Viewing a Configuration Comparison report

The Configuration Comparison report allows you to compare templates to templates, templates to configurations, and configurations to configurations. 

Do the following to generate a Configuration Comparison report by using the wizard:

1. Open the Configuration Comparison report wizard page by navigating to Reports > Status Reports > Configuration Comparison.
2. Optionally, enter an annotation (to identify this report when it appears in a list among other reports) and enable an email notification to be sent when the report generation is complete and the report is ready for viewing.
3. Select the types of files that you want to compare and then, select the two files.

4. Click  to display the list of templates, devices, or groups, then choose one.
   
   The example shown in the following figure compares a configuration for a single device against another device.
   

   Important

   If the comparison is against template and the selected template contains runtime parameters, click the Params button and enter the runtime parameter values. You can specify up to 2000 characters in each runtime parameter value.

5. Click Next.
6. For a network span, select the type of configurations to compare.
   
   
7. Click Generate to begin the report generation and to display its progress on the Report Activity page.
   

1. Click Refresh until the report is completed, or wait until you receive the notification email. If the report is aborted, the Progress column indicates so, to alert you that the report data is partial. You can view the partial report, but be aware it is partial. You should refine your selections (if you asked for too-large a report) or re-generate the report (if it was aborted due to a system shutdown) in order to obtain a complete report. Then delete the aborted report as soon as possible. For more information about the Report Activity page, see Viewing-report-activity.

2. Click the Configuration Comparison link in the Report column to display the report and verify that the report is complete.
   If the report was aborted, the details of this action is displayed in the title and the report generation information in the footer including the name of the user who aborted the report. An aborted report will be missing one or more devices or templates.
   The Configuration Comparison report displays a summary of differences (deleted, added, changed lines, image changed) between the selected files.
   The example shown in the following figure compares a configuration for a single device against another device.
   
   The example shown in the following figure compares a configuration for a single device against template.
   
   

   Important

   Only dash (-) is visible in the Configuration Comparison report against a template, because a template is not always a complete configuration and is different from a device.

3. (Optional) Perform one of the following tasks by using the menu options that are available on the Configuration Comparison report page:
   
   

   Menu option	Description
   Refine	Return to the wizard to change report parameters and generate a new version of the report.
   Export	Export the report to one of the following formats: HTML PDF RTF
   Email	Email the report to one or more recipients in one of the export formats.
   Back	Return to the Report Activity page.

4. Click the View Diff Details Report  icon to display the Difference Details report.