rConfig - Configuration Changes

5 mins V8 Pro

rConfig has the ability to track configuration changes on your devices. This is a powerful feature that allows you to see what has changed on your devices over time. This is useful for auditing, and troubleshooting purposes. This guide will take you through how it works, and the options available to you. Please note, this feature will change as we develop it further. Please review this guide regularly for updates, as well as the release notes for changes.

Compare Flow

The configuration changes feature is a powerful tool that allows you to track changes on your devices. It is a simple process to get started. It is enabled by default for all commands.

When a command is run, the output is stored on disk, and a reference to it is stored in the database. This is the baseline and a version ID of 1 will be applied to the config. When the command is run again, the output is stored on disk, and a reference to it is stored in the database. This is the new output, and the version ID will increment by 1. The new output is compared to the baseline, and the differences are stored in the database. This is the change that is recorded. The change is then displayed in the UI. If there are no changes, the new file is downloaded and stored on disk, but no change is recorded in the database, and the version ID stays the same.

Compare UI

You can stop the configs from downloading by setting the option below in the “Commands” menu. This will stop the configs from being downloaded, and stored on disk if the config has not changed. This is useful for saving disk space, and reducing the amount of data stored on disk. Toggle the “Keep Unchanged Config” option to “off” to stop the configs from being downloaded.

Keep Unchanged Config Toggle

When a config is not downloaded, you will see the config in the “Configurations” table, but the config will not be downloaded. You will see a message in place of its filename saying “Not Downloaded” to indicate that the config has not been downloaded. And opening this will result in an error. You can delete these records, but they might be useful for auditing purposes.

Unchanged Config Not Downloaded

Compare Exclusions and options

You can configure the compare options for each command. This allows you to specify how rConfig should compare the output of the command. You can also configure granular exclusions for the compare process. This is useful if you have commands that return dynamic data, such as timestamps, or counters that change each time the command is run. You can exclude these from the compare process, so that the changes are not recorded in the database. See more information here