Why Audit Configurations?

In many networks around the globe, the Information Technology Infrastructure Library (ITIL) is being implemented to provide detailed processes for change management and change requests. With these intricate processes, many administrators now swear off configuration auditing as superfluous—but this is not the case. Even if everyone follows the processes to the letter, there is always a need to audit configurations, not just for errors and changes but also for their applicability in the current network architecture.

Knowledge Is Power

Networks do not remain continuous, let alone survive, if no one is able to answer simple questions about how the network is designed or configured. Though some networks struggle along with very little documentation concerning design and configuration, these networks have little high availability. Configuration auditing provides insight into network configuration state to ensure that everything is configured correctly and to provide a foundation for future configuration changes. Configuration auditing has the following advantages:

Configuration standardization

Having standardized configurations and configuration procedures across the network allows new services to be deployed much more quickly, improves the efficiency of troubleshooting, and can help to prevent network downtime. Through the use of network auditing, you can ensure that the configurations throughout your network equipment are standardized and that one-off or kludged ...

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