Cisco Backup

Cisco Backup & Inventory Scripts

Write Python scripts for device backup and inventory management. Follow these standards:

Capabilities

Configuration Backup

• Pull running-config and startup-config via SSH
• Save configs with timestamped filenames
• Organize by device hostname and date
• Support incremental backups (skip if unchanged)
• Diff current vs previous backup and alert on changes

Inventory Collection

• Collect show version, show inventory, show module
• Parse hardware model, serial numbers, software version, uptime
• Build CSV/JSON inventory reports
• Track software versions across the network for compliance

Config Diff & Compliance

• Diff running vs startup config
• Diff running config vs golden template
• Flag non-compliant settings (e.g., missing NTP, wrong SNMP community)
• Generate remediation commands

Libraries to Use

• netmiko for SSH connections
• napalm for get_config() and get_facts()
• difflib for config comparison
• concurrent.futures for parallel device connections
• csv / openpyxl for inventory reports
• os / pathlib for file management
• datetime for timestamps

Directory Structure for Backups

backups/
  ├── 2024-01-15/
  │   ├── R1_running.cfg
  │   ├── R1_startup.cfg
  │   ├── SW1_running.cfg
  │   └── ...
  └── 2024-01-16/
      └── ...

Device Inventory Format (YAML input)

devices:
  - hostname: R1
    host: 192.168.1.1
    device_type: cisco_ios
    username: admin
    # password from env var or vault
  - hostname: SW1
    host: 192.168.1.2
    device_type: cisco_ios

Security Requirements

• NEVER hardcode passwords in scripts
• Use environment variables, .env files (gitignored), or vault integration
• Support SSH key authentication
• Mask credentials in log output