Netbox

Netbox is an open-source Django application that is designed to help manage and document networks and the devices on those networks. In the CSL we use it to document each machine and VM along with their network configurations.

Installation

Netbox consists of 4 parts:

  1. PostgreSQL database

  2. Redis

  3. Netbox Django Application

  4. HTTP Proxy and Daemon

Basic installation instructions are here. The netbox Ansible playbook properly installs and configures everything as well.

Upgrading Netbox

Netbox graciously created an upgrade script that automatically upgrades the current installation. Just ssh into netbox and run the following:

/opt/netbox/upgrade.sh

Once the script finishes, make sure to restart the supervisordaemons:

supervisorctl restart netbox
supervisorctl restart netbox-rqworker

Using Netbox

You can access the netbox web page at https://netbox.tjhsst.edu, but you MUST be VPN'ed into the CSL in order to access the website.

Creating User Accounts

Netbox has SSO support. Use that to log in.

Interacting with Netbox

Using netbox is pretty straightforward; navigating through the web page is pretty intuitive. More specific documentation on netbox is available here, but here are a few basics:

  • The highest order of organization is a region, it represents the physical area where the network is (TJHSST , CSL).

  • Next there are sites, they represent the specific area in the region that divides the network (Machine Room, Room 200, Room 200C, etc.).

  • Each site can have racks, which represent a physical server rack (only used in the Machine Room site)

  • devices are the next organizational unit. devices are NOT VMs. devices can belong to a rack(in the case of servers), or they can be independent (in the case of workstations).

  • devices have interfaces which can be assigned an ip.

    • Creating interfaces and ips is not obvious, though.

      1. First you have to create a device

      2. then on that device's overview page, click the "Add Components" dropdown and select "Interfaces".

      3. Then fill out the information for that interface.

      4. Finally, when the interface is created, scroll to the bottom of the device's overview page and click the green "+" box and add an ip there.

It is much easier to mass create devices through netbox's API, available at https://netbox.tjhsst.edu/api. In order to use the API, however, you must first create an API token here.

Some (messy) scripts that were used to bulk create the borg devices and workstations are available at https://gitlab.tjhsst.edu/sysadmins/docs/netbox-scripts.git

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