The ZipTie team announced the immediate availability of ZipTie 2007.12, the third major release of it's network configuration and change management software suite. ZipTie now supports more than 35 different device types, and can be easily extended to support newer device types.
What is new in ZipTie 2007.12
- Change Automation
- Tool Scheduling
- New Device Support
- Robust Database and Scriptable Client
ZipTie now supports execution of an arbitrary set of commands against a set
of devices. For example, this functionality allows network admins to quickly
address an attack or a vulnerability by deploying access lists to thousands
of devices within minutes. Users can also schedule command execution to take
advantage of maintenance windows (reduced risk) and they also have access to
the entire history of commands that were executed (for auditing).
Previously, ZipTie's script tools could only be executed impromptu, but from
2007.12 onwards they can be scheduled to run on a regular basis. This enables
users to easily monitor various characteristics of their devices (e.g. a CPU
utilization or Interface bandwith utilization tool that is run every 5 minutes).
The following new device types are supported in the 2007.12 release.
- Alteon Load Balancers
- Aruba Switches
- Cisco CS500, Local Director, and 3005
- Dell PowerConnect
- HP ProCurve Switches
- Nortel Contivity and Passport
ZipTie 2007.12 includes support for PostgreSQL, a highly scalable and advanced
open source database. The ZipTie server can also be managed via a Perl based
web-service client (CPAN link).
What does ZipTie offer ?
- Inventory Discovery
- Search Based Interface
- Flexible Tools Plugin Framework
- Extensible Adapter Framework
- Enterprise Grade Server
- ZipTie Development Environment a.k.a AdapterTool
- Installers
ZipTie uses a sophisticated inventory discovery mechanism to discover the nodes
in a network. It uses a combination of ICMP, TCP, and SNMP scans to discover
and identify devices and backup their configuration(s) via an extensible adapter
framework.
ZipTie was written with scalability in mind and this is reflected in its intuitive
and easy to use search based interface. Users can manage 1000s of devices
without any problem by searching on "tags" and other attributes (Hostname,
Model, etc.) of a device.
Network administrators can use ZipTie's Perl based Tools framework to reuse
all the tools and scripts they might have developed and easily create new ones.
ZipTie uses Perl based Adapters to communicate with devices while retrieving
their configuration data. ZipTie can manage devices via a variety of protocols
including Telnet, SSH, SNMP, etc. ZipTie's adapter framework has enabled out of
the box device support for more than 10 vendors (and 15 different models).
The ZipTie server is an OSGi based server that is capable of handling 100's of
users and 1000's of devices. The server boasts an extremely configurable "cron"
based scheduler, multi-user support, a powerful "Lucene" based configuration
search engine, ability to "tag" devices, Atom feeds, SSL support, and SOAP APIs.
Have a device that ZipTie does not support? No worries. A network
admin can use the AdapterTool to create an adapter in a jiffy. The Adapter
Tool's command line interface allows creation, debugging, and deployment of
adapters in a transparent and easy to use manner.
ZipTie can run on Windows, Linux, and MacOS X and it has installers for
each of the above platforms. The ZipTie Wiki has instructions on running
ZipTie on other platforms also.
A more detailed explanation of ZipTie's key features can be found in its data sheet.
What does the future hold for ZipTie ?
There are a lot of key features planned for ZipTie's future releases including support
for fault monitoring, availability monitoring, and traffic analysis. ZipTie already has a
comprehensive configuration model that will be the foundation of advanced reporting
and search functionality in the future. The ZipTie Roadmap specifies the roadmap in
more detail.
To get involved in ZipTie's future and to provide feedback, potential users, network
administrators, tools and software developers are strongly encouraged to join the ZipTie
Community and actively participate in the forums. ZipTie is a growing project and is
always looking forward to hear and incorporate feedback from its community.
ZipTie Resources
Have a question about ZipTie ? Cannot get a backup to work or have a cool idea for
a tool ? Post a question, idea, or start a discussion through any of the following
resources and one of our community members or developers will get you an answer.
For more information on how to use ZipTie's powerful capabilities or to just learn
more about ZipTie, please browse through the following resources.
ZipTie Wiki
Contains information about getting started with ZipTie, user's guide, and roadmap
documentation. Also contains a bunch of HOWTO's for software developers who want to
get involved with ZipTie.
ZipTie Website
Contains overall information about the ZipTie project with various links to docs,
forums, bug reports, and "breaking news" about ZipTie.