[rancid] RANCiD vs Cisco ACI

[Piegorsch, Weylin William]

Closing the loop on this.


- There does exist a "show running-config" option for the controllers, but not for switches in the fabric

- Any one controller is enough: all controllers have mostly the same running-config, and you have to bootstrap a controller with the unique details before you can restore to it anyway
- the contents of the running-config are not enough to restore a fabric, and anyway that's not the recommended approach if you're using the GUI (https://www.cisco.com/c/en/us/td/docs/dcn/aci/apic/5x/basic-configuration/cisco-apic-basic-configuration-guide-52x/m_apic_configuration_interfaces.html#id_49309)

- there's a JSON dump file one can get, which can be used for restoration, however it's a tarball containing an entire directory structure of JSON files and other stuff (SSL certificates; archive hash; etc)



There are additional commands (not "show" but other commands) that can be run to get JSON output of various components of the Managed Object tree.



Cisco's "official" archive approach is for the system to proactively push a configuration archive to a remote server. This archive is a set of files (JSON, SSL certificates, etc) wrapped as a tarball.  And, there's an SSH interface that is "supposed to" be able to drop a full system archive to the CLI.  In theory it should be possible to either: use this local-CLI feature; or, drop the tarball into a particular location in the rancid file hierarchy, and in theory it should be enough for RANCiD to use it's already-inherent capabilities for backup archive, restoration, and config diff.  I don't have opportunity to develop it, though I'm open to helping with testing.


[signature_1593189312]

Weylin Piegorsch |  Manager, Network Engineering
Boston University Information Services & Technology
weylin at bu.edu<mailto:weylin at bu.edu> | 617.353.8128 | bu.edu/tech<http://www.bu.edu/tech>
Listen. Learn. Lead.







From: Piegorsch, Weylin William
Sent: Thursday, October 20, 2022 12:34 AM
To: rancid-discuss at www.shrubbery.net
Subject: RANCiD vs Cisco ACI

Has anyone had success using RANCiD against Cisco ACI?  I'm running RANCiD v3.4.1.





[signature_1593189312]

Weylin Piegorsch |  Manager, Network Engineering
Boston University Information Services & Technology
weylin at bu.edu<mailto:weylin at bu.edu> | 617.353.8128 | bu.edu/tech<http://www.bu.edu/tech>
Listen. Learn. Lead.




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