kron and backup

Today, I have looked my auto archive to see if they work properly. Surprise, all was ok except for the 3560 switch. When someone execute a 'write memory' all work fine but the schedule backup creates an empty file. There are just these four rows:

!

!

!

end

After some investigations on Internet I have discovered that I was not the first to occur this issue with these equipement. So I have decided to use another solution. It's the kron which is the equivalent of the cron on an unix machine. The configuration looks like this example:


archive
path ftp://10.10.10.10/PATH/MY-SWITCH/$h-
write-memory
no time-period 10080
! 
kron occurrence backup at 22:00 25 recurring
policy-list backup
!
kron policy-list backup
cli archive config

I have kept all the configuration of the archive except the 'time-period'. I have just added policy backup which is schedule by a kron. The policy executes the command 'archive config' and the kron starts one time par month every 25th at 10pm. Also, it's very important to have NTP server if you don't want encountered problem to execute a kron.

Add a mount point for an ASA

I have found a nice feature on the Cisco ASA. You can create a mount point to a server FTP.

Below you can find a sample of the configuration to  apply:

mount Backup-ASA type ftp
 server 10.10.10.10
 path /root/Backup
 username  userFTP
 password passwordFT
 mode passive
 status enable

To check all the configuration available on this particular folder you can use the command 'dir':

ASA# dir Backup-ASA:

Directory of Backup-ASA:/

       -rwx  71147       19:37:00 Jul 14 2011  ASA-14jul11.txt
       -rwx  79337       16:41:00 Jan 31 2012  ASA-09-02-2012.txt

0 bytes total (2146293760 bytes free)

This trick can be useful to backup easily the running configuration on remote folder:

ASA#copy running-config Backup-ASA

Archive configuration on a Cisco Switch

In a previously post I have written a script (python) to automatically backup cisco config.
There is another method to backup this configuration. Used the archive command. By this way, it's possible to backup the configuration on a remote FTP server. Below, you will find an example:


ip ftp username user1
ip ftp password password1
!
archive
 path ftp://10.10.10.10/folder/My-switch.cfg
 write-memory
 time-period 1440

The write memory command trigger an automatic backup on the ftp server.
1440 means one backup generate every day.

If you make a mistake and you decide to come back on an old version, it's possible to restore the configuration. The better way is  using this command:


configure replace path ftp://10.10.10.10/folder/My-switch.cfg--9-09-00-23-0

To see the state of the archive you can use the 'show archive' command:


SWITCH#show archive
The maximum archive configurations allowed is 14.
The next archive file will be named ftp://10.10.10.10/folder/My-switch.cfg-%3Ctimestamp%3E-2
 Archive #  Name
   1        ftp://10.10.10.10/folder/My-switch.cfgFeb--9-09-00-23-0
   2        ftp:// 10.10.10.10/folder/My-switch.cfgFeb--9-09-00-37-1 <- Most Recent
   3
   4

Multi Instances with PuttyCM

By default you can just start one puttyCM instance. For example if several users want to use a puttyCM on  server via RDP it's impossible by default. To open several session you need to modify a key register on windows. Below this key:


HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\ACS\PuTTY Connection Manager\
AllowMultipleInstances REG_DWORD 1