Automatic Configuration Archiving for Cisco Routers

Cisco routers provide a simple CLI based archiving feature which allows you to archive the router's configuration to an FTP server on a periodic basis. Below is a sample configuration:

  conf t                       

  archive                                                          ! Setup archive mode

   path ftp://username:password@192.16.1.1/Folder/$h-filename-$t   ! Archive location

   time-period 1440                                                ! Frequency of archive in minutes

   maximum 14                                                      ! max number of archives to keep

   write-memory                                                    ! create archive before write-memory occurs

The sample configuration will create an archive copy of you router's configuration every 24 hours and keep up to 14 previous versions. The $h value represents the hostname and $t represents the time the archive occurred. This configuration also creates an archive of the previous configuration anytime a write-memory is performed.