171 docs tagged with "Administration"

To invite a new user to a NetBox Cloud Free instance, the user will need to have a valid email address, and be added as an administrator in the NetBox Labs Console.

NetBox Enterprise is designed to harness the power of Kubernetes while minimizing the amount of work the average person needs to manage it.

NetBox includes a slew of features which enable integration with other tools and resources powering your network.

The registry is an in-memory data structure which houses various application-wide parameters, such as the list of enabled plugins. It is not exposed to the user and is not intended to be modified by any code outside of NetBox core.

Local Authentication

Object-Based Permissions

AWS Direct Connect is available via hosted connections from BT, Equinix Fabric, MegaPort, Optus, PCCW, Zayo etc. VLAN hand-off is with BGP and Single or Dual Direct Connect services are available. Customer IP space (/24 or /25) is assigned for the VPC, as this is required to host load balancers and proxies within the dedicated customer Account/VPC. Internally we will allocate a /27 per availability zone for each of the 3 availability zones.

NetBox includes the ability to execute certain functions as background tasks. These include:

NetBox plugins can defer certain operations by enqueuing background jobs, which are executed asynchronously by background workers. This is helpful for decoupling long-running processes from the user-facing request-response cycle.

The NetBox branching plugin allows you to create and work with branches in NetBox, similar to version control systems. This enables you to make changes in isolation and merge them back to the main branch when ready.

v0.6.0

Every time an object in NetBox is created, updated, or deleted, a serialized copy of that object taken both before and after the change is saved to the database, along with metadata including the current time and the user associated with the change. These records form a persistent record of changes both for each individual object as well as NetBox as a whole. The global change log can be viewed by navigating to Other > Change Log.

Circuits can be arranged into administrative groups for organization. The assignment of a circuit to a group is optional.

A cluster is a logical grouping of physical resources within which virtual machines run. Physical devices may be associated with clusters as hosts. This allows users to track on which host(s) a particular virtual machine may reside.

Context data is made available to devices and/or virtual machines based on their relationships to other objects in NetBox. For example, context data can be associated only with devices assigned to a particular site, or only to virtual machines in a certain cluster.

Plugin configuration parameters for NetBox Change Management

One of the critical aspects of operating a network is ensuring that every network node is configured correctly. By leveraging configuration templates and context data, NetBox can render complete configuration files for each device on your network.

Configuration templates can be used to render device configurations from context data. Templates are written in the Jinja2 language and can be associated with devices roles, platforms, and/or individual devices.

NetBox Cloud supports SAML-based authentication, including group mappings to enforce role-based access control. For group mapping, you will need to provide your Identity Provider (IdP) group names so we can associate them with the desired NetBox groups.

Setting up Group Mapping for SAML requires the base SAML SSO Setup to be configured and working first.

This guide covers administrative tasks for the NetBox Labs Console, including managing administrator accounts and console settings.

Contacts can be organized by functional roles, which are fully customizable by the user. For example, you might create roles for administrative, operational, or emergency contacts.

Much like tenancy, contact assignment enables you to track ownership of resources modeled in NetBox. A contact represents an individual responsible for a resource within the context of its assigned role.

A contact represents an individual or group that has been associated with an object in NetBox for administrative reasons. For example, you might assign one or more operational contacts to each site.

Configuration context data (or "config contexts" for short) is a powerful feature that enables users to define arbitrary data that applies to device and virtual machines based on certain characteristics. For example, suppose you want to define syslog servers for devices assigned to sites within a particular region. In NetBox, you can create a config context instance containing this data and apply it to the desired region. All devices within this region will now include this data when fetched via an API.

Single- and multi-selection custom fields must define a set of valid choices from which the user may choose when defining the field value. These choices are defined as sets that may be reused among multiple custom fields.

Each model in NetBox is represented in the database as a discrete table, and each attribute of a model exists as a column within its table. For example, sites are stored in the dcimsite table, which has columns named name, facility, physicaladdress, and so on. As new attributes are added to objects throughout the development of NetBox, tables are expanded to include new rows.

