About Gen.IT

Gen.IT does not attempt to understand or talk to any network devices directly and is therefore completely agnostic to any form of protocol, vendor or device type.

Gen.IT is able to generate configuration for any device from any vendor that supports cli configuration. Gen.IT requires no understanding of the underlying protocols, hardware, or configurations.

Solarwinds Config Generator, Solarwinds Network Config Manager, Ciscoworks, Cacti, MailMerge?

None of the application mentioned are able to, or are flexible enough to pull together multiple templates and variables to generate multi-vendor configurations in minutes. In most cases, the cost of these other applications is significantly higher than Gen.IT. In others, the complexity outweighs the benefits.

Actual Use Case

A legacy network spanning multiple data centres, with 500+ WAN and 30 MAN sites required updating.

The network was upgraded to Multi VRF using Cisco / HP / H3C network equipment running MPLS & DMVPN’s + MPLS MAN. All network equipment at all sites was physically replaced and deployed with completely new configurations.

Gen.IT was used to generate the configurations for all devices for WAN and MAN sites.

Multiple spreadsheets were used, 1 for the MAN, 1 for the WAN, and one for the LAN.

For the WAN and MAN devices, a single site was defined as a single row within the relevant spreadsheet. Excel lookup’s and the Gen.IT macro’s were used to calculate the relevant config values for the row. All values for sites were calculated, including BGP, OSPF, EIGRP, layer 3, layer 2, management, DMVPN hubs, security etc. In all, 170 templates and 250 variable’s were used.

A single high availability site required the replacement of 650 variables to produce the configuration, including WAN, L2 switching, IP SLA, PKI, DMVPN etc.

Now that the base work has been done, adding a new site is as simple as copying the row from a similar site and adding the site name and summary IP addresses to the spreadsheet.

Actual Use Case

A new site deployment required the configuration of 70 switches and 45 vlans. Gen.IT was able to use compound templates to generate the SVI’s and downlink port configs. The switch configurations and .ini files for SecureCrt were generated together based on templates.

Actual Use Case

BAU requires the generation of configuration files for new vlan’s, SVI’s, and base firewall policies. Lookup tables were defined with allowable information, and template configured. Generating the new configurations is not a 1 minute job, and they will always be correct!.

While running an unlicensed copy of Gen.IT, a “Purchase Gen.IT Now!’ button (highlighted in red) is placed to the the right of the menu bar. Clicking on this button will open a new window which will show the PC’s Hardware ID, Domain membership and users Domain Membership.

Stonking Product !! Every now and again you come across a product which makes you think I wish I had this years ago. This is definitely one of those. If you are doing more than a handful of network device configurations this is a must for your tool kit. If you are doing very large deployments, I would say it is essential.