ArubaOS-CX - Configuration Checkpoints and Auto Rollback

[Ruben.Iglesias]

ArubaOS-CX – Managing Configuration with Checkpoints

The new ArubaOS-CX has some interesting features. Configuration checkpoints is one of them.

What is a checkpoint

A checkpoint is a snapshot of the current configuration. Checkpoints are stored in database format instead of text files. Because of that, they contain a state of the configuration. You can read a checkpoint as a text file or in JSON notation. The second will give you more details, including factory defaults that are still in effect.

Because they are stored as “states” moving between checkpoints is usually easy, fast and safe. The only caveat is that checkpoints created with one software version may not work properly on another.

Checkpoint creation

Checkpoints can be created manually or automatically.

• Manually created checkpoints: copy running checkpoint <checkpoint-name>

• Automatically created checkpoints: If you make changes to the configuration but do not save them, 5 minutes (configurable) after the last change, a checkpoint is created by the system. Its name will include date and time of the creation (CPC20180709164306).

Checkpoints and configuration auto-rollback

An additional feature, is configuration auto-rollback. If, before starting a configuration change, you enter: checkpoint auto <number of minutes>, two minutes before the end of the number of minutes, you will be prompted to confirm the changes. If you do not, at the end of the period, the configuration will return to its previous state. For this purpose a hidden checkpoint is used.

The main purpose of this option is to recover from a configuration mistake that disconnected you from the device (especially if accessing it remotely).

[Alvin.Castro]

Great info, Ruben!

In addition to the CLI commands to manage checkpoints, you have access to the checkpoints in the WebUI.

On the sidebar of the UI, open the System dropdown and click Config Mgmt to list all of the checkpoints.  You can create checkpoint with the '+ADD' button, Copy each checkpoint to Running config or Startup config, and you can even download the checkpoint in JSON format.

One last thing I'd like to add is that if you're using the Network Analytics Engine that is built-in to each AOS-CX, checkpoints are automatically viewable on NAE agent graphs as purple diamonds when they are created and updated, giving you a quick and easy view to see configuration changes between the previous configurations when they happen!

[../smb/air]

Please consider expanding your quality POST to include the CHECKPOINT DIFF command(CLI).  The DIFF results with:  +, -, @, numbers, and spaces need more explanation than the aos-cx CLI manual seems to provide.

The 8320 CLI (10.03) manual states (but only describes + and - ):

Usability
The output of the checkpoint diff command has several symbols:

--N

-----
# Thanks # Gracias # Merci # ありがとう # Danke # Spasiba # 감사합니다 # Toda # Cheers # Dhanyawaad # Ahsante # Xièxiè # shukran #

[guillote]

Hi Alvin,

Is there any plan to bring the checkpoint functionality to the REST API? Namely, create/delete/rollback/diff between any checkpoint and running/startup. It seems that's only available in the Web UI/CLI. Also, uploading config seems to work only when overriding the running-config, it with be ideal to use checkpoints for that purpose.