NetBox administrators can extend NetBox's built-in data model by adding custom fields to most object types. See the custom fields documentation for more information.

Custom links allow users to display arbitrary hyperlinks to external content within NetBox object views. These are helpful for cross-referencing related records in systems outside NetBox. For example, you might create a custom link on the device view which links to the current device in a Network Monitoring System (NMS).

Users can add custom links to object views in NetBox to reference external resources. For example, you might create a custom link for devices pointing to a monitoring system. See the custom links documentation for more information.

Custom scripting was introduced to provide a way for users to execute custom logic from within the NetBox UI. Custom scripts enable the user to directly and conveniently manipulate NetBox data in a prescribed fashion. They can be used to accomplish myriad tasks, such as:

Custom sessions can be used to modify the default HTTP behavior. Below are a few examples, most of them from here.

NetBox validates every object prior to it being written to the database to ensure data integrity. This validation includes things like checking for proper formatting and that references to related objects are valid. However, you may wish to supplement this validation with some rules of your own. For example, perhaps you require that every site's name conforms to a specific pattern. This can be done using custom validation rules.

While NetBox strives to meet the needs of every network, the needs of users to cater to their own unique environments cannot be ignored. NetBox was built with this in mind, and can be customized in many ways to better suit your particular needs.

Each NetBox user can customize his or her personal dashboard by adding and removing widgets and by manipulating the size and position of each. Plugins can register their own dashboard widgets to complement those already available natively.

Data sources can be defined to reference data which exists on systems of record outside NetBox, such as a git repository or Amazon S3 bucket. Plugins can register their own backend classes to introduce support for additional resource types. This is done by subclassing NetBox's DataBackend class.

Creating Models

DEFAULT_DASHBOARD

DEBUG

Devices can be organized by functional roles, which are fully customizable by the user. For example, you might create roles for core switches, distribution switches, and access switches within your network.

A device type represents a particular make and model of hardware that exists in the real world. Device types define the physical attributes of a device (rack height and depth) and its individual components (console, power, network interfaces, and so on).

Every piece of hardware which is installed within a site or rack exists in NetBox as a device. Devices are measured in rack units (U) and can be half depth or full depth. A device may have a height of 0U: These devices do not consume vertical rack space and cannot be assigned to a particular rack unit. A common example of a 0U device is a vertically-mounted PDU.

At its heart, NetBox is a tool for modeling your network infrastructure, and the device object is pivotal to that function. A device can be any piece of physical hardware installed within your network, such as server, router, or switch, and may optionally be mounted within a rack. Within each device, resources such as network interfaces and console ports are modeled as discrete components, which may optionally be grouped into modules.

Diode SDK Python is a Python library for interacting with the Diode ingestion service utilizing gRPC.

Sentry

SENTRY_DSN

Plugins can register their own custom event types for use with NetBox event rules. This is accomplished by calling the register() method on an instance of the EventType class. This can be done anywhere within the plugin. An example is provided below.

NetBox allows users to define custom templates that can be used when exporting objects. To create an export template, navigate to Customization > Export Templates.

Export templates are used to render arbitrary data from a set of NetBox objects. For example, you might want to automatically generate a network monitoring service configuration from a list of device objects. See the export templates documentation for more information.

Below is a list of tasks to consider when adding a new field to a core model.

From global regions down to individual equipment racks, NetBox allows you to model your network's entire presence. This is accomplished through the use of several purpose-built models. The graph below illustrates these models and their relationships.

Filter sets define the mechanisms available for filtering or searching through a set of objects in NetBox. For instance, sites can be filtered by their parent region or group, status, facility ID, and so on. The same filter set is used consistently for a model whether the request is made via the UI or REST API. (Note that the GraphQL API uses a separate filter class.) NetBox employs the django-filters2 library to define filter sets.

Form Classes

This guide will help you get started with development on pynetbox. It covers setting up your development environment and running tests.

