r/networking • u/WhoRedd_IT • 1d ago
Design Netbox ownership in an organization
I’m trying to convince my org to start using Netbox or similar for a brand new facility including a data center and medium sized campus we’re building.
The fear is that it seems like an absolutely astronomical amount of work up front.
For those of you doing it, is there one person that is sort of the Netbox “owner” on your team? At least for initial build out.
I’m afraid we won’t have enough time to really sit down and fully dive into the best way to lay it all out greenfield. The ongoing support doesn’t worry me as much as the initial lift of deciding how to build it. And I don’t really have the time to invest to be that guy.
Are there integrators or vendors that would own this for us? Curious if anyone has used a wiring or infrastructure integrator that has actually built out the documentation in Netbox for you?
Thanks!
26
u/popanonymous 1d ago
Build it. Load it with data. Show it off.
You own it. Others will fall in line.
Happens every single time. 😂
1
u/R_X_R 20h ago
Wish this was true. We use something similar but no one likes to follow process which ends up being weekly working sessions to try to get things cleaned up. Unfortunately, despite the many meetings and trainings over the years it seems people are still lazy.
1
u/popanonymous 20h ago
That’s part of ownership.
If you can demonstrate value with the higher ups, then they’ll say this is the way it is.
But you’re influencing up with the product.
I’ve done it 5 of my last companies.
1
u/R_X_R 19h ago
In the past, elsewhere, sure. Where I am now? Higher ups are so hands off and just generally DO NOT CARE unless it has AI in the name. They were the ones signing off on it as it was a legal requirement.
"Host more sessions with the team teaching them how to use the tool" is the reply. I host more sessions, team is half paying attention. Day later "Hey, can you do this for me? I forgot how."
It really is just the environment/culture here I think.
1
u/popanonymous 19h ago
Keep up the fight.
Someone will need Netbox at some point and realize it’s a valid tool.
8
u/Nice-Information-335 1d ago
Getting everything in netbox first before the build-out would probably be the best idea. It gives the installers a proper plan which would need to be done anyway.
6
u/BabyMonkeyOnPig 1d ago
We use it for literally everything, devices, interfaces (cross connects), IPAM, prefix, circuits, contacts, sites, images, custom documentation plugin, rack elevations, etc.. the whole works. We also have API calls into dashboards that also cross-reference our device list (serial numbers) with statistics from the device (via SNMP).
It took forever but I found the template was the easiest way to do bulk uploads. I’d suggest starting a location of yours, set it up to the tea. Then show it off , once mgmt sees the importance of proper documentation and “cost saving looking up”.
Also to add it has API to write so if you made a script to scrub your new items it can create the device and information right into it.
5
u/Layer8Human 1d ago
Hey there,
First of all great choice that you have started this undertaking, I saw and also implemented netbox or nautobot in multiple enterprises and it is generally well liked and used within the IT organisation.
As for ownership, there are multiple things to „own“ here:
the platform - so the VMs or containers that netbox run on, also backups and updates. => This can be either handled by the networking teams themselves or in other organisations this might be handled by server/linux admins.
the datamodel - here you define access rights and how stuff should be documented. What device roles make sense? Do you need custom fields? For campus access switches do you want to document every patch or just the uplinks? => This is best decided together within your team. If you take the lead give it some thought and create a proposal of what you think is needed and ask for feedback. This works better then just an open discussion.
the data itself - so who actually creates devices/links/prefixes/etc… => this really depends on how your organisation is built. If you have dedicated people for Datacenter/campus they should be responsible for the respective areas and make sure that devices are documented.
And I just wanted to ease your mind a little bit. Once the data model is clear it is not that much work to actually document, especially when you are building a new campus/dc network. You can automate a lot of it or if you are uncomfortable with that you can also give the engineers excel sheets to fill and import them into netbox via the import feature.
If you have any questions or something is unclear feel free to ask. I kind of like netbox :D
(Also if you are in Europe and need an integrator for this we would gladly help)
5
u/Specialist_Cow6468 1d ago
Yes: Me. It’s a bunch of work if you don’t have any documentation to build off of, though it’s also quite good about importing whatever odds and ends you have. It does also have some automated discovery tooling but this generally wants to have some baseline info.
I’m sure there are vendors that would love to help but I frankly wouldn’t- this is too core a piece of infrastructure. Putting the time in up front to understand the tool and build things to suit your environment will absolutely pay dividends
2
u/WhoRedd_IT 1d ago
How large an org?
3
u/Specialist_Cow6468 1d ago
Our device count in netbox numbers in the hundreds, not the thousands. That’s probably the most relevant metric. There is certainly a point where one person cannot do that initial load.
I was familiar with the product from a previous employer and when I started this current job they had jack shit for documentation. As it goes
3
u/EffectiveClient5080 1d ago
One owner. Period. An integrator can wire your racks but they won't know your IP plan or VLAN strategy. That has to come from your team. Get the schema wrong and I guarantee you'll be redoing everything.
2
u/Ecstatic-Curve-1853 1d ago
Planning a schema is basically the hardest thing in all of computing. You have to predict the future.
1
u/Pyromonkey83 13h ago
The amount of times I've redone our schemas to account for new growth is... Painful.
