Basics

The FortiMonitor Network Configuration Management (NCM) performs backups as per the schedule configured for the device.

The device needs to first be discovered (see the Discovery article) before it can be backed-up.
FortiMonitor NCM will use the discovered connector (protocol/port combination) and the discovered credentials to connect to the device.

After a successful connection, config of the device is retried, and stored.

Automatic exec-mode switching

The NCM can handle logging in to the device in user-exec or privileged-exec mode.
(if the particular device has concepts of user-exec/ privileged-exec)

If the device needs to be switched into privileged-exec, the NCM will do so.
(the enable password was already discovered during Discovery)

Startup vs. running config

The NCM will retrieve the configuration from the device using the appropriate commands for each vendor automatically.

If the device has concepts of startup-config/ running-config, the NCM always works with the running-config of the device.
If the device does not have concepts of startup-config vs. running-config, the NCM will simply retrieve a backup.

Only unique backups (when config changes) are stored

The NCM automatically stores unique backups of the config.
If a backup retrieved from the device is the same as the last backup already in the system, it will not be stored.

The backups table will show a time range for which a backup was valid for, rather than just backup retrieval timestamp.

Dynamic data (such as timestamps, etc.) are automatically filtered from backups before NCM compares backups to analyze if they have changed.
(this is supported for all our supported vendor drivers)

This feature makes it much easier to see when a device config changes.