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Network Configuration Management

Configuration Management
UCI 102: COMPUTER COMMUNICATION SYSTEMS
Topic 5

MASENO UNIVERSITY

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Network Configuration Management

Ta ble of Conte nts

Table of Contents .................................................................................................................................................... 2

Objectives ........................................................................................................................................................... 3

What is Configuration Management? ...................................................................................................................... 4

Why Is Configuration Management Important? .................................................................................................. 6

Best Practices for Configuration Management ................................................................................................... 6

Network Documentation and Diagrams .............................................................................................................. 7

Managing Risk .................................................................................................................................................... 7

Time to Resolve .................................................................................................................................................. 8

Developing Configuration Management Capabilities .......................................................................................... 9

Asset Management ........................................................................................................................................... 10

Review Questions ................................................................................................................................................. 16

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Network Configuration Management

Objectives
Many operational problems facing network managers today result from a lack of configuration

management capabilities. Configuration management is an essential operational capability. It is

foundational for other network management functions and crucial for service management.

This topic introduces you to configuration management and its importance for operations and network

management.

At the end of this lesson, the learner will be able to:

1. Explain configuration management and its importance in a network environment.

2. Identify best practices for configuration management.

3. Demonstrate capability to develop a configuration management capability in an organization.

Network Configuration Management

Wha t i s Confi gur a ti o n M a na ge m e nt?

Configuration management falls under the network operations function of network management.

It involves a wide number of areas, including the following:

x Setting and managing configuration of network devices.

x Collecting and maintaining an inventory of software and hardware devices.

x Device software management.

x Conducting backup of device configurations, and the viewing, archiving and comparison of

configuration information.

x Detecting any changes to the configuration of hardware, or software.

x Implementing any configuration changes, and

x Providing support for change management.

The IT Infrastructure Library (ITIL) is a framework for service management to help ensure that the IT

department and the business group in an organization are aligned. It is a comprehensive framework

covering many topics related to operations and network management. ITIL defines a set of processes,

of which one is configuration management.

ITIL outlines the goals of configuration management to be the following:

x To account for all IT assets

x To provide accurate information to support other service management processes

Network Configuration Management

x To provide a sound basis for incident, problem, change, and release management

x To verify records against infrastructure and to correct exceptions

Configuration management is the C from the FCAPS (fault, configuration, accounting, performance, and

security) model. Configuration management is a key function of this model.

Some of the problems that may arise due to lack of configuration management capabilities in an

organization include the following:

x The engineer who makes a configuration change is not available when the impact is realized.

For example, Impact of a change effected on Sunday, may not be noticed until the next

Tuesday by another engineer when, say, end of month processing causes high load.

x An approved change is implemented, but not in the manner that was agreed to when the

change was approved by the change approval committee. When this change later adversely

impacts on the business impact, the committee is held accountable, yet there exists no audit

trail, nor recourse.

x Security alerts indicate impacted devices and workarounds, but the manual effort takes

considerable time to determine the exposure, and the possible risk. A lot of time is therefore

expended to implement the required workaround and software upgrades.

x Configuration changes are made on the network, without management being aware.

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Network Configuration Management

Why Is Configuration Management Important?

Some of the benefits of an effective configuration management system are:

x Reduced downtime through rapid change impact identification

x Productivity improvement for making configuration changes

x Helps ensure compliance for device configuration, software versions, and hardware

x Quick impact determination of security alerts

x Improved visibility and accountability at all levels

x Improved process and approval implementation

Best Practices for Configuration Management

The recommended best practices to avoid configuration management problems include:

x Maintain a master device list

x Maintain correct credentials and manageability at 100 percent

x Create relevance for users and management

x Achieve differentiated management; "not all devices are equal"

x Address people, processes, and technology, not just technology

x Develop processes to work for your company

x Commit resources; this is not a project, it is a system.

Failure to adhere to any of the above key factors has been known to cause configuration management

problems in the past.

