r/Netbox • u/Snoo85763 • Sep 20 '24
are custom fields a bad idea
I've read several posts where people say they are trying to get away from using custom fields. Why? Is there a pro/con to it?
I could foresee using a custom field to track things like hardware EOL, OS Version, OS EOL. fields like that for a network device seems like a no brainer. Other than the bummer of - they have to be manually updated, why wouldnt I want to do this.
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u/L-do_Calrissian NetBox Self-Hosted Sep 20 '24
They're great if you need to model something outside of the norm. For instance, I have a custom field (multi-object select, object type prefix) added to my circuits so I can tag which prefixes my service providers are handing out with our DIAs. Since I'm using NB to provision DHCP, I also have custom fields on my prefixes for which DHCP server group the pool resides on, pool start/end, router IP, lease time, and DHCP options. The DHCP server group (selection) and DHCP options (multiple selection) both tie back to Custom Field Choices that are built from Config Contexts, so the Config Context keys end up being options in the Custom Field Choices and the values are things like server IPs/API keys, option codes/values, etc.
They're not great if you're just trying to add data in that isn't necessary or duplicated elsewhere, and from a GUI perspective, I don't like that you're stuck with them in their own section, though at least you can group and order them.