Serial Numbers

IP Fabric uses the serial number field as a key in its tables for a device. In some cases, the same serial number may be required to be used for multiple elements (for example, clusters, stacks or virtualized platforms).

Thus, the serial number is manipulated by IP Fabric in some way - anything from a virtual context name to a simple _1 might be added.

This makes it potentially more difficult to match the serial number with other platforms outside IP Fabric.

To work around the issue, we did the following in version 3.7.0:

• renamed the previous Serial Number column in the Device Inventory table (in Inventory → Devices) to Unique serial number (including virtualization unique identifier such as context, VSYS, VDC etc.)
• introduced a new Serial Number column (containing real serial numbers as reported by devices themselves)

By default, only the new Serial Number column (with serial numbers as captured on devices / as seen on other platforms) is shown in the Device Inventory table:

The Unique serial number column can be additionally enabled (click ... in the top-right corner of the table and select Display settings):

As expected, some devices have different values in their Unique serial number and Serial Number columns:

Info

In the API, these columns are defined in the request body as:

{
  "columns": [
    "sn",
    "snHw"
  ]
}

where sn is the Unique serial number field and snHw is the Serial Number field.