How to add Switch-Stacks which are not sharing neighbouring Rack Units

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lars.h...@tbh.eu

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Sep 15, 2017, 5:26:51 AM9/15/17
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Hi,

i just set up netbox and am wondering if there is a good way on how to represent stacks of switches (in my case Cisco Flexstack Switches) which are placed into our patch field:

Basically we have the following order of devices in our Rack:

Patch
Switch
Patch
Patch
Switch
Patch
Patch
Switch
Patch

Now i wonder if it is possible to group those switches into a single entity - otherwise i can't see a way how to tell netbox about the cross-stack LACP Groups that we use for the uplink.

The only way i can think of is setting up a "parent device" and place the switches and patch-panels into it as child entitys.

I am sure there is a nicer way to realize this which i just didnt find yet - so please help me out here :-)

Thanks for any Help :-)

--
Lars

Dave Noonan

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Sep 15, 2017, 7:20:36 AM9/15/17
to lars.h...@tbh.eu, NetBox
This comes up enough that maybe it should be in the documentation?  


NetBox does not currently include any means of dealing with stacks or virtual chassis. The way I've done it is as follows...

  • Append .# to the end of each device name where # is the stack number of the device.
  • When adding interfaces to the device I add them as they appear on the device, so the interfaces on switch 2 in the stack are Gi2/0/x and on switch 3 they're Gi3/0/x, etc.
  • For port-channels I add the Po to each device and add appropriate interfaces to it.  This means that I have to look at multiple switches to actually see the full port-channel.
This has worked so far but obviously has some issues, especially around the connections.

Another option that I considered but didn't try was creating a Device Type of "stack" so I could have all the interfaces and connections in one place. The downsides of that option are rack placement when switches are alternated with patch panels and in maintaining hardware inventory.  You'd still probably want to keep the individual switches and their SNs in the system and have some way to tie them to the stack.

Regards,
Dave



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Jeremy Stretch

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Sep 15, 2017, 9:09:29 AM9/15/17
to Dave Noonan, lars.h...@tbh.eu, NetBox
FYI issue #99 has been opened for this feature. Implementing the necessary logic will take considerable effort.

Jeremy

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lars.h...@tbh.eu

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Sep 15, 2017, 10:28:19 AM9/15/17
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Thanks everybody for your answer - i will subscribe to the github bug and will see :-)

Cheers
Lars
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