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Define Sources

Sources are a key part of the plugin, they are used to define the connection to IP Fabric. Once configured, sources will be used by background tasks to synchronize data from IP Fabric to NetBox. Multiple sources can be configured if multiple IP Fabric instances are being used such as a production and development instance.

Prerequisites

Before creating a source, make sure you have the following information:

Parameters

Field Description Type
Name Name of the source CharField
Type Local or Remote Collection CharField
URL IP Fabric URL CharField
API Token IP Fabric API Token CharField
Verify Validate HTTPS Certificate (use false if using a self-signed certificate) Boolean
Description Description for the source CharField
Comments Provide additional comments for the source CharField
Tags Apply tags to the source ForeignKey

Info

If your IP Fabric instance is using a self-signed certificate, you need to unset the Verify field. This will disable the validation of the certificate. Currently, there is no way to validate custom certificates, we are working on that.

Creating a Source

To create a source, navigate to Plugins → IP Fabric → Sources → [ + ]. In our case, the source is set to Local. If type is set to Remote, data for the snapshots will need to be pushed via API. The API endpoint to do this can be seen in the NetBox OpenAPI spec.

Create Source

Syncing a Source

Once a source has been added to NetBox, it does not mean that data will be synchronized. NetBox does not know what snapshots to synchronize from IP Fabric. So first the snapshots must be synchronized.

Navigate to your source and click the Sync button. This will create a background task to synchronize the snapshots from IP Fabric.

Sync Source

Once the synchronization has completed, you will see the number of snapshots shown within the Related Objects section.

Source Snapshots

Snapshots

Clicking through to the snapshots will show you all the snapshots that have been synchronized from IP Fabric into NetBox. There will be one snapshot created with the snapshot_id of $last, this is IP Fabric’s way of getting information from the API for the latest snapshot.

Snapshots

Each snapshot will show the following information:

  • IP Fabric Version (e.g. 7.0.15)
  • Status (e.g. Loaded, Unloaded)
  • Site Count (e.g. 1)
  • Sites (e.g. Site1, Site2)
  • Device Count (e.g. 10)
  • Interface Count (e.g. 20)
  • Note (e.g. Note1)

This information is used when creating a sync to determine the snapshot and site to synchronize from IP Fabric to NetBox. This page also contains the raw JSON for the snapshot that is returned via the IP Fabric API.