Replace a Device

In some situations, such as during device hardware failure, you might need to replace a device in your network. Routing Director provides the Replace Router option to help you replace a device. You must be a Super User to replace a device.

Note:

  • Ensure that you take a backup of the device configuration before you replace a device.

  • Replace the device during a maintenance window as service is disrupted during device replacement.

What Happens During Device Replacement

During a device replacement, Routing Director:

  1. Sets the operational state of the old device to Undefined.

  2. Replaces the UUID of the new device with that of the old device.

  3. Copies all device configurations (configurations related to service orchestration, network implementation plan, configuration templates, Active Assurance, network optimization, and routing observability) managed by Routing Director from the old device onto the new device.

    Note:

    Even though all configurations managed by Routing Director are copied to the new device, the following configurations require manual reconfiguration on the new device:

    • All MPLS RSVP-LSPs and SR-LSPs configured using the NETCONF protocol (even if configured using Routing Director).

    • All configurations committed manually or that are not configured using Routing Director.

  4. Sets the status of the new device to In Service.

After the device is replaced:

  • The new device takes the device ID and the site assignment of the old device. These values are taken from the network implementation plan managing the old device.

  • All services provisioned by Routing Director on the old device are migrated to the new device. Any configuration already present on the new device is retained.

  • The existing configurations and services on the old device remain intact.

Warning:

After you replace a device, you must release the old device in the Undefined state from the Inventory. To release the device, click More > Release Router on the Inventory page. See Device Replacement Procedure for more details. Failure to remove the old device from the inventory will lead to the old device being listed in the Topology page (Observability > Network > Topology) and impact network optimization use cases.

Prerequisites

The prerequisites to replace a device are:

  • The new device must be the same model, software version, and the same hardware configuration. as the old device.

    The new device must not be assigned to a site or must be assigned to the same site as the old device.

  • The new device must not be assigned to a network implementation plan.

  • The new device must be adopted to Routing Director and listed on the Inventory page.

Device Replacement Procedure

To replace a device:

  1. Click Inventory > Devices > Network Inventory.
    The Inventory page appears.
  2. Select the device that you want to replace and click More > Replace Router.
    The Replace Router page appears.
  3. On the Replace Router page, select a new device to replace the old device from the Select New Router drop-down list.
  4. Click Replace.

    The old device is replaced by the new device and the operational state of the old device is set to Undefined and the new device is set to In Service.

    You can also verify that the status of the device is Onboarded in the Details pane (More > Details) of the network implementation plan used to manage the new device.

  5. To complete device replacement, release the old device from inventory by selecting and clicking More > Release Router on the Inventory page.
    The old device is removed from the inventory after the device is successfully released.

After you replace an old device with the new device, you may observe that the Events page (Observability > Health > Event) may sometimes display events generated by the new device under the old device's name.

An audit log is generated when you replace a device. You can view it on the Audit Logs page (Settings Menu > Audit Logs).

Troubleshoot Device Replacement Failures

If an error occurs during replacement, the status of the new device is changed to Replace Device Failed. To troubleshoot, review the device replacement workflow on the Workflow page (Orchestrator > Monitoring > Workflows to determine the cause of failure. After resolving the issue, retry replacing the device by using the More > Retrigger Device Replacement option.

When a device replacement is retried, Routing Director performs some basic existence checks on the new device and retries the device replacement process.

Related Documentation