Configuration Management at Massive Scale: System Design and Experience

William Enck, Patrick McDaniel, Subhabrata Sen, Panagiotis Sebos, Sylke Spoerel, Albert Greenberg, Sanjay Rao, William Aiello

Research output: Contribution to conferencePaperpeer-review

49 Scopus citations

Abstract

The development and maintenance of network device configurations is one of the central challenges faced by large network providers. Current network management systems fail to meet this challenge primarily because of their inability to adapt to rapidly evolving customer and provider-network needs, and because of mismatches between the conceptual models of the tools and the services they must support. In this paper, we present the PRESTO configuration management system that attempts to address these failings in a comprehensive and flexible way. Developed for and deployed over the last 4 years within a large ISP network, PRESTO constructs device-native configurations based on the composition of configlets representing different services or service options. Configlets are compiled by extracting and manipulating data from external systems as directed by the PRESTO configuration scripting and template language. We outline the configuration management needs of large-scale network providers, introduce the PRESTO system and configuration language, and demonstrate the use, workflows, and ultimately the platform-s flexibility via an example of VPN service. We conclude by considering future work and reflect on the operators- experiences with PRESTO.

Original languageEnglish (US)
Pages73-86
Number of pages14
StatePublished - 2007
Event2007 USENIX Annual Technical Conference, USENIX 2007 - Santa Clara, United States
Duration: Jun 17 2007Jun 22 2007

Conference

Conference2007 USENIX Annual Technical Conference, USENIX 2007
Country/TerritoryUnited States
CitySanta Clara
Period6/17/076/22/07

All Science Journal Classification (ASJC) codes

  • General Computer Science

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