The Core of Everything Your First Netbox Site

there are many ways to get started in configuring that box i'm here to show you which way is best [Music] so i'm going to call this little series of videos that are coming up here the net box structure assembling the lego pieces because you'll find that that nut box truly is a series of lego pieces that all fit together and there is a right order to to start configuring them now it's a little bit of chicken and egg you're going to feel that way when you get started and most people do this they'll get netbox installed the web interface is up and they're like great and they they jump into exactly what they came to netbox for which is the ip address management devices you know inventory tracking all that and as they're doing that there will be these required fields and they're like ah i got to do that so you'll just go configure some random junk for those required fields and then before long it's all turned to gobbly and you're like ah just delete it all and start over right so let's not do that it all starts with the nutbox site the site is the center the site is the core of netbox and a site i would say you can use it for many things but i would say the most traditional way is use it exactly what it sounds like this is the location that contains the network equipment and the ip address managements the vlans the interfaces all of that kind of stuff that you're using netbox to track right so one of the first things that you should do in configuring that box is to set up the site so before i even talk about some of these other pieces right now i want to go there with you right um i'm going to bring netbox up and i want you to do this with me and i know you're going to see that you're like oh well i'm going to do that no no no no hang on hann do exactly this with me go in that box and you're going to see right on the the upper left think of it like that's the you know table of contents it starts here top left click on sites no sites will exist go to the upper right click on add and you're going to add in my first site now i know right now you're like no i want to name it like you know denver or like don't do that name it my first site it's like hello world there's a reason all programming starts with hello world is because they know it's just a template right so so you'll notice right underneath it creates a slug now that's it's going to seem insignificant at first but as you get deeper into netbox and start integrating apis looking at the database that becomes pretty significant right the status is the only other required field which you can see in bold right there it's currently active but you notice we've got planned retired if you if you want to you know lock in some of those old sites and put it in the archive right scroll down you'll see all the different things that you can add to the site the address the email the tags you know comments about that site these are all fields that are are going to be searchable they'll be indexable and probably most importantly they'll be api-able i'm going to make that word and you're going to hear me say this throughout this whole series netbox is a great system in itself but it's so much better if you can tie it to all the other systems that you have create a site in that box and poof it automatically creates a site in your monitoring system and poof it automatically creates a new site in your ticketing system or or maybe netbox isn't the starting point maybe you've got your ticketing system and you create a new site there poof poof poof poof it creates it in all your other systems that's the power of apis more on that to come right so we're back at the site i want you to go down here and click on create and boom you get the site perspective this this is why the site is the ultimate container because over here on the right-hand side you see the stats here's the racks that are assigned here's the devices that are assigned the prefixes that are assigned and these these are all the things right if you go up here there's your racks there's your devices there's your prefixes right here right all of those things show up on a report right here and even better even better i love this images oh i love images don't you love it when you go to a site and you take a picture of your pristine it room the mdf the idf where all the equipment is racked right and and you know it'll only stay that way for a week unless you put signs and stuff like we do in my company but but but um it looks beautiful well that's a great thing to put into netbox and then you can build your rack from that image without actually staring at it while you're trying to configure netbox right so so that's the site okay um enough enough with that right now um next thing i want to show you is the region racks intent actually i'm not even going to get into the racks i want to show you the the the the region and the tenant right let me start with the tenants the tenant is your way to sub divide the site right and and just just like it sounds when you think tented think of like you know there's your site it's a shared office space and you come in you walk in you know the first thing you see is in the lobby there's a starbucks because it's an airport or something like that yeah it's starbucks uh star and then right here is is maybe uh a dentist office and right here is is sam's uh spas right they're all share whether these are floors or different suites in the same building so you could create a tenant right you could say i've got tenant one which is going to be starbucks and i'm going to assign that to the site and now you can assign devices vlans ip address to the tenant right it's the only thing that you can assign those things to so that you can now have a site with tenants that have their own individual equipment maybe there's a little wall-mounted rack on the wall of starbucks right and all their equipment's right there that's you've got that assigned to the tenant but but in that office complex maybe they have one router that's common one internet connection that all the tenants share well in that case assign that router to the site and then all the individual devices to the individual tenants so so tenant again is your way of subdividing that site up now region regions are your way of categorizing sites that's the best way think of regions as containers for sites and and you can use it just as the name implies a region you think okay this is phoenix arizona this is you know nebraska this is the state of missouri right you could do that and a lot of people do with that but regions are just containers so let me show it to you real quick watch this right over here uh bring that box back up so i've got my first site right so i'm gonna go to oregon and oh okay so one thing i want to show you this home page does not have all the options netbox has right this is just the most common options if you look at organization you see there's regions you won't find regions anywhere on the home page right so you click on regions and right now it's saying the regions are blank so i'm going to add in let's add let's add arizona right that's where i am create now as soon as i do that look at look at what happened it says i've modified the region arizona and all of a sudden i'm at sites what wait a sec i thought we created a site no no no it took me to the sites assigned to the arizona region right if i go back to my sites you can see right there there's my first site it's not assigned to any region so if i were to if i were to click on that go to edit and say this is actually in the region arizona down update now when i go to my regions my first site shows up arizona right so you get that okay okay now regions are very nestable okay so i'm going to click on add let's just say i've got phoenix right and the parent is arizona great now note notice it took me right to the sites for phoenix there are none as of yet but if i look at the regions now it's like oh we got a little nesting going on hey now this is where it gets a little fun because i could go to the regions and i could divide it even further maybe maybe this netbox instance is for my global enterprise right and i i have you know in arizona i've got the phoenix region and in phoenix i actually have let's go to region i'm going to uh click on add and we'll make the parent phoenix i've got uh you know five offices on 51st street right create boom again you can see the nesting goes deeper and deeper and i can keep it you know there's there let's just just go with i know you i know you got it right now but i just got to show you you know 52nd street right is my next region so so what i'm doing is i'm laying out a region hierarchy and what what i want you to catch right now i'm gonna i'm gonna show you in the next video maybe um some of the some of the practical just like okay how would i do this like give me some examples that's that's the next nugget for now i just want you to see that regions while the name implies like geographical location and that's fine they can be used for all kinds of structures that you could build more on that in the next nugget for now you've seen how to set up a site in netbox the core container right and how to set up regions where you can categorize them and you know you haven't set it up yet but you know that we can use uh tenants to subdivide this so here's what i want you to do i want you to go get started with netbox if you've got it installed which i hope you do go create the first site that you plan to use i know we created my first site you can either rename that one or you can create a brand new site but create the first site that you plan to use with netbox and then build the region structure around that site now maybe maybe you you're small and you only want to use netbox for your little small office that's fine but just build the region structure anyway so you know the feature and i mean maybe you just say hey we're in arizona we're in michigan wherever you are we're in australia right you know do whatever you want to do just create that structure so it's there and you can see it you can experience it and now you know how to get started with the first structure it's that simple

Channel: Viatto

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Id: Ic_tuGBF4lQ

Length: 10min 6sec (606 seconds)

Published: Thu Nov 11 2021