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Network Configuration Management

Network Documentation and Diagrams

Network documentation is a critical part of network configuration. It provides a static record of the state

of the network at a point in time. Static, because its useful life is limited up to until the first change is

made on any of the elements contained in the documentation.

Like network documentation, network diagrams are critical, but they are again a static record of the

desired state of the network and have no reflection of the current configured or operational state.

Documentation and diagrams form part of the network configuration in that they can provide information

when troubleshooting network outages;

An effective configuration management capability will provide up-to-date information on the configured

state of the network and will be updated dynamically as the network changes. When combined with

static documentation and diagrams, it provides more relevant information to support network

operations.

Managing Risk

A key issue with network management is the rapid increase in the number of network elements. As the

organization grows to capitalize on emerging opportunities, the network infrastructure must continually

change to support business growth –that is it must scale up communication services. This implies more

devices, software versions, and configuration combinations, and increased risk exposure. This requires

coordinated effort so that the risk can be understood and expediently mitigated as required.

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Network Configuration Management

Time to Resolve

A key measure in many service levels is time taken from occurrence of an incident to resolution

Common causes of network outage include the following:

● Network medium failure (leased line, fiber cut, and so on)

● Physical infrastructure failure, power, air conditioning

● Hardware failure, power supply, chassis, or module, device failure

● Software failure, due to memory leak or bug

● Security exploit, causing Denial of service (DOS) or software failure

● A change in configuration, either logical (e.g. Introduction of a new feature) or physical (e.g.

installation of new hardware or connections)

In general, a network outage can be caused by a change in state or configuration of any of the network

components.

Configuration management assists reduce the time to resolution by providing the necessary information

to support troubleshooting and decision making. This is especially true of a configuration change.

If a network outage is caused by a configuration change, this needs to be eliminated as the root

cause early in the resolution effort.

Effectively applied, configuration management is a system that contributes to the overall availability of

the network.

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Network Configuration Management

Developing Configuration Management Capabilities

● People

● Processes

● Technology

Configuration management as with most network management functions is not a isolated function, but

rather calls for integration of a number of components, that must corporate to achieve the overall

objective.

For instance, whereas technology is available as packaged products that incorporate many of the

required features, it must be combined with people and processes; else its utility is lost.

For example, the technology will produce the required reports, but unless the people read the reports,

determine any actions needed, then kick off the necessary processes to carry out the actions, the

reports are quite useless. This is one of the factors that contribute to many network management

systems often failing to deliver a suitable return on investment.

This section details how to develop configuration management capabilities by identifying the high level

requirements of configuration management, some of the policies that need to be developed, and some

of the necessary processes of which the configuration management functions will be part.

High-Level Requirements

The following is a list of requirements that define the essence of configuration management. These

requirements are not purely technical. They are both technical and functional requirements to support a

full configuration management solution.

The requirements for configuration management are:

● Collect network inventory, including chassis and modules as well as serial numbers

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Network Configuration Management

● Report on collected network inventory

● Collect device configurations

● Keep multiple versions of device configurations

● Allow comparison between the multiple versions of device configurations

● Detect changes in device configurations (event or polling based)

● Determine which user made changes to device configurations

● Report on configuration changes

● Allow configuration changes to be batched and scheduled

● Report on existing software versions deployed on devices

● Keep a repository of device software versions

● Support upgrading of device software

● Audit configuration to help ensure compliance

● Search device configurations, software, and hardware

● Store or link to static documentation and diagrams

● Support the approval processes and workflows

Asset Management
If the configuration management system needs to support asset management, then the additional

requirements needed to support business accounting processes, such as depreciation, are:

● Purchase date

● Purchase price

● Asset number

● Purchasing details, company-specific information (purchase order number, vendor, and so on)

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Network Configuration Management

Carrier Service Management

If the configuration management system needs to support carrier service management, then additional

requirements that support carrier service management and contract renewal are needed. Some of

these requirements are:

● Service number

● Carrier (Telecommunications Company)

● Contract start date

● Contract period

● Currency

● Cost per month

Federated Database

From the requirements, it is clear that a database is needed to store and manage the configuration

data. It may be difficult to find a single system that supports all of these requirements, so a federated

database model may need to be considered. This means that not all the data has to be in one

database, but if there is more than one database, the databases should be linked in some way.

