SG 300 Textview

[eric-owens]

We're in the process of rolling out quite a few SG 300-28P.  I've read about the use of Textview which gives the ability to copy a running config to a text file, modify, and paste it in another switch for a more streamlined massive deployment of these switches.

Cisco's documentation says CDP, Smartport, and Textview will be available in the next firmware release.  We're using 1.0.0.27 which appears to be the latest firmware release.  Does anyone have any idea when to expect these features with the next firmware?

Thank you.

[cavan1975]

Same question as above, but for the SF300 model.

[maddoxb123]

I contacted support about a month ago and they  never responded with a release date. I'm most interested in the CDP feauture so these switches can be monitored with the Cisco Network Assistant. You could save off a good config and restore each switch you want to deploy from the backup. Just change the hostname and IP address after....not as fast as text view but still better than building each config from scratch.

[Ivor Diedricks]

The target is to ship firmware with this functionality before the middle of the year - hopefully sooner.

Ivor

[tim.durack]

Any way to get on a beta list?

[nimusell]

Hello Timothy,

While waiting for the new firmware with textview (and other enhancements like CDP and QinQ) which should be released most probably by the month of May, there could be an alternative by "provisioning" your switch through DHCP/TFTP. If your DHCP server provides options 66/67/150, you can indeed have the switch pull the configuration automatically from a TFTP server. If you don't have these options in your DHCP server you can still load the config manually through DHCP.

The way to go is to configure one switch completely, but leave it in DHCP (do not apply a static IP address), I would suggest though to reserve the MAC addresses of the switches in the DHCP server. Then save the config to your TFTP (or eventually HTTP) server. Now the hard work is done, for every other switch you need to deploy, load this config from the TFTP/HTTP server, this can either be done through the web interface or through the menu based console.

I would strongly advise not to maually alter the configuration file, once saved to the TFTP/HTTP server, as the Textview, although it is much like Cisco IOS, it is not entirely identical and loading a configuration that is "faulty" might cause the switch not to come up.

If you need more information about the DHCP auto-configuration option, do not hesitate to contact me. For the real Textview access, please have a little patience, it will be here soon

Best regards,

Nico Muselle

Sr. Network Engineer - CCNA