Large networks rely on a wide variety of switches, routers and other devices, and many organizations have policies requiring the replacement of devices to which manufacturers have assigned an end-of-life (EOL) status. At EOL, many manufacturers will no longer support or maintain these devices, which increases risk for the organization that still uses them.

Organizations today usually track device EOL status manually. The network management team must discover when a device has been declared EOL and then make a plan to replace the device. They have to save device configurations manually from the EOL device and then reinstall the configuration on the replacement device.

With so many devices on a network, the task of discovering that a particular device has reached end-of-sale, end-of-life, or end-of-support status can be herculean.Yet it