The documentation set for this product strives to use bias-free language. For the purposes of this documentation set, bias-free is defined as language that does not imply discrimination based on age, disability, gender, racial identity, ethnic identity, sexual orientation, socioeconomic status, and intersectionality. Exceptions may be present in the documentation due to language that is hardcoded in the user interfaces of the product software, language used based on RFP documentation, or language that is used by a referenced third-party product. Learn more about how Cisco is using Inclusive Language.
This chapter describes Factory Reset feature and how it can be used to protect or restore a router to an earlier fully functional state.
The Factory Reset feature is used to remove all sensitive information from a router or restore the router to a fully functional state.
The factory reset process uses the factory reset–all command to take backup of existing configuration and then reset the router to an earlier fully functional state. In a high availability setup, the factory reset process is executed on the active Route Processor (RP) and is then synchronized to the standby RP. The duration of the factory reset process is dependent on the storage size of the router. It can extend between 30 minutes on an ASR1000 consolidated platform and up to 3 hours on a high availability setup.
Table 1 covers details of data erased or retained during the factory reset process:
After the factory reset process is complete, the router reboots to ROMMON mode. If you have the zero-touch provisioning (ZTP) capability setup, after the router completes the factory reset procedure, the router reboots with ZTP configuration.
After factory reset is successfully completed, the router boots up. Before factory reset process is started, if the configuration register on the router is set to manually boot from ROMMON, then after factory reset the router will stop at ROMMON.
The factory reset process takes a backup of the boot image if the system is booted from an image stored locally (bootflash or harddisk). If the current boot image is a remote image or stored on an USB, NIM-SSD or such, ensure that you take a backup of the image before starting the factory reset process.