This guide will help you set up and start using Diode to ingest data into NetBox.

This guide explains how to configure single sign-on (SSO) support for NetBox using Google OAuth2 as an authentication backend.

Defining the Schema Class

Upgrade your Single Sign-On experience with Group Mapping for Microsoft Entra ID SSO – a smarter, more secure way to manage user access. The Group Mapping feature for Entra ID Single Sign-On, streamlines the synchronization of group memberships from Microsoft Entra ID to groups in NetBox Cloud, allowing you to align your user access efficiently and accurately.

Upgrade your Single Sign-On experience with Group Mapping for Okta SSO – a smarter, more secure way to manage user access. The Group Mapping feature for Okta Single Sign-On, streamlines the synchronization of group memberships from Okta to groups in NetBox Cloud, allowing you to align your user access efficiently and accurately.

This page provides instructions for setting up the gunicorn WSGI server. If you plan to use uWSGI instead, go here.

NetBox includes a housekeeping management command that should be run nightly. This command handles:

An Internet Key Exhcnage (IKE) proposal defines a set of parameters used to establish a secure bidirectional connection across an untrusted medium, such as the Internet. IKE proposals defined in NetBox can be referenced by IKE policies, which are in turn employed by IPSec profiles.

ServiceNow Integration Overview

The instructions below detail the general process for installing and configuring a NetBox plugin. However, each plugin is different and may require additional tasks or modifications to the steps below. Always consult the documentation for a specific plugin before attempting to install it.

While NetBox Enterprise comes with a variety of certified and other community plugins built-in, there are cases where you will want to include additional plugins in your NetBox runtime.

Interfaces in NetBox represent network interfaces used to exchange data with connected devices. On modern networks, these are most commonly Ethernet, but other types are supported as well. IP addresses and VLANs can be assigned to interfaces.

Beginning with NetBox v4.0, NetBox will leverage Django's automatic translation to support languages other than English. This page details the areas of the project which require special attention to ensure functioning translation support. Briefly, these include:

Internet Delivery (Single Region) is the standard product offering for NetBox Cloud. It comes with extensive security features (see below) and is suitable for the majority of use cases and environments:

Origin Story

Beginning in NetBox v4.3, the use of inventory items has been deprecated. They are planned for removal in a future NetBox release. Users are strongly encouraged to begin using modules and module types in place of inventory items. Modules provide enhanced functionality and can be configured with user-defined attributes.

Beginning in NetBox v4.3, the use of inventory items has been deprecated. They are planned for removal in a future NetBox release. Users are strongly encouraged to begin using modules and module types in place of inventory items. Modules provide enhanced functionality and can be configured with user-defined attributes.

Beginning in NetBox v4.3, the use of inventory items has been deprecated. They are planned for removal in a future NetBox release. Users are strongly encouraged to begin using modules and module types in place of inventory items. Modules provide enhanced functionality and can be configured with user-defined attributes.

IP address management (IPAM) is one of NetBox's core features. It supports full parity for IP4 and IPv6, advanced VRF assignment, automatic hierarchy formation, and much more.

This model represents an arbitrary range of individual IPv4 or IPv6 addresses, inclusive of its starting and ending addresses. For instance, the range 192.0.2.10 to 192.0.2.20 has eleven members. (The total member count is available as the size property on an IPRange instance.) Like prefixes and IP addresses, each IP range may optionally be assigned to a VRF.

Most objects in NetBox support journaling. This is the ability of users to record chronological notes indicating changes to or work performed on resources in NetBox. For example, a data center technician might add a journal entry for a device when swapping out a failed power supply.

This guide explains how to implement LDAP authentication using an external server. User authentication will fall back to built-in Django users in the event of a failure.

NetBox Upgrade Maintenance Windows

NetBox supports Markdown rendering for certain text fields. Some common examples are provided below. For a complete Markdown reference, please see Markdownguide.org.

