Patent Document ID: 7870238
Application ID: 12365692

Base Claim:
1. A method comprising: connecting, with a computing device that executes a network configuration tool, to a first network device from a first vendor, wherein the first network device stores a first set of configuration information; adaptively extracting, with the network configuration tool, the first set of configuration information stored to the first network device by issuing vendor-specific commands to and receiving, in response to the commands, the first set of configuration information from a first management software interface presented by the first network device; parsing, with the network configuration tool, from the first set of configuration information a first tag, wherein the first tag defines a configuration property for the first network device; connecting, with the computing device, to a second network device from a second vendor, wherein the second network device stores a second set of configuration information; adaptively extracting, with the network configuration tool, the second set of configuration information stored to the second network device by issuing commands to and receiving, in response to the commands, the second set of configuration information from a second management software interface presented by the second network device; parsing, with the network configuration tool, from the second set of configuration information a second tag, wherein the second tag defines a configuration property for the second network device; determining, with the network configuration tool, whether the first tag and the second tag are of a same kind of tag; when the first and second tags are of the same kind of tag, determining that the first tag and second tag each define similar configuration properties that are comparable with the network configuration tool; and when the first and second tags are of the same kind of tag, presenting, with the network device, aggregate configuration information in a manner that organizes the first and second tags based primarily on the kind and second tags and secondarily on the network devices from which the first and second sets of configuration information was received.

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Claim 7:
7. The method of claim 1 , wherein the first and second tags are stored to respective first and second archives files stored in the memory, the method further comprising: storing the first and second sets of configuration information as raw data files to the respective first and second archive files; and storing meta data associated with the extraction of the first and second sets of configuration information to the respective first and second archive files, wherein the meta data includes one or more of a timestamp, a log message, a package name, a package timestamp, a snapshot identifier, and a user.