Chapter 1:

Planning Maintenance
for Complex Networks

CCNP TSHOOT: Maintaining and Troubleshooting IP Networks

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Chapter 1 Objectives
This chapter covers the following topics:
Structured network maintenance
Network maintenance processes and procedures
Network maintenance services and tools

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Network Maintenance Overview
One of the responsibilities of the network administrator
Includes necessary tasks and operations which keep
network functional to fulfill company business needs
Sometimes, while performing routine maintenance, also
need to troubleshoot different problems that might occur
during network day-to-day operations
If have maintenance plan may be able to avoid many
problems before they occur reducing downtime and
improving availability

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Structured
Network
Maintenance

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Structured Network Maintenance
Depending on the size and type of organization, some or all
of the following may be included in the maintenance tasks:
Device Installation and Maintenance
Failure Response
Monitoring Network Performance
Auditing Business Procedures
Implementing Security Procedures and Security Auditing

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Structured Network Maintenance
The structured approach to network maintenance has some
clear benefits over the interrupt-driven approach
Reduced Network Downtime
Cost-effectiveness
Better Alignment with Business Objectives
Higher Network Security

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Network
Maintenance
Processes and
Procedures

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Network Maintenance Processes and
Procedures
Steps to establish procedures that fit an organizations
needs
Identify network maintenance tasks.
Recognize and describe the advantages of scheduled maintenance.
Evaluate the key decision factors that affect change control
procedures
Describe the essential elements of network documentation and its
function.
Plan for efficient disaster recovery.
Describe the importance of network monitoring and performance
measurement as an integral element of a proactive network
maintenance strategy.

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Common Maintenance Tasks
Accommodating adds, moves, and changes
Networks are always undergoing changes. As people move and
offices are changed and restructured, network devices such as
computers, printers, and servers might need to be moved, and
configuration and cabling changes might be necessary. These adds,
moves, and changes are a normal part of network maintenance.
Installation and configuration of new devices
This task includes adding ports, link capacity, network devices, and so
on. Implementation of new technologies or installation and
configuration of new devices is either handled by a different group
within your organization, by an external party, or handled by internal
staff.
Replacement of failed devices
Whether replacement of failed devices is done through service
contracts or done in house by support engineers, it is an important
network maintenance task.

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Common Maintenance Tasks
Backup of device configurations and software
This task is linked to the task of replacing failed devices. Without good
backups of both software and configurations, the time to replace failed
equipment or recover from severe device failures will not be trouble-
free and might take a long time.
Troubleshooting link and device failures
Failures are inevitable; diagnosing and resolving failures related to
network components, links, or service provider connections are
essential tasks within a network engineers job.
Software upgrading or patching
Network maintenance requires that you stay informed of available
software upgrades or patches and use them if necessary. Critical
performance or security vulnerabilities are often addressed by the
software upgrades or patches.

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Common Maintenance Tasks
Network monitoring
Monitoring operation of the devices and user activity on the network is
also part of a network maintenance plan. Network monitoring can be
performed using simple mechanisms such as collection of router and
firewall logs or by using sophisticated network monitoring applications.
Performance measurement and capacity planning
Because the demand for bandwidth is continually increasing, another
network maintenance task is to perform at least some basic
measurements to decide when it is time to upgrade links or equipment
and to justify the cost of the corresponding investments. This
proactive approach allows one to plan for upgrades (capacity
planning) before bottlenecks are formed, congestions are
experienced, or failures occur.

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Common Maintenance Tasks
Writing and updating documentation
Preparing proper network documentation that describes the current
state of the network for reference during implementation,
administration, and troubleshooting is a mandatory network
maintenance task within most organizations. Network documentation
must be kept current.

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Network Maintenance Planning
Scheduling maintenance
Formalizing change-control procedures
Establishing network documentation procedures
Establishing effective communication
Defining templates/procedures/conventions
Planning for disaster recovery

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Scheduling Maintenance Advantages
Network downtime is reduced.
Long-term maintenance tasks will not be neglected or
forgotten.
Predictable lead times for change requests.
Disruptive maintenance tasks can be scheduled during
assigned maintenance windows,reducing downtime during
production hours.

