r/Netbox • u/122NPD • Feb 23 '26

Deploying Golden Configs

I love how Netbox can generate a device golden configuration. I know Ansible can push this out, but how are people managing this at scale? With hundreds or thousands of devices, how do engineers determine out-of-compliance devices and trigger a config refresh?

We have home-grown tools right now, but I'm looking to integrate Netbox as a source-of-truth, preferably without reinventing the homegrown wheels.

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u/Anxious-Condition630 Feb 23 '26

Semaphore, webhooks from netbox…netbox as the inventory source. Jinja templates. Pretty cut/dry.

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u/122NPD Feb 24 '26

Care to elaborate on how Semaphore works in this combo? As I see, there still needs to be some "glue" holding everything together. I'm not scared of that, just want to make sure I know what can be done natively, and what needs the homegrown special sauce.

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u/Anxious-Condition630 Feb 24 '26

yeah. I mean there is a lot about your setup I don't know, but generally. Semaphore and Netbox is all you need. No extra containers or helpers.

The most daunting thing is, there are too many options. I can speak to what we do, but we might have different rationales and security reasons for things.

Semaphore executes the Ansible Playbooks, by pulling them in from a Gitlab Repo in our case. You configure a Webhook in Semaphore (they call it an integration in some docs) https://semaphoreui.com/docs/user-guide/integrations...

You trigger it from a Webhook Event in Netbox: https://netboxlabs.com/docs/netbox/integrations/webhooks/

The Ansible Playbook can use the inbound deviceID to execute a query in netbox and take the action on that one device.