As mentioned in previous posts, I'm studying for my Cisco Certified Network Associate certification. Tonight we had our weekly lab class and it was interesting. We were practicing backing up configuration files, which is important because if you ever have a router crash or it has to be rebooted, having the config file easy to load again will save hours or data entry and/or troubleshooting. There are racks of routers in the lab, and each rack has three of the routers that we're using for this semester. Upon coming into the lab tonight, I found that the Operating System on two of the routers in the rack I was using had been wiped clean, so as a little aside to my regular labs, I had to perform disaster-recovery on the two broken machines. It was really cool.
Since there was one router with a valid operating system, I had to back it up and then load it onto the two others. This is how I did it:
- Set up a TFTP server on my workstation.
- Use the built-in functions on the working router to back up the good operating system.
- Connect to the first of the bad routers. Normally on a router, if there is no operating system, the router automatically loads a very basic command prompt.
- Use the basic TFTP functions on the broken router to grab the backed-up operating system.
- Restart the router. BOOM!!! One peoperly working router.
It was kinda cool, working ahead like that. It wasn't part of the normal lab excercises for this week, but my instructor allowed me to work ahead a bit to see what this kind of thing was like. I'm sure it's not as advanced as some people would think, but for someone not even half-way through the second semester of the course, it's pretty cool.
And I'm done geeking out for the day.
No comments:
Post a Comment