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Formalizing Change-Control Procedures
Which types of change require authorization and who is
responsible for authorizing them?
Which changes have to be done during a maintenance window
and which changes can be done immediately?
What kind of preparation needs to be done before executing a
change?
What kind of verification needs to be done to confirm that the
change was effective?
What other actions (such as updating documentation) need to be
taken after a successful change?
What actions should be taken when a change has unexpected
results or causes problems?
What conditions allow skipping some of the normal change
procedures and which elements of the procedures should still be
followed?

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Establishing Network Documentation
Procedures
Network drawings: Diagrams of the physical and logical
structure of the network
Connection documentation: Lists of all relevant physical
connections, such as patches, connections to service
providers, and power circuits
Equipment lists: Lists of all devices, part numbers, serial
numbers, installed software versions, software licenses (if
applicable), warranty/service information
IP address administration: Lists of the IP subnets scheme
and all IP addresses in use
Configurations: A set of all current device configurations or
even an archive that contains all previous configurations
Design documentation: A document describing the
motivation behind certain implementation choices

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Establishing Effective Communication
Who is making changes and when?
How does the change affect others?
What are the results of tests that were done, and what
conclusions can be drawn?

If actions, test results, and conclusions are not communicated

between team members, the process in the hands of one
team member can be disruptive to the process handled by
another team member. You do not want to create new
problems while solving others.

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Defining Templates/Procedures/Conventions

Are logging and debug time stamps set to local time or

coordinated universal time (UTC)?
Should access lists end with an explicit deny any?
In an IP subnet, is the first or the last valid IP address
allocated to the local gateway?

In many cases, you can configure a device in several different

ways to achieve the same results. However, using different
methods of achieving the same results in the same network
can easily lead to confusion, especially during
troubleshooting. Under pressure, valuable time can be
wasted in verifying configurations that are assumed incorrect
simply because they are configured differently.

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Planning for Disaster Recovery
To replace a failed device, you need the following items:
Replacement hardware
The current software version for the device
The current configuration for the device
The tools to transfer the software and configuration to the device
Licenses (if applicable)
Knowledge of the procedures to install software, configurations, and
licenses

In short, the key factors to a successful disaster recovery are

defining and documenting recovery procedures and making
sure that you always have the necessary elements available
in case a disaster strikes

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Network
Maintenance
Services and
Tools

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Fundamental Tools and Applications
in a Network Maintenance Toolkit

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Network Time Services

Example 3-1 shows the clock of a device that is synchronized to a single

time server with IP address 10.1.220.3. The time zone is configured to
Pacific standard time (PST), which has a 8 hour offset to UTC. The clock
is configured to change to daylight savings time on the second Sunday in
March at 2:00 a.m. and back to standard time on the first Sunday in
November at 2:00 a.m. The system logging is configured to use the local
date and time in the time stamps and to include the time zone in the time
stamps. For log entries generated by debugs, the settings are similar, but
milliseconds are included in the time stamps for greater accuracy.

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Logging Services
Network devices generate logging messages during
operation.
Logging messages can be sent to one or more of the
following:
Console (default)
Monitor (vty/AUX)
Buffer (volatile memory)
Syslog server
Flash memory (nonvolatile memory)
Simple Network Management Protocol (SNMP) network management
server (as an SNMP trap)

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Logging Services

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Logging severity levels
There are 8 levels of severity of logging messages:
(0) Emergency
(1) Alert
!
(2) Critical logging buffered level
(3) Error !
(4) Warning logging console level
!
(5) Notification
logging xxx.xxx.xxx.xxx
(6) Informational logging trap level
(7) Debugging
By default, system logging is on and the default severity
level is debugging all messages are logged

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Performing Backup and Restore
FTP Configuration Backup

Store Username and Password for FTP Access

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Performing Backup and Restore
Configure SSH and SCP Backup

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Performing Backup and Restore
Setting up an archive configuration

show archive Command

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Restore archived configuration

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Chapter 1 Summary
Structured network maintenance
Network maintenance processes and procedures
Network maintenance services and tools

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 2007 2016, Cisco Systems, Inc. All rights reserved. Cisco Public 31