The first and most important rule in IT, is “Backup soon, Backup often!”
It’s a logical statement but sadly one that many people only truly appreciate when it’s too late!
Two of the most important files on a Cisco router are the Running-Configuration which stores the current configuration of your router, and the IOS (The operating system) that your router needs to be able to boot.
It’s vitally important that a copy of both of these files is available at all times, and one of the easiest and quickest ways to keep these files from all your devices together is to copy them to a TFTP server. I use PumKIN as my TFTP server as it’s free, easy to use and does the job perfectly.
At the end of this post you will see a Live demo of how to copy the IOS and Running-configuration to a TFTP server running an IP address of 192.168.1.1.
Here is a breakdown of the configuration
AOIP.ORG# show flash
This will show you all the files that are currently stored in the Flash memory of the router. The file with a .bin extension is the IOS that we want to backup. You can copy this file name for use in the next step.
AOIP.ORG# copy flash: tftp:
This instructs the router I would like to copy data from the flash of the router to a tftp server.
Source filename []? c1841-ipbase-mz.124-5b.bin
You are prompted for the file name you wish to copy, you can paste the .bin file you have just copied.
Address or name of remote host []? 192.168.1.1
Specify the IP address of the TFTP server
Destination filename [c1841-ipbase-mz.124-5b.bin]?
The router will automatically prompt you to save the file with the same name as the source. You can change it here, or just press <Enter> to accept the file name.
At this point your router will start to copy the file. Once the file has finished copying, it will show you the details. In my case my router displays “13966524 bytes copied in 50.068 secs (278951 bytes/sec)”
You can backup your Running-Configuration very similarly, however replace flash: with running-config as seen below
AOIP.ORG# copy run tftp:
Address or name of remote host []? 192.168.1.1
Destination filename [aoip.org-confg]?
!!
784 bytes copied in 1.180 secs (664 bytes/sec)
