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Install NetBox

Introduction

This guide details how to deploy a new instance of NetBox. For guidance on upgrading NetBox, please refer to this Upgrade NetBox.

NetBox is installed from the public GitHub repository according to the version set in Semaphore (or proposed during an upgrade). Netos has not forked NetBox. Any customizations made by Netos are optional and controlled from within the NETOS view in the NetBox project in Semaphore.

Configuration Guide

1. Configure the Semaphore Environment

You can set the SUPER_USER username, email, and password in the NetBox Global Settings environment settings, or just use the defaults for testing: 

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Please don't change the install directory from /opt/netbox as it is hard coded in configuration files and variables.

There is a bug in Ansible Semaphore that requires you to delete and recreate the secret value. Save doesn't work.

2. Deploy NGINX and the Cert

Refer to the following guide Deploying NGINX & Certificates for a detailed guide on deploying NGINX and certs. Once you've deployed, you'll see a screen like this and should be able to connect to a URL like https://uk-lab-nb05-netbox.core.netos.io.

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You need to deploy NGINX because it configures the webserver to mount alias /opt/netbox/netbox/static/; correctly to avoid the Static Media Failure error.

3. Install NetBox

We have included pre-defined NetBox templates (which will be updated from time-to-time), for example, you can just click play on the Semaphore template to deploy NetBox v3.7.8 or v4.0.11.

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If you want to install a custom version of NetBox, you can do so by editing the tags in the Semaphore Template. For example, change --tags=X.X.X to --tags=3.6.5. This feature is useful for a migration, for example, if you wanted to migrate from a legacy NetBox instance, you could take a backup and Restore, then Upgrade.

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Note that the netbox-deploy.yml Ansible playbook has logic that matches the tags referenced in Semaphore. The tags must be set for this playbook to execute. The tags are used to set variables which are passed to the netbox-deploy Ansible role.

- hosts: 127.0.0.1
  connection: local
  become: yes
  vars_files:
    - ./vars/env-netbox-settings.yml

  tasks:
    - name: Set NetBox release version to v4.1.1
      set_fact:
        NETBOX_RELEASE: 4.1.1
      tags: 4.1.0

    - name: Set NetBox release version to v4.1.0
      set_fact:
        NETBOX_RELEASE: 4.1.0
      tags: 4.1.0

4. Connect to NetBox

Once you've deployed NetBox you can connect to the application based on the NETBOX_HOSTNAME and DOMAIN variables configured in the NetBox Global Setting environment.

Check the Users, Accounts, and Tokens guide for full details on account and passwords. The default credentials are as follows:

  • Username: admin
  • Password: ohp8toef7Jee
a. NetBox 3.7.8

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b. NetBox 4.0.11

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Thoughts About Docker

We (Netos) used and tested the NetBox Docker image for over 6 months. When we started to load test to simulate a large production enterprise environment, we experienced stability issues, especially when hitting the API hard, and also had to make a number of changes to the Docker NGINX configuration.

Others may have had success; however, we were unable to achieve stability (outside of development environments) with NetBox in Docker. The playbooks here install NetBox natively on the Linux operating system, and we've had no issues whatsoever.

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