Sams Teach Yourself Network Troubleshooting in 24 Hours, Second Edition

Hour 18. Managing Change: Establishing Consistency and Standards

The art of progress is to preserve order amid change and to preserve change amid order.

——Alfred North

Network components that are configured consistently—identically, when possible—are a godsend to busy network troubleshooters. In particular, I’ll discuss two techniques in this hour that will help you build and maintain as consistent (homogenous in geek speak) a network as possible:

• Manual consistency methods (which rely mostly on personal organization skills combined with the use of operating system features)

• The use of automated deployment tools

Apart from the obvious benefits of planning once and deploying many times, these consistency techniques are going to make your troubleshooting ...