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Jun 7
Cisco Network Change Best Practice Quick Rollback
Posted by Chris Marshall

Happy New Year LookingPoint blog readers. In this quick post I wanted to share with you all a quick tip that I use for all my changes on Cisco equipment running IOS/IOS-XE software.

Sometimes network changes need to be rolled back, and with this tip you can restore the pre change state in seconds without the need for a reload or pasting in a potentially long list of commands prefixed with “no”.

Before making any changes I always take a backup/snapshot of the current running configuration to flash memory using the following command:

copy running-config flash:PRE_CHANGE_ROLLBACK_<CHANGE_DATE>

Once I have completed all my changes, I take a second backup/snapshot of the new configuration using the below command:

copy running-config flash:POST_CHANGE_ROLLBACK_<CHANGE_DATE>

Now in the event that we need to quickly revert to our previous pre change state we can quickly rollback using a single command:

configure replace flash:PRE_CHANGE_ROLLBACK_<CHANGE_DATE>

This now gives us time to research the issue that called for the rollback. Once we are happy that we have identified and resolved the issue we can return to post change state utilizing the same configuration replace command with our post change backup/snapshot.

The below screenshot shows an example where a devices hostname has been changed and then rolled back. Remember with a real-world change this could have been hundreds of lines of code rolled back in a matter of seconds.

Cisco Network Change Best Practice Quick Rollback

As always if you have any questions on IOS/IOS-XE software for you and your business and would like to schedule a free consultation with us, please reach out to us at sales@lookingpoint.com and we’ll be happy to help!

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Written By:

Chris Marshall, LookingPoint Senior Solutions Architect - CCIE #29940

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