I would like to know how to configure a lot of switches (more than 500) in parallel.
I know about SolarWinds NCM (Network Configuration manager). However, this software cannot communicate directly with the switch; the switch would need to have a polling IP address configured & NCM would need to able to poll via SNMP & interact with the device via telnet or ssh. Once these requirement are met they could push out a baseline configuration to devices.
So, How could automate the first configuration of the switches? I do not like the idea to do it one by one via USB… Maybe via python script?
If I understand correctly, the premise here is that these are all new out-of-the-box devices. Also, I am assuming that they don’t have any IP addresses configured, as is the case with most Cisco platforms, so initial configuration MUST occur over the console. This means there will still be a large amount of physical work involved regardless, connecting and disconnecting console cables.
In such a case, the only automation that I can think of that would be helpful is to create a script that would set up the default configuration that you desire (in a terminal programme such as SecureCRT for example) and plug each switch in to the console and run the script. As you said in your post, if you don’t have the initial IP settings set up, you can’t take advantage of products such as NCM.
Another option is to write the configuration to NVRAM memory chips and install them physically into each switch.
(Depending on the platform these may be removable). This still doesn’t solve the large amount of physical work involved, and may actually take up more time than the conventional configuration method. I have not tried this so I don’t know what the practical implications are.
I will try the “Script recorder” wiht SecureCRT:
_Script recorder:_
_Quickly create a script to automate routines using the script recorder, which records keystrokes, including function keys, and then generates VBScript or Python code (Windows) or a Python script (Mac, Linux)._
