• A disaster is expensive. It impacts productivity, disrupts business services, interrupts business critical applications and causes huge financial losses.

• A disaster is unexpected, with hardly any warnings or symptoms.

• A disaster can happen to any business, regardless of any size or type of businesses.

Sh*t happens !

Image source: http://www.networkcomputing.com/sites/default/files/resources/nwc/2016-IHS-Cost-of-ICT-Downtime-Chart.jpg

For a network admin, disasters can come in the following ways:

- A network outage- A security breach- Performance degradation of business

critical services and applications

Can happen to you.

Image source: https://media.makeameme.org/created/youre-a-network.jpg

What causes these disasters?Human errors like misconfigurations & faulty configuration changes cause critical network outages.

in 2015

Image source: https://journal.uptimeinstitute.com/data-center-outages-incidents-industry-transparency/

Image courtesy John Klossner, © Computerworld

Really though!Im

age courtesy John Klossner, ©

Com

puterworld

How to be prepared.• Disasters, sometimes, are

inevitable. • The only way to lessen the

impact is to take corrective actions immediately and ensure business continuity.

• The best way to do this is to have a simple tool that aids you with all the right information and data to quickly revert disasters.

• Network Configuration Manager is a simple tool that gives a complete detailed view into your network devices and its configuration.

• These telecom & communication companies trust their network with NCM:

Why Network Configuration Manager.

• AT&T MOBILITY AFFILIATES Puerto Rico

• Ericsson Magyarorszבg Kft

• Essar Services India Ltd.

• Lightyear Network Solutions

• Telecom Italia S.p.A.

• TeleCommunication System

• Telecel S.A.

WAYS NCM CAN SAVE YOU FROM A DISASTER.

• A disaster could mean critical data loss and re-building your network from scratch. A task that will take long enough to cause major dents in your business.

• With backups, you can rebuild your network in a jiffy.

• NCM allows backup in 3 different ways:• Syslog based automated backups• Scheduled backups• Manual backups

#1 AUTOMATED BACKUPS

Scheduled hourly, daily, weekly, & monthly backups.

Instantaneous backup at any given time.

Automated backup whenever there is a 'Log out' event in the Syslogs of that device.

• Baseline configuration is the best working configuration of a device.

• The trusted configuration is restored into the device when something goes wrong.

• Having a trusted configuration enables a quick fallback to bring business continuity immediately.

• NCM allows labelling of a configuration as 'Baseline' in just a click.

#2 Restore configuration

Labels the current running and startup configurations as baseline

Sets the selected version of the configuration as baseline.

• An organization with many network admins having access to all network devices is a sure fire way of something going amiss.

• Restricting access based on roles can keep a check on the changes that are made by the network admins & users.

• The changes made by unauthorized personnels should not be implemented before approval.

• NCM sends out notifications whenever an authorized/ unauthorized person makes a change to the running/startup configuration.

#3 Change management - Role based access controls

Notifications can be set for authorized or unauthorized changes made in startup, running, or startup and running configurations.

Various actions that can be performed for a notification.

Rolling back to the previous / baseline version can be automated by selecting this option.

• Once you have taken the corrective actions and reverted your network outage, there is the task of finding out the root cause. To know what exactly went wrong?

• Analysing the changes made in the configurations and finding out what changes were made by who and when gives deep insight on the cause of the disaster.

• For this to be possible, you must be able to track and monitor real time changes and have historical versions of the configurations.

• NCM allows you to track, monitor and also compare different versions and highlight the changes.

• Each time a change happens, the configuration version is incremented and saved.

#3.a Change management -Root cause analysis

Number of devices with changes, the changes made in each device and its corresponding versions.

Comparison of two different versions of a startup configuration with the changes highlighted.

#4 Compliance• Staying compliant to the industry standards

is mission critical to any business. Non-compliance may lead to vulnerabilities, disruption of service/operation and damage to reputation.

• If you have web applications in which users leave their card data, it is imperative that you stay PCI compliant.

• With PCI DSS compliance policy in NCM, protect your cardholders data and provide a secure platform.

• NCM also monitors for HIPAA and SOX compliance standards.

• You can custom create policies and upon violation of any, can have the remediation executed via configlets.

PCI compliance schedules and reviews in one page.

• Firmware updates add functionality, fix bugs, and fine-tune the performance of a device.

• Missing out a firmware update may give rise to loop holes for security threats, exploits and malfunctioning of the device.

• Spend less time on firmware updates as NCM provides a central module to push firmware updates on various devices at one go.

#5 Upgraded firmwares

The template for firmware update

is listed in configlets.

Numerous devices can be selected for the firmware update to be executed at one go.

The downloaded firmware update file will be in the TFTP server (built-in with NCM).

Website: https://www.manageengine.com/network-configuration-manager/

Product download: https://www.manageengine.com/network-configuration-manager/download.html

Forums: https://forums.manageengine.com/network-configuration-manager

Support: ncm-support@manageengine.com

Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCHLusaahd4nS9esD3xBVeUQ

So, what do you think?

Get a free one-on-one DEMO

THANK YOU!HEMALAKSHMI.B

Marketing analystManageEngine Network Configuration Manager