Policies

There are a number of policies that need to be implemented within a configuration management

system. A policy in this context is a documented management decision on what and more possibly how

the system should work. The policy will determine how the configuration management system itself is

configured or set up.

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Network Configuration Management

This list is by no means comprehensive but serves as a guide for what needs to be documented as part

of a company’s configuration management policy. The minimum management policies needed to build

a configuration management platform are:

● Length of time device configurations should be kept

● How many versions of device configurations should be kept

● Frequency of full configuration collection

● Frequency of configuration change polling

● Frequency of full inventory collection

● Frequency of inventory change polling

● Length of time inventory changes are kept

● Frequency of device configuration compliance checking

● Which configuration changes can be made automatically

Processes

Processes are important for a successful configuration management system. ITIL provides a good

framework for processes relevant to configuration management. There are more generic or general

processes that are needed for configuration management in a network.

Related ITIL Processes

The following are the directly related ITIL processes that network configuration management

supports:

● Configuration Management including the Configuration Management Data Base (CMDB)

● Change Management

● Incident Management

● Problem Management

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Network Configuration Management

● Capacity Management

Configuration Management

Network configuration management is synonymous with ITIL Configuration Management, which defines

the important elements of configuration management a network needs.

Change Management

Without effective configuration management, change management is somewhat pointless. Currently

many organizations implement change management on a trust basis with no real means to audit

approved changes against actual configuration changes.

Change management calls for IT to coordinate its efforts with the business group to help ensure that

the business impact is minimized or avoided.

Incident Management

As discussed in the section “Time to Resolve,” configuration management is important for incident

management. It provides up-to-date information about the network.

Capacity Management

This is specifically related to the physical capacity of the network. Inventory data provides information

about the spare capacity for interfaces, ports, modules, slots, and so on.

Configuration Change Auditing

This process aims at ensuring that accountability is enforced with network changes. The two main

aspects of this process are:

● Support the change management and have in place mechanism to ensure that any changes on the

network go through an approval process, and those that have been approved are implemented as

described

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Network Configuration Management

● Audit configuration changes and make sure they are any effected changes were subject to the

approval process.

Vulnerability Management

A process that scans for vulnerabilities in network components and determines which ones pose serius

risk, and possible impacts to the business.

For devices that are vulnerable, we need to determine if a software upgrade is necessary or if a

configuration workaround is sufficient to mitigate the risk.

End of Life Management

Audit the collected inventory for devices that may be out of depreciation or at the end of support by the

vendor or maintenance provider. Determine what the potential risk is and, when necessary, instigate

projects to upgrade equipment.

Maintenance

Use the collected inventory information to audit against vendor or partner maintenance and determine

that maintenance agreements are correct and that maintenance is not being paid on devices that are

no longer in production.

Testing, Change, Configuration, and Release Management

To effectively manage a large network, testing is crucial. Without testing and verification of changes,

especially for large changes, business impact should be expected. The tests are conducted in a test lab

The principles are simple and are considered as best practices by the industry. The test lab should

include a representative small scale topology of the network derived from the main network, and

changes to the configuration or software should be tested in this test lab.

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Network Configuration Management

As part of the project to deploy the new network, a test plan should be developed. This test plan should

be made of unit tests, regression tests, and acceptance tests. After deployment, these tests will be

repeated as part of the release management process.

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Network Configuration Management

R ev i ew Qu es t i on s

1. What is configuration management, and why is it necessary?

2. What are some of the operational issues that could result from lack of configuration management
capabilities in an organization?

3. Identify the key factors that are known to have caused configuration problems in the past.

4. You have been contracted as a consultant by Maseno University to develop configuration management
capabilities at its ICT directorate. Explain how you would go about formulating one.