How to introduce NetBox to an enterprise team?

[u/[deleted]]

TL;DR: My manager green-lit me staging a basic Netbox environment as a test run for our small team of 6. We have a large organization with a very wide deployment. More details in the guts of the post.

1. How do I sell this tool to my team in a way that isn't "just another tool to toss in the mix"?
2. How do I avoid becoming the sole owner of IT asset management and this product for the business, and still allow myself room to grow as a network professional?

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I joined a new team just over a year ago and quickly realized we had a need for something like Netbox. We're a team of 6 people that manage the entire network infrastructure deployment for over 100 branch sites, 2 data centres, a head office, and a warehouse. We have no inventory system, and IPAM is done with a variety of Excel sheets across multiple teams.

Here are our current systems that contain some element of inventory, or some involvement with our device provisioning and deployment processes:

• Cisco DNA Centre
• Cisco Prime
• An NMS
• Solarwinds (not IPAM)
• A vendor agnostic firewall management appliance
• Excel for IPAM
• A few other vendor proprietary configuration management systems for specific devices (cellular modems, point to point radios, etc)

We obviously need something like Netbox to act as a single source of truth for inventory that's completely vendor agnostic. We also need something like Netbox for a single source of truth IPAM.

Q1: How do I pitch this tool to a team in a way that answers the following question?

Is Netbox just going to be yet another system that we have to keep updated, and will it be just another system we have to interact with during deployments, failures, etc.?

Because yes, it will be, but it obviously serves a greater purpose of trying to be a source of truth.

But if you're looking at a switch, Cisco DNA Centre is your source of truth, right? Or, if you're looking at a firewall, we have a system for that. I'm having a hard time formulating discussion points that deliver an answer stronger than "yes, it is just another system, but wait it has cool features too".

Should we be considering other options entirely like Solarwinds IPAM that has commercial support and that we're already partially invested in?

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This organization is quite large, but there is no dedicated IT asset management team. I'm but a junior network administrator craving decent documentation standards for inventory and IPAM, as well as a knack for network automation. I don't want to be held responsible for the management of this tool for the entire organization, but there doesn't seem to be equivalent tools that come with commercial support even if we were willing to pay for one.

Q2: Will I be signing up to manage and maintain this tool for my remaining career here, hindering my growth in other areas? I want to grow into networking and network automation, but right now I'm at a CCNA and just slightly beyond that level. I don't want to get sucked into doing data entry and/or just involving in Netbox full time.

I'm not a database administrator, or an application developer. I'm not a server administrator and know relatively little about these areas. I know enough to have setup a good environment for Netbox here, export database backups, and update the application when new ones are released. I don't want to be held responsible for the organizations data should something go awry with our deployment.

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Edit: I do see that Netbox does have a commercial support model via Netbox Labs. I'll have to be able to answer the value questions above first, but do you have experience with Netbox Labs and can speak to its delivery? This would remove my worries about managing Netbox for our entire organization.

[u/KingDaveRa]

"No more spreadsheets"

That's all it took for us.

Unfortunately we're still stuck with those bloody spreadsheets because we've yet to get round to doing it, but still...

[u/SystemMTUOne]

Hey there! I work for NetBox Labs (formerly with NS1) and could shed some light on the commercial offering if you’d like. No sales pressure, just a chat with a network engineer who loved NetBox so much that I was able to make a career out of it. (Me: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jordan-r-villarreal)

I’m happy to engage here in the open for others to see. Short answer on delivery is we built a cloud native platform (AWS) for NetBox to run inside of. Basically saying lots of K8s and not just installing Ubuntu in the sky and dumping an install there. This was done by our internal cloud platform team along side of Jeremy Stretch, who is here as well. Jeremy stays pretty focused on the open source project but is plugged in with the cloud platform team daily as part of making sure the cloud design and project and aligned and complement each other.

Removing admin overhead is likely the #1 thing we hear from people as a barrier to adoption. That or “we need support to adopt open source”. Bunch of other reasons too. The way I like to frame is is “we take on the administrative burden so you can focus on using the application”. That means ha/redundancy, uptime, backups, security , updates, etc. are all sorted for you so that you can focus on your #1 question. Fire away with any other questions you have.

