Anyway to add pictures to the device page? We have hundreds of small sites. It would be nice if we could take a picture of the equipment and add it to the device page for the helpdesk to see what it looks like? Any suggestions.
I actually use a mediawiki for documentation and link to LibreNMS. I mean, for me having a photo of a piece of network equipment isn’t especially useful on its’ own. It’s most useful if you need to go lay hands on the switch itself, so having something documenting where it’s physically located, how it interconnects with other devices, how it can be accessed etc. is important documentation - just probably not something that one would necessarily put into librenms.
Edit: https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/MediaWiki
I was actually just plugging more information into our in-house wiki this morning. I like to think of it as my “how to” manual for this organization, it’s beautiful how it all starts to tie together. You might have a page for a building or location and have all of the equipment for that building on individual pages, network diagrams, background information on why the architecture is how it is. Off of the equipment you might have links to other equipment or which servers or end-points use a particular piece of network hardware.
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Ill check it out. THank You
Netbox is also good variant to store pictures of network devices and document network stuff. It support local storing of pictures and to various storages.
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@zombah
thanks for the tip on that one. I need to take a look at that for sure!! Here I was saying to use a media wiki when it looks like that netbox is probably a better way to skin a cat.
Netbox “custom links” feature currently integrates pretty nice with LibreNMS, so it is possible to have links on Netbox device page to LibreNMS device page and to wiki device page also if you manage to have some predictable system of wiki page names to corralate with netbox device names.
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Will look into it.
Anyway to suck in all the devices from LibrenNMS to netbox?
Both have extensive REST API all in your hands.
We use MediaWiki here too, and I’m in the process of setting up Netbox, so this is right up my alley.
Of the two, I think MediaWiki is easier to set up, and more flexible, and overall more useful.
Netbox is a “System of Truth”, meaning that you set that up with how your network should be, and any variations from that are wrong and should be fixed. It’s also designed for just that purpose, manage your network design, so don’t expect to put How-To’s in there, for example.
Adding our infrastructure to Netbox is helping me get to the very minutest detail as far as what’s connected to where, and by which. It’s a level that we might not need to be at but if we’re taking the time to do it, then we’ll damn well do it right.
So now we have 3 systems: MediaWiki for information, LibreNMS for monitoring, and Netbox for the Truth.
Netbox do say that while you can pull information from LibreNMS, you should do that only to get it setup, not as a permanent thing. If someone changes a switch port VLAN on the switch, then LNMS pulls that, and updates Netbox, and no-one knows why it doesn’t work anymore. My goal is to have equipment update from Netbox, so you change the switch port VLAN there and then it updates the switch itself.
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@Limey welcome to the forum!
I recently setup Netbox. I’m not sure that it’s worth the effort to populate with data, especially where our organization is with regards to networking and state of flux etc.
I think MediaWiki is the way to go along with LibreNMS. Netdisco is a little helpful for finding things on the network.
Thanks @Killo_RIchards!
It is a lot of effort, that’s for sure, but as we’re growing the company and the team, I’m looking to put better procedures in place for change management. I’m hoping that Netbox will be a big part of that.
Adding LibreNMS to the toolset was a big help, too. Now we don’t have to manually document e.g. switch ports in the wiki because we can look in LNMS, as long as we updated the switch!
It would be nice if there was a single system that did ::waves hands:: all of this, and I’m sure there is but I’m also sure it’s got a very nice price tag. And by nice, I mean for the person getting commission on it.
For sure wiki system is must have for various howtos,setup guides and configuration specific explations but specificly for pictures i think Netbox is better, because there you can attach pictures to devices type’s, like vendor pictures with port explanations and etc and attach rack pictures before setup and after for rack planning/documenting also inside Netbox, so it gonna be more versatile all-in-box “South of Network Truth”
Netbox looks very cool. To me, it’s a ton of work that I really don’t have any interest or time to do. I can sort of understand why populating the data shouldn’t be automated, but also I think it’s kind of dumb. I mean, if I looked at LibreNMS right now, I’ve got a fairly accurate and complete picture of what IP addresses are in use, what ports are in use, how everything connects. I should be able to export that into Netbox as a starting point…but I’m not going to spend a bunch of time trying to figure out how to get exports formatted in a way that netbox wants them to get it to ingest the data.
Netbox mostly used as source for adding devices to LibreNMS or other performance monitorings when device status changed to Active from Planned for example, like CAD or something, you plan your network there, reserve ip addresses links between devices etc etc and then do setup and configure them as planned manualy or with help of automation. And it also good to plan non active equipment like patch panels and optic ODF, when you try it’s cable trace feature after planning cable with couple odf between devices you will notice how cool it is.
I started to use netbox. As of right now I just have a link in the comments to a photo bank.
Do you guys use netbox as an IP manager? After importing ranges how can I tell what is still open?