While the networking world slowly moves towards automation being a standard aspect of the profession, skills such as coding and data modelling are increasing. Network automation is evolving in complexity and capability. This piece is a reminder about one ultra simple concept that catches teams out and is rarely discussed: You can't automate what you... Continue Reading →
Windmill.dev for Network Automation Scripting
Over the last half a year I have been experimenting and learning how to use Windmill. It is designed to be a central place that a team can run and develop scripts. It has the ability to be complex and powerful but I just want somewhere that network automation scripts could live and run. It... Continue Reading →
IP Fabric Netbox plugin – Restricting the Scope of Ingestion
This post is a long winded way of telling you how you can select multiple sites to be ingested into Netbox easily so that the amount of data being added to Netbox is small enough to not overload it. The IP Fabric Netbox plugin allows input and comparison of data between the two systems. It... Continue Reading →
IP Fabric Netbox Plugin – How to strip the re0 from Juniper Routers
Larger Juniper routers have two hardware control planes, known as routing engines. These can be seen on some models as a removable slot in the chassis. Each has its own management IP, storage etc and can be seen as an independant compute node. If one fails, the other takes over. When IP Fabric connects to... Continue Reading →
IP Fabric Script to Check and Alter Attributues
IP Fabric allows one or more attributes to be assigned to a device. These act like tags in blog posts where certain optional attributes/values can be given to each object. They can be used to filter down devices in all the views of the UI, or via the API. Built in attributes like the site... Continue Reading →
Netbox – Bulk Deletion of an object element
This post describes how to delete an element (field) from every object in Netbox. It uses the example of deleting the weight field from device types. There may be a reason why a netbox admin would need to remove every example of a field from a type of netbox object. For example a custom field... Continue Reading →
IP Fabric Netbox Plugin vs Device Library Import (UPDATED)
The very talented Alex Gittings from IP Fabric has helped me to understand how to get around the capitalisation issue. In the transform maps you can create a jinja2 template that capitalises a field. So if applied in the device - DCIM|manufacturer map, with source field as vendor and target field as name, it will... Continue Reading →
What is a Single Source of Truth?
When we talk about a concept for a long time, its meaning can become unclear or changed. What it truly represents might become less significant. Today, I want to discuss the SSoT, a term that many people think they understand, but I believe has lost some clarity. This term is essential in modern IT automation.... Continue Reading →
IP Fabric: Download All Settings Easily
This post looks at a simple way to download all the settings from IP Fabric and acts as a primer for future IP Fabric API posts. IP Fabric was written from day one with an API First approach. This means that every function/feature is coded as an API in the first instance. The webUI is... Continue Reading →
Automating Raritan PX3 PDU Configuration
Automating tasks on devices with no vendor API/library support is really hard work, but it can also be the most useful code you write. In this example the devices have no API, SDK and the CLI structure is so different to network equipment that standard automation techniques won't work. The Problem My most recent coding... Continue Reading →
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