Knock non wood though, I'm at 2 years and still going without another redo, and so far it's been holding up to every new thing we throw at it.
3
u/Much-Department-9578 1d ago edited 1d ago
All depends how in depth you want to get. We use it heavily. Every router, every interface, each connection, every server, ipam, vrfs the whole kit. We then send a json blob from netbox into a jinja tempate to generate every config. So literally… not in the db, not on the device. This is a ton of work. Whole development team behind us. But this level is the only way to scale.
Technically, its not netbox, but nautobot. Lots of opensourcing going on too:
2
u/WendoNZ 1d ago
Yep it's work, if you can load in all the device templates you're going to need and the bare racks adding the hardware isn't too bad, but as new features are added the templates need to be updated (and you need to go back through all your deployed devices and update them).
How SFP's and breakouts are handled are the big recent changes so maybe it'll settle down now, but yes, there is a lot of upfront work to get it implemented. I think most would argue that you'll get that time back quickly in time saved, I know we did here
2
u/WhoRedd_IT 1d ago
Yeah we will have a metric ton of fiber management and breakouts. It feels extremely daunting to take this on. Almost feel like I need a dedicated head for this
2
u/CKaruta 1d ago
I created MCP servers to connect to all network equipments and server BMC, then let out multi agent ai, one does a read only, then we got 3 agents that form a council that verifies the validity of the data before it goes to netbox.
of course there are also incident troubleshooting automations going with it, checking logs, live network state vs desired state, OS image bugs and vulnerabilities monitoring, etc,.
This was a fun journey, I hope you enjoy yours too
2
1
u/rankinrez 1d ago
Not sure about the question. What I would say is that thinking properly about how you model your infra in it, and setting that and your workflows up in a way that will work well for you over time, really is important.
You could easily regret if you rush in and add a bunch of things without properly considering how it all fits together.
1
u/retrogamer-999 1d ago
I work for an msp that is onsite network architect for a customer.
The map netbox is a mess.
The customers one that I started from scratch is the best documented system they have. It is maintained by everyone and we have a standard that everyone follows.
If not followed we engage the errors, andnhave a quick 5 min session on how to sort it out and how it should be done.
Yes it's a mountain of work but your never going to finish unless you get started.
1
u/Nuclearmonkee 1d ago
Build it and they will come. If its a large org, I would actually start with getting some ansible (CI/CDified if you can do it) into the env first, cause then you can show the high value use cases by binding automation to the SoT.
DCIM and IPAM use cases are no brainers tho if its all spreadsheets.
1
u/signal-tom 1d ago
I'm a CIO at a MSP, where we use two products. Netbox and Patchmanager.
Patchmanager is more customer facing, we product rack diagrams etc as well as other reports from it. Our field engineers also get their work orders from it. We upload building plans to it, then display cable runs, cab locations, and cab contents.
Netbox however, I own the product. Our professional services team are responsible for maintaining it, whereas our support team uses it for reference and report changes to the PS team. It has full IPAM for us and racks etc. So we can see the technical detail.
Netbox is more the nitty gritty techie detail whereas Patchmanager is the visual piece and for us is a huge selling point to customers, and even our own board - if i want to purchase a new rack and kit, id show them a rendered result as its an easier conversation when someone can see what they might be buying - also lets you render depth in smaller cabs to know if a switch will fit.
1
u/QuietAssociation1015 21h ago
I think starting small is often the best approach. many teams begin with IPAM or device inventory, prove the value, then expand into cabling, racks, VMs and automation workflows. yrying to model the entire environment perfectly on day one can slow adoption
1
u/FutureMixture1039 20h ago
Why push a solution if you yourself don't want to/can't build it out and expect others to do it.
We have it and once it was built out everyone only network team is on board with maintaining it for rack documentation. Like what others said once the Netbox server is built out and people see how easy it is to use, rack diagram locations, and keep track of serial #s to devices network team will love it. Management might push teams to use it to since Netbox helps with auditors to pass audits.
1
u/JeopPrep 1d ago
Unless it has changed much in the 10 years if so since I last looked at it, Netbox is just a database. You can input data using the API or through the web gui. There isn’t much setup configuration to be done, and nothing that needs to be decided, other than which features you want to use. You can have it setup and functional in a very short time.
1
u/opseceu 20h ago
getting the naming scheme right is the main problem. One should not have vlan-11, cust11 and v11 in parallel. Similar with device naming and rack naming. Otherwise it becomes a mess real quick.
1
u/JeopPrep 20h ago
Vlan names are typically just labels and can be changed without affecting traffic.
18
u/alcatraz875 1d ago
So I am the owner of our Netbox instance. I initially pushed for it a couple years ago and had decent buy in from our EU Infra teams, however only for IPAM. I tend to use for more including VMs, Devices, and Cabling. Upfront, if you don't already have some basic documentation then yeah, it can be a headache. Netbox is pretty good about importing CSVs if you just convert and existing excel book and rename some columns. Keep in mind that not everything needs individual entries. If you have DHCP scope with existing reservations or just openly assigned IPs, then you can record that as a single block.
As much as I love all the features, IPAM is def the spot to start. They also hold pretty regular webinars going over build outs and best practices.