Available Metrics

This guide explains how to configure single sign-on (SSO) support for NetBox using Microsoft Entra ID as an authentication backend.

This guide explains how to configure single sign-on (SSO) support for NetBox Cloud using Microsoft Entra ID (formerly Azure Active Directory) as an authentication backend.

This document serves as a handbook for maintainers of plugins that were written prior to the release of NetBox v4.0. It serves to capture all the changes recommended to ensure a plugin is compatible with NetBox v4.0 and later releases.

ADMINS

Each module type may optionally be assigned a profile according to its classification. A profile can extend module types with user-configured attributes. For example, you might want to specify the input current and voltage of a power supply, or the clock speed and number of cores for a processor.

A module is a field-replaceable hardware component installed within a device which houses its own child components. The most common example is a chassis-based router or switch.

Menus

NetBox is the world's leading source of truth for network infrastructure, featuring an extensive and complex data model. But sometimes it can be challenging to orchestrate changes, especially when working within a large team. This plugin introduces a new paradigm for NetBox to help overcome these challenges: branching.

Change management support with policy and workflow controls for NetBox

You should already have access to the NetBox Labs Console when you sign up for NetBox Cloud.

The NetBox Cloud Free Plan is perfect for small networks, lab environments, and targeted use cases. It includes up to 100 devices, 500 IP addresses, 10k API requests/month, and 2 operational branches.

1. From within the NetBox Labs Console click on Settings and then Hostnames Manager in the left-hand main menu to view the settings for your Organization:

From within the NetBox Labs Console, you can easily view installed NetBox Cloud Plugins, along with their Scope and Version number. Simply follow these steps:

Overview

Console Access

Configuration File

Overview

Much like the NetBox software itself, NetBox Enterprise uses 2 main datastores: PostgreSQL, and Redis.

Place the following in configuration overrides python section

Host system requirements

Ubuntu-specific preparation steps. See the main requirements document for general requirements and special cases.

Required Information

This section of the documentation discusses installing and configuring the NetBox application itself.

NetBox Labs products and features can go through multiple release stages before becoming generally available. These stages in the release life cycle can present varying degrees of stability and support. The following are the NetBox Labs release stages:

Reports are deprecated beginning with NetBox v4.0, and their functionality has been merged with custom scripts. While backward compatibility has been maintained, users are advised to convert legacy reports into custom scripts soon, as support for legacy reports will be removed in a future release.

v2.0.10 (2017-07-14)

v2.10.10 (2021-04-15)

v2.4.9 (2018-12-07)

v2.7.12 (2020-04-08)

v3.0.12 (2021-12-06)

v3.6.9 (2023-12-28)

v4.0.11 (2024-09-03)

A set of NetBox users and/or groups of users identified as recipients for certain notifications.

NetBox includes a system for generating user notifications, which can be marked as read or deleted by individual users. There are two built-in mechanisms for generating a notification:

NetBox employs a new object-based permissions framework, which replaces Django's built-in permissions model. Object-based permissions enable an administrator to grant users or groups the ability to perform an action on arbitrary subsets of objects in NetBox, rather than all objects of a certain type. For example, it is possible to grant a user permission to view only sites within a particular region, or to modify only VLANs with a numeric ID within a certain range.

This guide explains how to configure single sign-on (SSO) support for NetBox using Okta as an authentication backend.

This guide explains how to configure single sign-on (SSO) support for NetBox Cloud using Okta as an authentication backend.

A platform defines the type of software running on a device or virtual machine. This can be helpful to model when it is necessary to distinguish between different versions or feature sets. Note that two devices of the same type may be assigned different platforms: For example, one Juniper MX240 might run Junos 14 while another runs Junos 15.

Plugins are packaged Django apps that can be installed alongside NetBox to provide custom functionality not present in the core application. Plugins can introduce their own models and views, but cannot interfere with existing components. A NetBox user may opt to install plugins provided by the community or build his or her own.

