Tear down and release

A deployment that created something can delete it again. Tear down plans deleting what a deployment created; you review the plan like any other and apply it. Release does the opposite: Designs stops managing the deployment and its objects stay in NetBox, owned by nothing. This chapter tears down rack R2 and the Berlin deployment, and leaves Release for Clean up.

Tear down rack R2

1. Go to Deployments, open rack-r2, and select Tear down. Nothing is deleted yet: it plans, and the deploy page opens on the plan.
2. Read the plan: 260 Delete. Rack R2, its eleven devices, their modules, interfaces, ports and bays, and its 30 cables.

The 11 objects rack-r2 adopted aren't in the plan. The device types, module types, rack type, roles and manufacturers were created by rack-r1, and rack-r1 still describes them, so they stay. A deployment never deletes what it adopted, and never deletes what another deployment still describes: that is released instead, and stays in NetBox.

3. Apply. The parts of each device, its interfaces, ports, bays and module, are deletes of their own in the plan, so there is nothing to accept beyond what it lists.

Rack R2 is gone from Riga DC. The page says rack-r2 is torn down and offers Remove, which makes Designs forget it; leave it for now, so you can see it in the history. On the Deployments page, under Torn down, rack-r2 owns nothing. Open rack-r1 and Check drift: in sync. Nothing it owns was touched.

Tear down Berlin, in the wrong order

The Berlin deployment holds two designs. Try the site first:

1. Open berlin-dc, and in the tutorial/site_foundation section select Tear down.

The plan is refused. Deleting the site means deleting Berlin DC, and NetBox won't delete a site while devices stand in it. The refusal lists what's in the way: rack B1's switch and servers, which belong to the deployment's other design. Nothing has changed.

Designs checks this before you get as far as a plan, so an order that NetBox would reject half-way through is never applied at all. Read a plan lists what else a plan is refused for.

And in the right order

1. In berlin-dc, select Tear down on tutorial/compute_rack: 260 deletes, the rack and everything in it. Apply.
2. Then Tear down on tutorial/site_foundation: 2 deletes, the site and its prefix. Apply.

Berlin DC is gone, and berlin-dc is torn down. In NetBox, the region Germany is still there: the site referred to it, but world_regions owns it, and nothing in Berlin described it.

What release is for

Release is for handing objects over rather than removing them: a design built something you now want to manage by hand, or in another tool, and you want Designs to forget it without deleting anything. After a release the objects are in NetBox as they were, no deployment owns them, and nothing Designs does will change or delete them. The next chapter releases the region hierarchy, since regions are the kind of thing you keep.

Next, clean up.