How To's: Manage Configuration File on Cisco Devices

Hi there.

In this post I wanted to share a very simple and basic feature that I've been using a while. I've been able to set-up a full scale lab with 20 routers in less than 5 minutes!

It's Cisco configure replace feature. It allows you to restore to a previous running configuration file, stored somewhere (in your device flash for example).

How does it work?

Suppose your router only has the hostname configured, so this will be your initial configuration state. We'll save the running configuration to flash with a descriptive name, like the one below:

R1#copy running-configuration initial-config

Then you can start build your lab. Now when you want to replace or delete the current running configuration, all you have to do is run the command below:

R1#configure replace bootflash:/initial-config force

And like that, your router will have the initial configuration in a couple of seconds. You can take one step further, by saving your configuration files directly on your router's flash, and just replace them with the initial-config file, whenever you want to start a new lab.

Hope you enjoyed this post, leave your comments below and I'll see you on the next post.

Reference:

https://www.cisco.com/c/en/us/td/docs/ios-xml/ios/config-mgmt/configuration/xe-3s/config-mgmt-xe-3s-book/cm-config-rollback.html