Requirements to assign IP to device

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Brent F

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Nov 2, 2016, 7:55:04 PM11/2/16
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First off, love netbox and thank you for all that youve done!  

My question is around the requirement to first create a network interface for a device and associate that network interface with another network interface before it's possible to assign an IP to the device.  Ideally (for me at least) it'd be possible to assign an IP to a device regardless of if it has network interfaces or not.  The reason for this is what in my lab environment I'm not concerned about specific ports that a server is connected to on a switch, only which switch it's connected to, though it's great to have the choice to be as granular as port to port.  Being able to assign a device an IP and then later if I choose associate that IP with a network interface and then choose to associate that interface with another device network interface would be nice.  Let me know if this is possible today and I'm missing something.

Thanks!
-Brent

Jeremy Stretch

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Nov 3, 2016, 9:41:42 AM11/3/16
to Brent F, NetBox
One of the guiding tenets of NetBox is to model the real world as close as practical, thus an IP address must be assigned to a discrete interface within a device. Just as in the real world, it's not possible to assign an IP to a device without mapping it to a particular interface. If you need something more abstract than that NetBox probably isn't going to be a great fit.

Jeremy

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Frank Mogaddedi

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Nov 3, 2016, 10:32:41 AM11/3/16
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From: 'Jeremy Stretch' via NetBox [mailto:netbox-...@googlegroups.com]
Sent: Thursday, November 03, 2016 09:41
To: Brent F <brent.f...@gmail.com>
Cc: NetBox <netbox-...@googlegroups.com>
Subject: Re: [netbox-discuss] Requirements to assign IP to device

 

One of the guiding tenets of NetBox is to model the real world as close as practical, thus an IP address must be assigned to a discrete interface within a device. Just as in the real world, it's not possible to assign an IP to a device without mapping it to a particular interface. If you need something more abstract than that NetBox probably isn't going to be a great fit.

Jeremy

On Wed, Nov 2, 2016 at 7:55 PM, Brent F <brent.f...@gmail.com> wrote:

First off, love netbox and thank you for all that youve done!  

 

My question is around the requirement to first create a network interface for a device and associate that network interface with another network interface before it's possible to assign an IP to the device.  Ideally (for me at least) it'd be possible to assign an IP to a device regardless of if it has network interfaces or not.  The reason for this is what in my lab environment I'm not concerned about specific ports that a server is connected to on a switch, only which switch it's connected to, though it's great to have the choice to be as granular as port to port.  Being able to assign a device an IP and then later if I choose associate that IP with a network interface and then choose to associate that interface with another device network interface would be nice.  Let me know if this is possible today and I'm missing something.

 

Thanks!

-Brent

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Frank Mogaddedi

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Nov 3, 2016, 10:39:15 AM11/3/16
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(Sorry about my previous send-email fail!)

 

I’m not quite sure what you mean with “associate that interface with another interface” – I don’t think that step is really necessary unless you really need the topology graphs (or I’m missing something).

I’ve started out using just the IPAM part of Netbox and just put the device’s name in the description field (10.1.1.1 -> TestServer-01) and a search for “TestServer-01” still finds the IP. Now I’m actually adding real devices and start adding the interesting IP addresses to those devices (yeah, not the smartest way, but it speeds up getting what’s important to me into the system)

Now that I’m adding real devices – initial setup takes a bit – add the manufacturer, device role, device type, add the standard interesting NICs to the device type, I’m at the point where I can just add the device, which inherits the interfaces from the device type. That way I was able to add most of our stuff quickly and can get to really assigning IP addresses to the device’s interface. Duplicates be damned, I can clean up later (or as I go) J

In your case, would it make sense to create a “dummy server” device type with let’s say 4 interfaces and use that as your ‘template’? Regardless of whether your real server really has 4 NICs?

 

Granted, I still don’t have my servers connected to switch ports – I label my switchports (ifAlias/port-name) on the switch and have a different app to query those. Eventually I’ll do that, but in my case that’s a low priority thing; I haven’t even connected all my switches in netbox yet J


I think what I’m saying is: you only need a device and an interface on the device to assign an IP to the device – and for real quick-and-dirty work, you could use the description field on the IP to say what server it goes to, and the description on the device to say what  switch it’s connected to. That’ll get you through “Mon-Thu”, and you could do the “details, it’s always the details” on “no-change-don’t-deploy-Fridays”.

 

            Frank

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