Just getting started with plugins? Check out our NetBox Plugin Tutorial on GitHub! This in-depth guide will walk you through the process of creating an entire plugin from scratch. It even includes a companion demo plugin repo to ensure you can jump in at any step along the way. This will get you up and running with plugins in no time!

Change management policies for NetBox Change Management

Policy rules for NetBox Change Management policies

This section covers the mechanisms which are available to populate data in NetBox.

You can secure access to your NetBox Cloud instance by adding IPv4 and IPv6 addresses and ranges to Prefix Lists, which can then be applied to NetBox instances to control which source IPs your instances will accept connections from.

This model can be used to represent individual accounts associated with a provider.

A provider is any entity which provides some form of connectivity of among sites or organizations within a site. While this obviously includes carriers which offer Internet and private transit service, it might also include Internet exchange (IX) points and even organizations with whom you peer directly. Each circuit within NetBox must be assigned a provider and a circuit ID which is unique to that provider.

Traffic Originating From NetBox Cloud

Python API client library for NetBox.

Users can reserve specific units within a rack for future use. An arbitrary set of units within a rack can be associated with a single reservation, but reservations cannot span multiple racks. A description is required for each reservation, reservations may optionally be associated with a specific tenant.

The rack model represents a physical two- or four-post equipment rack in which devices can be installed. Each rack must be assigned to a site, and may optionally be assigned to a location within that site. Racks can also be organized by user-defined functional roles. The name and facility ID of each rack within a location must be unique.

Regional Internet registries are responsible for the allocation of globally-routable address space. The five RIRs are ARIN, RIPE, APNIC, LACNIC, and AFRINIC. However, some address space has been set aside for internal use, such as defined in RFCs 1918 and 6598. NetBox considers these RFCs as a sort of RIR as well; that is, an authority which "owns" certain address space. There also exist lower-tier registries which serve particular geographic areas.

This documentation describes the process of packaging and publishing a new NetBox release. There are three types of releases:

NetBox releases are numbered as major, minor, and patch releases. For example, version 3.1.0 is a minor release, and v3.1.5 is a patch release. Briefly, these can be described as follows:

The configuration parameters listed here control remote authentication for NetBox. Note that REMOTEAUTHENABLED must be True in order for these settings to take effect.

The instructions below detail the general process for removing a NetBox plugin. However, each plugin is different and may require additional tasks or modifications to the steps below. Always consult the documentation for a specific plugin before attempting to remove it.

Replicating the Database

ALLOWED_HOSTS

Filtering Objects

When filtering lists of objects in NetBox, users can save applied filters for future use. This is handy for complex filter strategies involving multiple discrete filters. For example, you might want to find all planned devices within a region that have a specific platform. Once you've applied the desired filters to the object list, simply create a saved filter with name and optional description. This filter can then be applied directly for future queries via both the UI and REST API.

NetBox v3.4 introduced a new global search mechanism, which employs the extras.CachedValue model to store discrete field values from many models in a single table.

Global Search

Plugins can define and register their own models to extend NetBox's core search functionality. Typically, a plugin will include a file named search.py, which holds all search indexes for its models (see the example below).

ALLOWTOKENRETRIEVAL

A service represents a layer seven application available on a device or virtual machine. For example, a service might be created in NetBox to represent an HTTP server running on TCP/8000. Each service may optionally be further bound to one or more specific interfaces assigned to the selected device or virtual machine.

In addition to Django's built-in signals, NetBox defines some of its own, listed below.

Device

Several models in NetBox support the automatic synchronization of local data from a designated remote source. For example, configuration templates defined in NetBox can source their content from text files stored in a remote git repository. This is accomplished using the core data source and data file models.

Some NetBox models support automatic synchronization of certain attributes from remote data sources, such as a git repository hosted on GitHub or GitLab. Data from the authoritative remote source is synchronized locally in NetBox as data files.

Syncing a Branch

BASE_PATH

This object represents the saved configuration of an object table in NetBox. Table configs can be crafted, saved, and shared among users to apply specific views within object lists. Each table config can specify which table columns to display, the order in which to display them, and which columns are used for sorting.

