I’ve recently made some updates to my seafelt Configuration Manager tool, specifically around the auditing function.
When I’m doing gigs for customers, I often need to check that their configuration settings are correct. It’s one of the biggest causes of problems in an environment. It gets worse when you have lots of devices, and since I deal almost exclusively with large companies, it’s often a problem for them, and one they usually haven’t made any attempt to solve.
I believe there are some vendor specific tools that can do some of what SCM does, but since I don’t deal with just one vendor’s kit, I wanted a tool that would let me audit lots of different types of kit. It also helps me with the ‘glue’ problem: getting different pieces of kit to work together. With SCM I can check the config settings on the NetApp storage devices, and check that the network settings match those of the switches they’re connected to. It’s no use having jumbo frames enabled on the NetApp if the Ciscos are only running with an MTU of 1500.
If you’ve got similar problems and don’t want to have to write up a bunch of your own custom scripts to do this, check out SCM. It’s still under heavy deveopment, so if there’s something you want it to do, let me know. The documentation is inside the code at this point, so until I find the time to write up a basic user guide on the wiki, feel free to email me with questions.