I want to start this year and the first post to explain the use and need of NetBox!
Netbox is a free and amazing tool to help you with control and documentation of your system. Netbox can help you with IPAM(IP address management), DCIM(Data Center Infrastructure Management)
To get your infrastructure and network automated, one of the most important things is to have single SOT (source of truth). How is the infrastructure looks like right now? To have some of the network documented in excel and other just in vCenter, it will be hard or not possible to automate it. This works good for your home network of for big enterprise companies. Netbox comes from the network engineering team at DigitalOcean.
Netbox is easy to install and use. I don’t explain the process of install here since it’s a lot of good documentations and videos on the web. But I want to just spread the word of this tool. Its has helped me a lot in different project to get control of the network and to start automate the inventory. Netbox come with REST API that you can use with other tool or create your own scripts. Also, NAPALM is 100% integrated that help you with automate the network automation. (Network as Code). NAPLAM stands for “Network Automation and Programmability Abstraction Layer with Multivendor support”. The name is far too long, but the functions give Netbox a flying start that’s absolutely worth to try.
I have tried with successes integrated Netbox with following:
- Cisco IOS Switches and Routers
- Cisco Nexus Switches
- Vmware vCenter
Hope this short information give interest to install Netbox and explore all the possibility it gives.
Read more of the documents for Netbox and NAPALM on the links here: