About RANCID
RANCID is a set of scripts used to regularly and automatically retrieve the configuration from common network equipment and deposit that configuration into a CVS repository. This process creates a historical archive of past configurations, and allows the easy viewing of changes from revision to revision.

Reduce Downtime
Maintaining current backups of your network configuration is crucial. If you've ever had a switch fail and spent the next several hours guessing at what its configuration used to be to install a cold spare, you already know how important configuration change tracking is, and how much customer downtime it can save.

Verify Changes
RANCID also generates email anytime a configuration change is detected. Innovative uses this email to verify changes made both by members of our staff, and by our clients' in-house technicians. This allows us to correct mistakes before they become a problem. If you elect to receive copies of the change email, you and your staff can use it as an additional verification step, or as a learning tool to develop an understanding of how we handle your routine requests.

Use Innovative's RANCID Instance
Innovative prefers to monitor the configuration of all our clients' network infrastructure equipment using our in-house RANCID instance. This allows our network operators to double check each others' changes, and gives us a CVS repository containing change history for your configuration. Clients are welcome to receive copies of the RANCID configuration diff emails that our in-house instance generates.

Install Your Own RANCID Instance
We will also, at your option, install RANCID on one of your servers. This is a system administration function that may best be carried out using your own system administrators. Our focus remains network operations, and our fee for this service may be higher than what contract system administrators would charge for the same work. We provide this service only as a convenience to our clients. Please visit our fee structure page for the current price of this additional service.