VPN: Site to Site -- LOST Config

I got a call last night after spending the day in one of our remote offices that they couldn't connect back to the main office.

and no before you ask, I wasn't working on the router there! hehe.

I got home and tried to do some remote troubleshooting, and sure enough couldn't see the remote office. I had them reboot the router, which dumped our IP phone connection naturally. DOH!

It didn't come back online after the reboot. I rebooted our main ASA5505 in the office early this morning and it still didn't come up. So I made the 45 min drive to the remote office to check it out.

I logged into the router with SDM and was surprised at what I saw on the main status screen. There were no site to site VPNs configured. The whole config was gone.

I quickly recreated it and it came back up. Any ideas what could cause that?? I have rebooted this thing a couple times and it hasn't lost anything previous.

TIA.

Tim,

Funny enough, I've encountered the same problem only once with an 871 Cisco router - after a power loss, the router lost its whole configuration - I was never able to explain it! When the customer brought the router to the office, I performed a quick check and saw everything seemed fine - no errors during post test.

As you did, I threw the backed up configuration and sent it back to the customer.

I'm suspecting that under very specific conditions the router's nvram looses its configuration, but I've got no further information or evidence to back this up.

I suppose we should always ensure we have a current configuration backup of all equipment we work with, as you never know what's going to hit you!

Cheers,

Interesting, glad that it wasn't "just me" I got some info off of a newsgroup post, telling me it couldn't happen and to check the output of a few things.

I didn't think far enough ahead I guess to allow myself external access, "I have a VPN, what do I need external access??" :roll:

Guess I will be working on that very soon!