with Brocade switches, so I've arranged pre-shared ssh keys, and whenever I need to push a command out, I execute a loop in bash (on unix) looks kind of like this:

for switch in sw1 sw2 sw3
  ssh admin@$switch command > $switch.out
done

Now I actually wrote that into a script that'll read an environment variable containing a list of all my switches (which is shared with the rest of my team and updated centrally). I also do some stuff in terms of logging commands issued this way, as well as archiving output by date with a retention, but that's because we do it so much that it was worth writing.

Basil
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Here's an idea. This is probably too much for a single change but you could develop it into a tool that could save you a lot of time in the long run.

1) Build a "template" configuration for your switches. This would include things like the switches' hostname, management IP address, SNMP community string etc. All the unique characteristics for that switch (e.g. IP address) would be a variable.

2) Make what ever change you need to make to the template (e.g. setting console timeout).

3) Run a script to "fill in" the variables and build a unique config for that switch.

4) TFTP the new config to the switch as startup and reboot the switch.

As I said, this would be something you would need to spend a bit of time setting up and designing but it would be scalable and save you time in the long run.

Another tool you should checkout is Rancid. It is a script that automatically downloads the configs from the switches on your network. It is very useful for disaster recovery if a switch dies and you need to get a replacement up and running ASAP.

imlepid
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