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Sheet SYN-10 — Network Operations Manual

On-Site Collector & Configuration Backup

The on-site collector, SSH-based inventory, versioned configuration capture, and unified diffs between any two versions.

Audience: Network operators running on-premises equipment Focus: Configuration truth, captured and versioned

Scope

Some network equipment has no cloud API. The on-site collector brings that gear into the same inventory and adds the artifact operators actually want when auditing a device: a versioned capture of its running configuration. This guide covers how capture works and how to read the history.

How the collector works

The collector is a small on-site component that polls the platform for work, connects to network devices over SSH, runs a fixed recipe of read-only show commands, and posts the output back. The cloud parses that output into the same normalized inventory every other integration feeds, plus a configuration snapshot. Device families arrive through the plugin bridge; Cisco IOS switches and routers are an example of what it carries.

The collector’s connections are outbound-only, with one documented exception: listening for traffic flow export, which is covered in the traffic visibility guide.

Versioned capture

Every sync of a collector-backed integration captures the device’s running configuration:

  • A new version is created only when the text actually changed. Captures are compared by content hash, so a device that has not changed in six months of nightly polls has one version, not one hundred and eighty identical copies.
  • A version is never overwritten or deleted. Once captured, it is permanent history.
  • Versions are numbered sequentially per device.

Reading the history

From a device, the configuration view offers three things:

  • The version list, newest first, with capture timestamps.
  • The raw view of any single version’s full configuration text as captured.
  • The diff view: pick any two versions and read a unified diff with added and removed lines styled distinctly, the standard way operators read a configuration change at a glance.

Configuration change, governed

Synapse can also change device configuration through the collector, but only as a governed device-write action inside the actions and journeys framework, behind an approval gate, with the before-and-after diff captured as run evidence. See the governed actions guide for how that approval and evidence chain works.