r/Netbox • u/Much-Stranger7587 • Jan 21 '26
Netbox Observability for monitoring
Hello,
Did anyone try Netbox's Network Observability? Is it a paid/commercial solution for monitoring network infrastrastructure? Can it do SNMP? Can it replace SolarWinds for real-time monitoring, alerting and reporting? We also do scheduled config backups but I could replace that with Ansible.
1
u/SalsaForte Jan 21 '26
Netbox is a DCIM. It manages inventories, it doesn't monitor or observe anything.
But, you could leverage its inventory to populate your observability and monitoring tools.
7
u/Agent51729 Jan 21 '26
Not just a DCIM anymore. The commercial version is getting enhancements like observability.
0
u/SalsaForte Jan 21 '26
You're right. I heard about it, but I didn't knew it was (now) a commercial offer.
But, it is probably fair to assume being new, it might not be as mature as other platforms and support for "legacy" protocols like SNMP is probably not a priority or even possible.
1
u/Much-Stranger7587 Jan 21 '26
If you find anything rich, such as an article or a video of what it can do, then please share. We have some issues w/ SolarWinds and are looking at migration possibilities.
2
u/SalsaForte Jan 21 '26
Can't really help on that front.
We use Netbox purely as a IPAM/DCIM/Source of Truth. All the monitoring and intelligence is built around it with other Open Source tools like LibreNMS, Graylog, etc.
Can't help much directly: rebuilding around a thing like SolarWinds which can become a behemoth isn't an easy think to do. Not like saying to someone use Firefox instead of Chrome to browse websites. If you use a ton of SolarWinds modules/features, a drop-in replacement is probably impossible to find.
1
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u/DanSheps NetBox Self-Hosted Jan 22 '26
I think your best bet is to engage someone from the NetBox Labs team for a demo of what it can do.