An SSH Workflow for Network Engineers: Sessions, Buttons, Highlights and Logs

Network work is not one long session — it is dozens of short ones against devices that all look slightly different. The failure mode of most terminal setups is not the protocol; it is that session #147 is named "sw-03" and nobody remembers which site it belongs to. This is the workflow that scales past about twenty devices.

1. Group sessions the way you think about them

A flat alphabetical list stops working almost immediately. Group by something you can remember under pressure — site, customer, rack, or role (core / distribution / access). In FlyTerminal, sessions live in groups with quick connect, so "everything at the Leeds site" is one click rather than a search.

Two habits that pay off immediately:

• Clone, don't recreate. When ten access switches share credentials, port and logging settings, configure one and clone it. You eliminate nine chances to typo the baud rate.
• Name consistently. site-role-nn beats whatever the hostname happens to be. Your future self is the one who benefits.

2. Put the commands you repeat on buttons

Count how many times you type show version, show running-config or show ip interface brief in a day. A command button bar turns those into one click each, and groups them so a change window is a sequence of clicks rather than a scrollback hunt.

Worth putting on buttons:

• Health checks: show version, show environment, show logging | include %
• Inventory: serial numbers, interface status, neighbours
• Pre-change and post-change capture commands
• Your backup snippet, so it runs the same way every time

Caution: buttons remove friction from commands, including destructive ones. Keep reload, write erase and interface shutdowns off the bar, or label them unmistakably.

3. Make failures impossible to miss

Scrolling past an error is easy when everything is the same colour. Per-session keyword highlighting fixes that: define the strings that mean trouble and they light up as they stream past.

• %LINK-3-UPDOWN, %SYS-5-CONFIG_I, error, failed, denied
• Your own change markers, so you can see where a config push started and ended
• Different colours per severity if your client supports it

4. Log every session, automatically

Session logs are the difference between "I think I changed that on Tuesday" and a record. Turn on logging with timestamps and direction markers, and enable rotation so a forgotten session cannot fill a disk.

What to capture:

• Everything typed and everything received — direction markers make the log readable later.
• Timestamps, ideally in UTC, so they line up with monitoring systems.
• One file per session, named from the session name so it is findable.

For regulated environments, decide retention and access up front. Logs from a terminal session can contain credentials typed in cleartext — treat them accordingly.

A worked example

1. Open the group for the affected site; quick-connect to the core switch.
2. Run your pre-change button set; the log starts capturing automatically.
3. Apply the change. Highlighting shows the interface flap the moment it happens.
4. Run the post-change button set and diff it against what you captured.
5. Close the session; the log is filed under the device name with a timestamp.

None of this requires automation tooling. It is just removing the five small annoyances that compound across two hundred devices.

FAQ

Can I import sessions from another client?

Depends on the client's export format. Plain host lists are easy; registry-stored PuTTY sessions need to be recreated. Either way, do the grouping while you import, not later.

Does logging slow anything down?

No. Writing a text file alongside the session is negligible; the bigger risk is disk fill, which rotation handles.

How do I avoid pasting the wrong command on the wrong device?

Grouping and consistent naming. A title bar that shows the session name — not just the hostname — also helps when twenty tabs are open.

Is this a replacement for Ansible or similar?

No. Automation tools change many devices at once and are the right answer for fleet-wide work. An interactive client is what you use for the one device that needs a human looking at it.