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# Configuration Manager overview

> Manage device configurations, backups, and compliance

**Tier**: Compliance, Scale, Enterprise

## Configuration Manager

Configuration Manager gives you a central place to manage the configurations running on your network devices: what's currently deployed, how it's changed over time, and whether it matches what it should be.

### Devices

View and manage individual network devices from any southbound system registered through Itential Platform, including Cisco NSO and Itential Gateway instances. Each device's details show its connection status, backup history, and current running configuration, so you can troubleshoot or verify a device's state without leaving Configuration Manager.

### Device groups

Organize devices into logical collections based on network segmentation or other criteria you define, such as a region, site, or department. Configuration Manager treats a device group as a single unit when applying compliance and remediation policies, so you can manage configuration at the scale of your network rather than one device at a time.

### Device backups

Every device backup is a point-in-time snapshot of that device's configuration. Backups let you track how a configuration has changed, compare it against a previous state or another device, and restore a known-good configuration when something goes wrong.

## Configuration Manager Enterprise

Configuration Manager Enterprise extends Configuration Manager with the tools to define what a compliant configuration looks like, and to check your network against it automatically.

### Golden Configuration

A Golden Configuration is a baseline you define for how a device or service should be configured. Instead of manually inspecting devices for drift, you model the standard once and use it to identify any device or service that doesn't match. Golden Configuration supports both CLI-based and JSON-based configurations, so you can manage compliance for devices and for services and APIs.

[Learn more about Golden Configuration](./golden-configurations/overview)

### Compliance Plans

A Compliance Plan runs your Golden Configuration against your network on a schedule, so configuration drift gets caught automatically instead of during an audit or after an outage. Reporting shows you exactly which devices are compliant, which ones drifted, and why, so you can prioritize remediation instead of hunting for the problem.

[Learn more about Compliance Plans](./golden-configurations/compliance-plans)

### Configuration parsers

A configuration parser tells Configuration Manager how to read and compare a specific device operating system's CLI syntax: its command structure, hierarchy, and comparison rules. Parsers are what make CLI-based Golden Configurations and compliance checks accurate, since a Cisco IOS configuration and a Juniper Junos configuration need to be read differently to be compared fairly. Configuration Manager Enterprise includes pre-built parsers for common platforms, including Cisco IOS, Cisco NX-OS, Cisco IOS-XR, Juniper Junos, Arista EOS, and Palo Alto PAN-OS.

[Learn more about configuration parsers](./golden-configurations/use-parsers)

### Template Designer

Template Designer lets you build reusable, dynamic configuration templates using the Jinja2 template engine, define variables for the parts that change per device, and apply the resulting configuration to one or more devices in a batch. Where Golden Configurations and Compliance Plans check whether a device's configuration matches your standard, Template Designer helps you push a standardized configuration out to your devices in the first place.

[Learn more about Template Designer](./use-configuration-templates)

## Next steps

#### [Navigate Configuration Manager](./navigate)

Access Configuration Manager and understand its interface

#### [View and manage devices](./manage-devices)

View device details, organize devices into groups, and manage configuration backups

#### [Golden Configuration overview](./golden-configurations/overview)

Define baseline configurations for compliance

#### [Compliance Plans overview](./golden-configurations/compliance-plans)

Schedule automated compliance checks

> Manage device configurations, backups, and compliance