Guides

Guides for network engineers

Step-by-step guides for the work network teams do every week: verifying a change, testing firewall failover, finding configuration drift, writing a MOP, running a postmortem and measuring a baseline. Each comes with a free Word or Excel template, and each works with or without REAP.

The guides

Start with the task in front of you

Each guide gives the method, the checks and what good looks like, a checklist, and a template emailed to you.

15-minute read · Template: Excel

How to verify a network change: pre- and post-checks by vendor

Pre- and post-change checks for Cisco (opens in a new tab) IOS XE, NX-OS (opens in a new tab), Arista EOS (opens in a new tab), Juniper (opens in a new tab) Junos (opens in a new tab) and PAN-OS, and how to record a verdict with evidence in the ticket.

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11-minute read · Template: Word

How to test firewall failover without an outage

Test firewall failover in a controlled window: pre-checks, failover and fallback, what to measure, and HA commands for PAN-OS, ASA, SRX and FortiGate.

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8-minute read · Template: Excel

How to find configuration drift across Cisco, Arista and Juniper

Find configuration drift on Cisco (opens in a new tab) IOS XE, Cisco NX-OS (opens in a new tab), Arista EOS (opens in a new tab) and Juniper (opens in a new tab) Junos (opens in a new tab), separate what matters from noise, and run a weekly drift review.

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8-minute read · Template: Word

Method of procedure (MOP) template for network changes

Method of procedure (MOP) template for network changes: scope, risk and impact, pre-checks, steps, verification, rollback trigger, approvals, evidence.

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8-minute read · Template: Word

Network incident postmortem template (blameless and evidence-first)

Blameless, evidence-first network postmortem template: timestamped timeline, evidence list, contributing factors, owned actions, restored versus fixed.

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9-minute read · Template: Excel

Measure your network operations baseline: 7 numbers

Measure your network operations baseline from ITSM tickets: time to detect and resolve (P50, P95), P1/P2 volume, repeats, change failure rate and more.

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How they are built

What every guide includes

The method, step by step, and the decisions that matter
Checks and commands where the task needs them, with what good looks like
A checklist to work through during the task
A free Word or Excel template, emailed to you
Straight answers to the questions teams ask
How REAP helps, with each capability’s status label

Before you run a command. Commands are written for the platforms named in each guide. Syntax varies by platform and software version, so test in a lab first, and run state-changing commands only in an approved maintenance window.

Bring us your last P1.

Keep the root cause to yourself; in a 30-minute session we walk through how REAP would have investigated it, evidence first. The replay on your own network happens inside the proof of value.

Bring us your last P1 Take the self-assessment