* The Reviewmeister tests configuration management tools
The Reviewmeister’s favorite configuration management tool is TrueControl from Rendition Networks.
TrueControl consists of a secure management engine along with syslog and Trivial FTP (TFTP) servers. The TrueControl product stores its information in a SQL database, and does not force a network administrator to choose a specific database engine; TrueControl supports mySQL, Oracle and SQL Server 2000 installations.
The system does not provide device auto-discovery because Rendition says most customers will use an existing network management system. Device password rules are used to associate credentials with a device and can be assigned to a specific device or multiple devices. TrueControl also can automatically configure a device to log messages to the system’s syslog server.
TrueControl supports most vendor equipment, with Juniper being the one exception. The system integrates with a number of network management systems, including HP OpenView Network Node Manager, Nortel Optivity and Remedy ARS.
Rendition’s system provided excellent search, audit and report capabilities – devices, modules, configurations, tasks, sessions and events all can be checked against specified criteria. TrueControl can make changes to the start-up and running configurations of network devices. Groups of equipment can be created to monitor and change configurations on a more easily managed basis. Read/write command scripts (as opposed to diagnostic scripts, which are read-only) can be created and issued to perform different tasks on devices or groups – commands sent to a particular device also can be recorded and “played back” at a later time. TrueControl can be used to deploy user and SNMP passwords, which makes a once-arduous task easy to complete.
Once devices had been added to the inventory, configuration snapshots were taken. Configurations on our network devices were then changed, and TrueControl let us view differences in three ways: contextually (showing us only the portions of the configuration that had changed), using a Unix-style diff view, or viewing the full text of the current and previous configurations side by side.
TrueControl detects real-time changes via its proxy interface (which lets telnet and Secure Shell [SSH] access each device in the inventory), SNMP traps and information directed at TrueControl’s syslog server. Notifications and reports can be configured (Simple Mail Transfer Protocol [SMTP ] alerts are one example) and sent to administrators when changes occur.
TrueControl provides a Web and command-line interface (CLI) for users to access command functions. Although the Web-based user interface was fairly straightforward, it wasn’t as intuitive as AlterPoint’s DeviceAuthority.
For the full report, go to https://www.nwfusion.com/reviews/2004/0419rev.html
