Hello everyone. I know in the past, Cisco IOS did not come out of the box being able to perform reverse DNS looks ups, but I was messing with the Autoinstall feature, and out of the box and just plugged into a live network, it can grab an IP from the DHCP server, do a reverse DNS lookup for it's hostname, and then update it's own hostname. Does anyone know if there is a way we can configure this manually?
The reason I'm asking, I have quite a bit of deployments for several switches (next one is 80 3560CG-8PCS), and I am trying to find the easiest way to let users just unbox their switch, plug it in, and it automatically deploys. Sure, this can be done completely by scripts, but that is a maintenance nightmare to add on top of all the other responsibilities.
Options I've explored:
Scripts. Works, but it's a proprietary script that is involved and a nightmare to maintain. Plus, so many other responsibilities are priorities that I'd have to pretty much relearn the script each time to work on it. Do not wish to continue this method. Wanting a out of the box, automated/streamline process.
APIC-EM PnP does not have a way to do bulk deployments with unique hostnames, so I'd pretty much have to either log into each device to update the hostname, or create a different configuration file for each individual device (post deployment provisioning, such as Prime Infrastructure, is a fail, per my time wasted and their own TAC team).
AutoInstall. According to the it's logic, it will load the network-confg on the tftp server first, which then makes it only look for the specific configuration for it's hostname only. Again, this solution would necessitate having to create a separate configuration file for each device, same dilemma as APIC-EM PnP. If I do not load a network-confg, it will then automatically grab an IP from my DHCP server, perform a reverse DNS, and then use that DNS to set it's own hostname, which is awesome. The problem is the next part, because now it goes back and looks for a configuration file specifying it's hostname, in other words, I'd still have to create individual configuration files for each device. There is a default configuration file option that is supposed to try if all else fails, but it seems to only work for routers, and not switches.
If anyone knows the answer to my configuring a reverse DNS lookup and setting the hostname, or even a solution to my actual problem, please shed some light on me.
