NetBox Discovery - Introducing Git-Based Configuration For Discovery Agents

We’re excited to announce the latest enhancement to NetBox Discovery: Git-based configuration management for NetBox Discovery Agents. This new capability provides a simpler, streamlined approach to control and deploy your NetBox Discovery agents, bringing some lightweight principles from GitOps to your network discovery strategy.

Centrally Managing NetBox Discovery Agent Configurations

As more organizations deploy NetBox Discovery across their infrastructure, we’ve developed a lightweight improved approach to agent management. With our latest update, NetBox Discovery agents now support Git-based configuration management, enabling network operators to:

• Centralize agent configurations in a single Git repository
• Deploy configuration changes consistently across multiple agents
• Track configuration history
• Enable collaboration through established Git workflows

Scaling to Small Fleets of NetBox Discovery Agents

Git-based configuration management brings several important advantages to your NetBox Discovery deployment. By centralizing your agent configurations in a single Git repository, you eliminate the need to update files on individual systems, ensuring consistency across your entire deployment while simplifying the configuration process.

This approach is particularly valuable for organizations running multiple NetBox Discovery agents & backends across different network segments. You gain a consistent way to deploy changes—either updating all agents simultaneously or implementing a controlled, phased approach using branch strategies, depending on your requirements.

The collaborative nature of Git workflows enables team members to propose, review, and approve changes to discovery configurations before they’re deployed to production environments. This brings the benefits of peer review to your network discovery strategy, improving quality and knowledge sharing within your team.

Additionally, with every change tracked in Git’s commit history, you maintain a complete record of when and why configuration changes were made. This historical record proves invaluable for troubleshooting issues or meeting compliance documentation requirements. The ability to quickly roll back to a previous known-good configuration also provides a safety net when implementing changes.

How It Works

Setting up Git-based configuration with NetBox Discovery agents is straightforward. Simply add a Git configuration section to your agent’s configuration file:

orb:
  config_manager:
    active: git
    sources:
      git:
        repo: "https://github.com/myorg/network-discovery.git"
        schedule: "* * * * *"
        branch: "main"

Once configured, the NetBox Discovery agent will:

1. Clone the Git repository
2. Determine what agent configuration files should be applied (via selector.yaml)
3. Execute the policies contained in the applied configuration files
4. Regularly check the repository for updates

This creates a workflow where your Git repository serves as the driver of all your NetBox Discovery agent configurations.

Looking Ahead

Git-based configuration management of your NetBox Discovery agent fleet, drawing inspiration from GitOps principles, is just the beginning of our journey to simplify NetBox Discovery agent management. Later this year, we’ll be introducing enterprise-grade Fleet Management capabilities that will allow you to control NetBox Discovery agents directly from the NetBox platform.

While Fleet Management will provide a more integrated management experience, the Git-based approach offers immediate benefits, particularly for teams already using Git for other infrastructure management tasks. Both approaches will have their place in our ecosystem, giving you the flexibility to choose the management method that best fits your organization’s workflows.

Getting Started

Ready to simplify your NetBox Discovery agent management? Updating to the latest version is all you need to do. The new Git-based configuration capability is available now in version 1.2.0 and above.

Check out the repository and documentation to explore all configuration options and best practices.

Try Git-based configuration today and take the first step toward more efficient, collaborative, and consistent management of your NetBox Discovery agents!