NETCONF Overview
NETCONF is an IETF standard protocol that provides mechanisms to install, retrieve, manipulate, and delete the configuration of network devices. NETCONF uses XML for both data specification and for protocol messages. NETCONF was developed because using CLI scripting or SNMP for automated configuration management was ineffective in an environment of frequent changes to networking parameters.
Rapid Development
Tail-f’s ConfD NETCONF agent implements the NETCONF protocol as defined in RFCs 4741 and 4742 mapping NETCONF operations to a configuration database. ConfD NETCONF provides developers with the fastest path to adding NETCONF to the existing applications and rock-solid technology to build XML-based configuration management for new applications. The NETCONF agent is automatically rendered from the same XML data model used to generate CLI and Web interfaces.
Comprehensive Solution
The ConfD NETCONF agent provides support for operating on candidate configurations, where changes are committed to an active state in atomic transactions. If the commit fails, a rollback to the previous configuration is performed. Candidate configurations can also be committed to several devices within a network using a single atomic transactional operation. If the commit on any of the devices fails, then all updated devices roll back to the previous configuration.
ConfD NETCONF includes a gateway feature providing a southbound client interface that enables ConfD to aggregate multiple NETCONF devices into a single configuration. This capability allows CLI, Web, and NETCONF Interfaces access to any sub-agent connected locally or remotely through the NETCONF gateway.
ConfD NETCONF can operate on instances in a data model in addition to configuration data allowing developers to declare operations in the configuration specification language. For example, start and stop network interfaces and reboot nodes.
ConfD NETCONF can be deployed as part of complete suite of network management modules or as a stand-alone product.