As network design engineers do stellar job in designing the various network architectures (such as branch network, campus network, WAN network, DMZ network, extranet connectivity, core network, hybrid cloud integration etc.), each architecture also requires defining associated device models & each device configuration segments. The configuration segments are defined as golden-configs or features oriented config-templates. 

Very soon these designs become obsolete & outdated from what is actually running in network. Largely, the possible causes are (not limited to),

• Organizational & Cost structure (design engineers are different from operation engineers)
• Cost of update is very expansive
• Designs are too abstract and cannot be used for implementation
• Design process is used for Day0 setup only
• Design-to-Operate process is too-slow and expansive for Day-2 offerings/changes.
• Many more…

 

This issue leads to various versions of network designs running in network and yet, none of them complying to the actual designs. This cause huge-cost and deployment-issues in setting up new office or another network segment. These out-of-sync designs further cause misconfiguration, security-hazards, outages, and significant delay in implementing network services.

How to keep network designs updated with what’s running in network? No, we are not talking about discovery model and spend significant amount of money & effort to learn what’s running on network. There are better ways to address it.