Interface descriptions

Hi all,

I'm faced with creating a new port description template for our DC equipment (all routers, switches, FW's and loadbalancers.) Right now it's not consistent and for many ports just a mess.

To make things worse, because we have certain sections of our network air-gaped, we also have end users directly connected with a thin client on some DC switches. For these ports, we require the MAC address of the thin client in the port description (for now.) Yet again we are also using port security sticky on these ports. This means that the MAC address also appears in the Cisco interface configuration (switchport portfast mac-address sticky.)

For now i have the following possible variables which i might (or might not) want to integrate in the description:

• Neighbor hostname
• Neighbor MGMT IP
• Neighbor interface name
• Neighbor MAC address (perhaps only for end user ports?)
• Port role(something like EDGE, CORE, USER, HA, MGMT etc?)
• Patchrack (Case and U#) and patchnumber
• Line numbers (DC interconnects)

These are values which i found in the current interface descriptions across the network.

Especially the MAC address seems a bit overkill to me. And the port role could work, but at the same time i can see it confusing my colleagues (shared DATA port with MGMT port for example.) Port roles might also be something which isn't easy to automate unless i setup a database with a port inventory with all the roles. Which is a pain in the ass and only moving the management problem to a different system.

Also i'm wondering if the line numbers for the DC interconnects shouldn't be placed somewhere else. Especially if i want a consistent template and the value is only required on ~6 interfaces per DC.

I mainly want the following requirements for the new template:

• Structured, easy to recognize template
• Consistent across all ports
• Easy to automate. I might want to implement some form of scripting to keep things organized
• Helpful, bare minimal but enough information in troubleshooting scenario's where documentation isn't available

I want to do it right for this time and not redo the whole template in another 4 years ;) So i was wondering if you guys could help me out here. What templates and variables are you using for your (DC) interface descriptions? What works for you and what's something that you clearly wanted to avoid?

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Thanks in advance!