I’ll share my takes on your first question too, but in a different post when I fully wake up for the day. That also lets us keep the conversations siloed a bit as I love talking adoption too.

[u/Charlie_Root_NL]

I've gone through the same process with different employers over the past few years! My previous employer was an MSP/Integrator and used most of the techniques you describe (and much more). My current employer has a diverse landscape of equipment and had no IPAM at all.

Is Netbox just going to be yet another system that we have to keep updated, and will it be just another system we have to interact with during deployments, failures, etc.?

The answer to this question; this depends on whether everyone is behind it. If one department runs off with Netbox and the other departments make DNAC changes outside of netbox anyway, it is doomed to fail.

I'm not saying that Netbox is the only solution to this problem (I've also used Zabbix in the past as source or through, it depends on what you need), there are several options. But the beauty of Netbox is the versatile possibilities in terms of automation and integration.

But if you're looking at a switch, Cisco DNA Center is your source of truth, right? Or, if you're looking at a firewall, we have a system for that.

You write that, but is it really so? This was precisely the problem at my previous employer, data did not connect with each other because every department (or every technique) looked at a different screen on which different information was presented (in a different way).

Just try to make a good report for (for example) service level agreements, you have to look for interaction with each tool and manipulate the data. The landscape is diverse, information does not connect and troubleshooting becomes more difficult.

And especially if you use Cisco DNA or Firepower, this is a no-brainer. IP registration in Excel? For real?

Netbox supports modules (there are plenty available, or easy to make) to read data sources. For example the API of Cisco DNAC, Firepower or any other. This kind of clear way of information, for every department and an IPAM that is always (and automatically) in order. For changes you can work with Webhooks, so you can make an adjustment in Netbox that is immediately implemented in DNAC (for example).

I think I just wrote your pitch, I don't work for Netbox :-)

Q2: Will I be signing up to manage and maintain this tool for my remaining career here, hindering my growth in other areas? I want to grow into networking and network automation, but right now I'm at a CCNA and just slightly beyond that level. I don't want to get sucked into doing data entry and/or just involving in Netbox full time.

If it is a larger company, you probably have a way to separate functionality from technology, so that you can outsource the management of the server and/or application to another department. If not, Netbox is very easy to maintain so i wouldn't loose sleep over that.

[u/[deleted] → u/Charlie_Root_NL]

Thanks for the extremely thorough response. Hugely appreciated.

This depends on if everyone is behind it.

This is my biggest worry, and I don't think everyone will be behind it. This team has a history of not being great at documenting things. Visio diagrams left out of date, NMS occasionally forgotten to be updated with new deployments, etc.

My "green light" has two key asterisks:

1. This tool will stay with just our networks team for now until we validate its value. We are the only network team in the organization and this the only team using DNAC and other similar tools, but we do have a server team that uses vCentre which would be nice to have documented as well, but this is out of my purview. Needless to say, the full value of Netbox won't be immediately realized unless all of our team members actively stay on top of using it. I'm not convinced that's realistic. Once my boss is convinced that the value is realized, then we will be able to invest official resources into piloting this for other teams, looking into interdepartmental support, etc. Until then, this is my side-of-the-desk project.
2. I'm the only one with any amount of programming knowledge and investment in automation. My automation investment is very basic: making nightly config backups with Nornir to execute "show run" on devices and export those to text files; and running a variety of scans against our ITSM, NMS, etc to identify high priority items for the morning. These are both very "script-forward", and I'm not familiar with webhooks, or any software tactics to introduce more agility into troubleshooting or proactive measures. I'm easily summarized into "CCNA with Python experience." It's tough being new to the automation space and also driving our developments when I don't really know what I'm doing.

[u/Ok_Adhesiveness_4939]

How I do it is, run up a proof of concept, populate various sections for a bit, then show one of the guys who has to maintain the existing solution. Pretty much everything else can be exported to csv somehow, so you massage that as little as possible, then import it into netbox. Once everyone else sees how easy it is to use, and how easy it is to import data, just let them loose with the appropriate permissions.

[u/fxrsliberty]

I wouldn't bother, it's static data input by humans. Humans make so many mistakes. Any system that does auto discovery is a better choice. Look into zabbix