Network templates

[WilliamDEdwards]

When creating a new network, the deployment steps are usually the same:

• Get free vLAN ID
• Add /128 and /32 to router 1 device (with DNS name like: rtr1-{vlan_id}.ourdomain.net)
• Add /128 and /32 IP to router 2 device (with DNS name like: rtr2-{vlan_id}.ourdomain.net)
• Get free VID (see: Dedicated model for redundancy protocol instances #6235)
• Add VRRP6 and VRRP IP to router 1 device and router 2 device (with DNS name like: gw-{vlan_id}.ourdomain.net)

It would be useful to create all objects needed to deploy a new network at the click of a button. Maybe based on templates, because not every network is exactly the same.

I haven't thought about this enough to propose a structure, but I guess it'd come down to:

• Create a new template model.
• The user should create a template. The user may add vLAN, prefix and IP address objects to the template. These objects will be created when a network is created from the template. In some object fields, like the IP address's DNS name, variable substitution (like vlan_id) should be possible.
• The user can then create the network, which is not an object itself, but the result of a collection of objects, based on one of their templates.

Although the templates concept would allow for some flexibility, I feel like this may be too dependent on specific infrastructure setups to be useful for all NetBox users.

What are other's approaches to this?

[candlerb]

The approach I suggest is to write a custom script. It can perform all the steps you listed, exactly to your requirements, and do them safely within a single database transaction.

You can see some examples here.

[WilliamDEdwards]

Thanks for your reply. Yep, that's the obvious solution. I created this issue to see if maybe it would be useful to natively implement this in NetBox (but as I said, I feel like this may be too dependent on specific infrastructure setups to be useful for all NetBox users).