Nexus 3000 Automating config backups with FTP Password

[jhallam01]

Hi all,

We just installed a set of Nexus 3000 series switches in our network.  Prior to this (and on the other cisco switches) I have been using the kron scheduler combined with piping the show running/startup-config command to automatically back up my running and start-up config to an FTP server on a weekly basis.

Obviously, the NX-OS doesn't have the kron scheduler, but does include a scheduler feature that I can use to automate this.  The issue that I am running into is as follows:

Our ftp server is set up so it requires a username and password.  I am able to write the following command that allows me to include the correct username and vrf in it, but I can't figure out how to configure it to use the password. 

copy running-config ftp://username@ftpServerIP/SwDC01.txt vrf management

I need to be able to set the password to use in order to make the transfer not require any user input.  In the Non-NX OS switches this can be done fairly easily through the "ip ftp password XXXXXXX" command in the conf t menu.  How would this be accomplished in NX-OS?

Thanks

Jeremy

[Ganesh Hariharan]

Hello Jeremy,

I have not seen scheduler functionality with FTP server support available yet but only tested with tftp server.

But tools like kiwi cat tools or solar wind backup functionality may be another option to explore for doing backup on ftp.

Hope it Helps..

-GI

[jhallam01]

Thanks for the ideas.

I know there are other tools out there that I can use to do these back-ups, but for the time being we are looking at staying with the built in features to accomplish it. One reason is that all of our other Cisco closet/core switches are set up and functioning as desired at no extra cost using the kron utility.

The only missing piece to my puzzle is "Can I configure the Nexus ftp client to use a password I set? If so, what is it under?"

Under the conf t prompt the command ip ftp says that it is used to configure the FTP client.  This would make me think that I could do it through that process, but I haven't found much documentation from Cisco that give details on this and this is the first NX-OS device I have worked with. I was kind of hoping someone else had been down this road and would have a quick answer for it.

I will dig into the FTP Client setup and post back what I find.

[lukas.tribus]

Hi Jeremy!

How did you resolve this issue in the end? I'm having the same issue here and wonder if you found a solution.

Thanks!

[jhallam01]

I went through Cisco and the response that I got was that it is not possible in the NX-OS.  Rather then going this route I was told to use the scheduler to call a python script that would handle the backup process, including inputting the required credentials.  I do have a python script that has functioned in a different test environment, but I have not deployed it to production.  We have had many other large project come up that have pushed this to the back burner.  Currently I just do the back up manually every 1-2 weeks.  Since it is only 1 switch and config changes are minimal this has not been tough to manage.  Deploying the python script is still on my "to do" list, just below quite a bit of other stuff.  Hope this helps.

[lukas.tribus]

Alright, thanks!

[n-kirillov]

You may use FTP notation for sending user/pass for example

copy running-config ftp://cisco:somepass@10.10.0.1/backup/MAIN/alkatra

[volant]

Hey. Thank you. This is the perfect solution for NX-OS

My NX-OS is 9k model.
I am backup once per week via archive command.
! send traffic via vrf managment
ip ftp source-interface mgmt0 vrf management
! Archive command
path ftp://FTP-USERNAME:FTP-PASSWORD@IP-FTP-SERVER/SWITCH-NAME/$h-$t
! every 10080 min
time-period 10080
!also activate when issue copy running-confing startup-config
write-memory

[balde]

I had the same issue with ftp, i tried tftp and it worked.

scheduler job name JOB-NAME

copy running-config tftp : //1.1.1.1/$(SWITCHNAME)-conf.$(TIMESTAMP)  vrf default

end-job

scheduler chedule name JOB-NAME

    job name JOB-NAME

    time weekly 07:00:00

this will run auto backup every saturday at midnight (first two digits are for the day of the week and last two, hour and min)