BETA

Startup profiles: swap every node's config in one click

How-to3 min readUpdated July 2026

A single node's startup config is one thing; a whole lab's config is another. Startup Profiles name and save a complete snapshot of every node's startup configuration - so you can build a "baseline" profile and an "incident" or "phase-2" profile for the same topology, and switch the entire lab between them in one click instead of editing each device by hand.

1

With nothing selected, the Inspector shows the Lab Summary - and at the bottom, Startup Profiles. Click + to name a new one - here baseline. This captures every node's current startup config under that name, in one shot.

Step 1: Startup profiles: swap every node's config in one click
2

Click Create. The profile is saved and listed - the lab can now have several named profiles, each a full copy of every node's startup config.

Step 2: Startup profiles: swap every node's config in one click
3

Click Activate on a profile to push its saved configs onto every node in the lab at once - swap the whole topology from baseline to incident (or any other profile) without touching a single device by hand. Only one profile is active at a time, shown with a highlighted badge.

Step 3: Startup profiles: swap every node's config in one click

Profiles are lab-scoped and travel with the lab like everything else - export the .npx and its profiles come too. Use them for anything with distinct "modes": a training lab's before/after states, a fault-injection scenario's healthy vs. broken configs, or a demo that resets to a clean baseline between sessions. For a single node's config, see "Save a device configuration"; for whole-lab version history, see "Back up your labs to git".