NetBox employs the django-tables2 library for rendering dynamic object tables. These tables display lists of objects, and can be sorted and filtered by various parameters.

Templates are used to render HTML content generated from a set of context data. NetBox provides a set of built-in templates suitable for use in plugin views. Plugin authors can extend these templates to minimize the work needed to create custom templates while ensuring that the content they produce matches NetBox's layout and style. These templates are all written in the Django Template Language (DTL).

Most core objects within NetBox's data model support tenancy. This is the association of an object with a particular tenant to convey ownership or dependency. For example, an enterprise might represent its internal business units as tenants, whereas a managed services provider might create a tenant in NetBox to represent each of its customers.

A tenant represents a discrete grouping of resources used for administrative purposes. Typically, tenants are used to represent individual customers or internal departments within an organization.

NetBox includes a Python management shell within which objects can be directly queried, created, modified, and deleted. To enter the shell, run the following command:

NetBox coordinates all translation work using the Transifex platform. Signing up for a Transifex account is free.

Tunnels can be arranged into administrative groups for organization. For example, you might crete a group to manage all peer-to-peer tunnels inside a mesh network. The assignment of a tunnel to a group is optional.

A tunnel represents a private virtual connection established among two or more endpoints across a shared infrastructure by employing protocol encapsulation. Common encapsulation techniques include Generic Routing Encapsulation (GRE), IP-in-IP, and IPSec. NetBox supports modeling both peer-to-peer and hub-and-spoke tunnel topologies.

To safely and easily upgrade your NetBox Cloud instance without worrying about any plugin compatibility issues, follow the steps outlined below:

Upgrading NetBox to a new version is pretty simple, however users are cautioned to always review the release notes and save a backup of their current deployment prior to beginning an upgrade.

The users.UserConfig model holds individual preferences for each user in the form of JSON data. This page serves as a manifest of all recognized user preferences in NetBox.

This plugin includes support for activating and deactivating branches via the REST API in addition to conventional creation, modification, and deletion operations.

Writing Basic Views

A virtual chassis represents a set of devices which share a common control plane. A common example of this is a stack of switches which are connected and configured to operate as a single managed device. Each device in the virtual chassis is referred to as a VC member, and assigned a position and (optionally) a priority. VC member devices commonly reside within the same rack, though this is not a requirement.

A virtual device context (VDC) represents a logical partition within a physical device, to which interfaces from the parent device can be allocated. Each VDC effectively provides an isolated control plane, but relies on shared resources of the parent device. A VDC is somewhat similar to a virtual machine in that it effects isolation between various components, but stops short of delivering a fully virtualized environment.

A virtual machine (VM) represents a virtual compute instance hosted within a cluster. Each VM must be assigned to a site and/or cluster, and may optionally be assigned to a particular host device within a cluster.

A VRF object in NetBox represents a Virtual Routing and Forwarding (VRF) domain. Each VRF is essentially an independent routing table. VRFs are commonly used to isolate customers or organizations from one another within a network, or to route overlapping address space (e.g. multiple instances of the 10.0.0.0/8 space). Each VRF may be assigned to a specific tenant to aid in organizing the available IP space by customer or internal user.

Complementing its IPAM capabilities, NetBox also tracks VLAN information to assist with layer two network configurations. VLANs are defined per IEEE 802.1Q and related standards, and can be assigned to groups and functional roles.

NetBox can be configured via Event Rules to transmit outgoing webhooks to remote systems in response to internal object changes. The receiver can act on the data in these webhook messages to perform related tasks.

In many cases where cloud connectivity options seem necessary, NetBox Cloud offers features that can address your needs without additional setup. In the majority of cases Internet Delivery (Single Region) is the most appropriate connectivity option, but there are some general recommendations depending on your use case:

Within the NetBox Labs Console you can access the backups of your NetBox Cloud database, and are able to perform the following actions: