Switches and more Switches

Question

I'm currently configuring a mass of new switches, and instead of doing them one by one, I was hoping someone has a better/faster solution. I have config files to use, and a laptop. Kind of limited on tools. Can anyone point me in the right direction?

Answer 1

You might want to look at something like "WINBATCH" or "expect" scripting.
The main issue, as pointed out in the first response, its that you need console connectivity to begin with, then you can either blow the rest of the config in through Ethernet, or set up a TFTP server with a default image and load 'em up from there.
You may want to do 'em in batches: first set the addresses up either manually or through a scripting progran (we read the configs from an Excel spreadsheet) to set up the common portions of tehe config, then blow in the config differences in a separate script/process.
The other upside to doing that is you can have some spares with the base config, then if you need to replace a switch later, you only need to add the "delta" config.
If you have a term server around, and are pretty clever with scritping (or the program (free) "expect") you could do a batch of 8, 16, or 32 at a time.
You may also be able to use some of the scripting facilities of CiscoWorks if you are using that.
Sounds like fun. We had to do a batch of 3000 Chipcom switches once. From that, a full-blown staging system was developed.
Good Luck
Scott