Neteng on Aaron's Worthless Words

Generating Network Diagrams from Netbox with Pynetbox

Wed, 23 Aug 2023 00:00:00 +0000

Here’s my typical disclaimer: I’m not a developer. I have the ability to make code give me an expected output, but I do not do anything “the right way.”

All the code I write for these blog posts is in my Github repo that you can and should freely copy and modify. Here’s the environment I’m running this stuff in. Python. Pynetbox. You know the drill by now.

Python         :  3.9.10
Pynetbox       :  7.0.0
Netbox version :  3.5.8

We’ve been working through some stuff, and, at this point, we have a lot of stuff in our Netbox instance. Let’s step up the game a little, though, and see if we can’t generate a network diagram based on that data. Let’s set some expectations, though. This is not going to be comparable to that Visio diagram you’ve managed by hand for the last 8 years. This is going to be a very simple diagram with subnet, nodes, and IP addresses – enough for an auditor or for some architect who doesn’t know what’s in their own data centers.

Out-of-band Management - Useful Beyond Catastrophe

Thu, 13 Jul 2023 00:00:00 +0000

I was lucky enough to participate in Tech Field Day Extra at Cisco Live a couple weeks months ago. This event brings independent thought leaders together with a number of IT product vendors that were at Cisco Live to share information and opinions. I was not paid to attend, but the organizers did provide some meals while I was there. There is no expectation of providing any content, so the fact that I’m mentioning it says something. It was a great event and worth a few hours to check out the videos. Thanks to Gestalt IT for getting me involved. OpenGear was there, and it was good to see some new faces and hear some new ideas.

Overlay Management

Wed, 12 Jul 2023 00:00:00 +0000

I was lucky enough to participate in Tech Field Day 27 a couple weeks months ago. This event brings independent thought leaders together with a number of IT product vendors to share information and opinions. I was not paid to attend, but the organizers did provide travel, room, and meals while I was there. There is no expectation of providing any content, so the fact that I’m mentioning it says something. It was a great event and worth a few hours to check out the videos. Thanks to Gestalt IT for getting me involved.

Netbox Upgrade Play-by-play

Tue, 25 Apr 2023 00:00:00 +0000

I just upgraded my Netbox server from v2.7.6 to v3.4.8. This is just a record of what I did in case anyone want to know how I did it.

Environment

The source v2.7.6 server is an Ubuntu 18.04 VM. Yes, both are very old.
The destination v3.4.8 server is an Ubuntu 20.04 VM.
We have no media, scripts, or reports in Netbox.
I’m running Virtualbox on my laptop to do the data migrations.

Using Python Logging to Figure Out What You Did Wrong

Sun, 26 Feb 2023 00:00:00 +0000

As a warning to everyone, I am not a developer. I am a network engineer who is trying to do some automation stuff. Some of what I’m doing sounds logical to me, but I would not trust my own opinions for production work. I’m sure you can find a Slack channel or Mastodon instance with people who can tell you how to do things properly.

I use too many print statements to figure out what’s going on. Get an object and print it to screen to make sure it’s right. Do a calculation and print the result. There are so many print statements in my code that I had to start using a debug variable to tell it when to print stuff. I even use that technique in my functions.

Deleting Stuff from Netbox with Pynetbox

Fri, 24 Feb 2023 00:00:00 +0000

We’ve added stuff and updated stuff, so let’s delete some stuff. “Hey, man…you already did that,” you say? You’re right! When we started creating API tokens based on user/pass, we made sure to delete the token at the end. That means we should all be professional pynetbox deleters, then, right? :)

Updating Stuff on Netbox with Pynetbox

Wed, 25 Jan 2023 00:00:00 +0000

Let’s see. We’ve queried stuff on Netbox and added stuff to Netbox. Now let’s update stuff.

Netbox, like all sources of truth, needs to be kept up-to-date if it’s going to be useful. Without doing some maintenance on the data, it will wind up being like that one Visio diagram that you give the auditors – it might have been accurate at one point but gets further and further from the truth every day. We’ll need to keep our stuff updated today in order to use it more effectively tomorrow.