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At the beginning, everything is perfect.

Bath towels stacked neatly. Beach towels in their own pile. Sheets folded like you’re auditioning for a home organisation show. You’ve even done that mildly obsessive thing where you tuck all the corners of the fitted sheets into each other so they form a suspiciously neat rectangle.

This usually happens on some rainy Sunday when you’re feeling productive.

Then… life happens.

Fast forward six months and the cupboard looks like it’s been hit by a small tornado. Towels are rolled up and shoved wherever they fit. Someone grabbed something from the top shelf, everything fell down, and instead of fixing it properly they just stuffed it back in and said, “I’ll sort it tomorrow.”

Spoiler: tomorrow never comes.

Sound familiar?

The exact same thing can happen to your network over time.

Switches get moved. Routers get repurposed. Firewalls get swapped. Cold spares get thrown in during an outage to keep things running. Everyone means to tidy it up later… but there’s always another job, another ticket, another fire to put out.

Unlike your linen cupboard though, a messy network doesn’t just lead to awkward dinner table conversations about “where are the towels?”

It can lead to real operational headaches.

What happens when you don’t manage your install base?

If you rely on cold spares for redundancy and swap one in during an emergency, did you finish the admin afterwards?

Did you:

Because if you didn’t, the next time something fails you might discover support isn’t attached to the right device anymore. Which is not a fun surprise mid-incident.

Or

You move a line card from a router in Sydney to WA. Capacity problem solved. Nice.

But if the vendor still thinks it lives in Sydney and you’ve got a 4-hour replacement SLA… guess what your SLA might not be met.

That delay can turn a minor fault into a major outage.

So how do you keep things tidy?

Looking at this through an HPE - Juniper Networks lens, there are a couple of simple habits that make a big difference.

Think of it as regular cupboard maintenance — but for hardware.

Install Base Configuration Updates

Any time you:

Run:

show chassis hardware detail | display xml | no-moreUpload the output using their template (you can include multiple devices).

They’ll update their records so:

Also — if you swap in a cold spare, don’t forget to transfer the support contract to the new device. This can be done by raising an Admin Case with HPE-Juniper TAC or your Partner.

This step gets missed all the time.

Install Base Location Updates

Moving gear between sites? Same story.

Raise a ticket and update the install address.

This is especially important for regional sites or anywhere covered by 4-hour replacement or onsite SLAs. If the location is wrong, the SLA basically becomes “whenever it gets there.”

Not ideal.

The takeaway

Network hygiene isn’t glamorous. It’s admin. It’s paperwork. It’s the stuff everyone swears they’ll do later.

But doing it today saves you a lot of pain tomorrow.

A few minutes of updates now can mean the difference between:

or

So treat your install base like your linen cupboard.

Little tidy-ups often.

Don’t let it turn into chaos.

And maybe avoid folding fitted sheets unless you really enjoy suffering.

Blog Written by:

Mark Maloney

CEO ICT Networks

February, 2026.