What is NetBox - FREE Network Documentation System?

when it comes to describing what netbox is there's really two answers you'll see what's on the surface a network documentation system and then you'll see something beyond the surface which goes so much deeper [Music] [Applause] so before we get started i want to give a huge shout out to the sponsor of this video network to code who literally takes what you can do with netbox to a whole nother level the focus of network to code is network automation so you use netbox as that source of truth that central database you add your devices network to code allows it to then say okay let's add that to the monitoring system add the sensors throw it in the inventory management let's make sure we track what warranty that device has let's go ahead and add it to a customer asset in our customer database system i mean essentially if you can dream it that's the idea of automation with code network automation can accomplish virtually anything so thanks networked code now let's jump into netbox my friends welcome to the data center chances are good if you're in technology for any length of time you eventually set foot in an environment like this now it may be a literal data center like i'm in right now with racks of equipment and i'm just showing you one of them if you were to just walk down the corridors of this data center you would just see rack after rack of after rack of equipment i mean there's probably more equipment here that i can even fathom that bring connectivity and data storage and application software as a service et cetera et cetera et cetera to clients or you could be stepping foot into your company's mdf or idf or whatever you have that brings network and and server connectivity to your environment regardless of what environment it is this stuff is really important right and one of the things that happens is we get so focused on on getting it all in there and getting the services delivered that documenting what's there is actually an afterthought or we've got one excel spreadsheet over here and then another one and no one's really sure which one's up to date right it just it just becomes an afterthought so enter the picture netbox right which is an application that's designed to document exactly what this what this this stuff is not only what is the equipment but what's connected to what what's powering what what connections are coming in what carrier are they from essentially it's a database that allows you to have an interface to document this well and and if you do it right it can be the hub essentially the step that the start of a full system that proactively ties everything together as in what if what if i could install a firewall up here at the top of this switch that as i added add it to now i say switch on top of the cabinet right as i add it to netbox i automatically have it add to my monitoring system and that automatically adds it to our billing system in our inventory city and all the other things netbox can be the hub of what becomes a paramount documentation system that keeps your company totally up to date and running together so let me bring you back from the data center to a much quieter environment right i want to make sure i convey what netbox is and and show you a picture of what it looks like on the surface this this is netbox right it is a ip address management that's ipam right and data center infrastructure management utility now now i'm saying data center just where i was a moment ago but this is also it could be useful for documenting any business of any size as a matter of fact i use it we use it at my company via to document all of our customers right and what what different ip address blocks vlans etc etc they have so that we can quickly track each one of them that's that's the surface and at that it does an amazing job it's lightning fast because it was built from the ground up to do exactly what it was it's not a result of acquisition after acquisition and slapping all of these different things together which so many ip address management products i've seen out there are right so so it does what it does well but i want to make sure that you catch this is meant to be the first place you go before you ever provision the actual device right and i'm going to emphasize what i just said in the data center but a little crisper this time the idea is that you can go into nut box right here you can provision a device which you can see some devices right here let's just say we go in and add a device right and i i fill in all my provisioning information this serial number right fill in the device type all of the different things which leads you to the next page of configuration after page you provision it right here and once you click go your automated systems behind the scenes take that information and do at that point whatever you want with it one could generate a template configuration for the device based on we'll say the ip addressing you put in here the power connections the console can write all of that information you can have a script come in and fill in blocks of a template configuration to where it's like okay there's your configuration hours of engineering time saved just like that right second thing you could have it added to an inventory database which maybe starts backing up the configuration of that device on a regular basis or a monitoring system or or or you know the options are truly endless because netboxes netbox was built with apis in mind application programming interfaces right where this links to all kinds of other systems to provide a ton of functionality with this being the starting point you'll hear it said many off many times this is the central point of truth in your in your system right everything else stems from doing what you have in net box right from the beginning in this series of videos my goal is to show you how to work with netbox i would say primarily on point number one right how do you how do you work with this system how do you get your information in there in the best possible way right as we move forward i'd love to take you into okay how to use netbox to back up all your device configurations and tie it into your configuration management system how do you use netbox to monitor your devices and have it automatically create the sensors that you need to tell you the cpu utilization the bandwidth on the interface et cetera et cetera et cetera right that will be in the future but you have to start somewhere let's start by talking about how we get netbox set up from the ground up to be a phenomenal network management documentation system it's that simple

Channel: Viatto

Views: 89,660

Keywords: NetBox, What is NetBox, About NetBox, Free software, free network documentation system, network documentation system, Network To Code, N2C, IT, Jeremy Cioara, KITS, KeepingITSimple, Keeping IT Simple, net box

Id: jr9Pxx0NkTc

Length: 6min 52sec (412 seconds)

Published: Wed Oct 28 2020