Adding a New Device to Nautobot

Nautobot is the Source of Truth (SoT) aggregation layer that has been chosen. In this section, you will review how to create a new Device in Nautobot and the dependencies that need to be satisfied to accomplish this task.

How to add a new device to Nautobot

First, you will review the necessary dependencies on multiple levels in order to create a Nautobot device. Then you will review three methods to execute this task:

1. Using the web UI.
2. Using the Nautobot Ansible Collections.
3. Using API calls.

Dependencies

There are three levels of dependencies that affect the creation of a Nautobot device. These dependencies align with the goal of Nautobot to represent real world devices with the required characteristics:

First level:

• Site: A device has a physical location, therefore a Site object is required to represent this location. Sites depend on the nature of your organization, for example a site for a bank may be a branch.
• Device Type: A device has a specific model, therefore a DeviceType object needs to be created to characterize it. Once a device type is added to the device, its default components such as console ports, power ports, and interfaces will be assigned to it.
• Device Role: A DeviceRole object indicates the function of a device within an organization, whether it operates as a core/distribution/access switch, router, firewall etc. It is a first level dependency since a device always has a specific purpose.

Second level:

• Site
  • name: To create a Site a unique name needs to be provided as a string.
  • slug: A slug string is required to standardize how the name is referenced.
• Device Type
  • Manufacturer: A Manufacturer object, i.e., the "make" of a device, needs to be assigned to each DeviceType.
  • model: The model is a unique name provided as a string.
  • slug: A slug string is required to standardize how the name is referenced.
• Device Role
  • name: The unique name of the role needs to be provided as a string.
  • slug: A slug string is required to standardize how the name is referenced.

Third level:

• Manufacturer
  • name: To create a Manufacturer object you need to provide a name as a string.
  • slug: A slug string is required to standardize how the name is referenced.

Next, you will review three different ways to satisfy these dependencies.

Using the Web Interface

NTCU - SKIP

Using Ansible

There is a rich set of Ansible Collections for Nautobot that can perform all the above operations programmatically:

1. Create a Site:

   Below we show an example with Sites corresponding to states.

   - name: "Test Nautobot site module"
     connection: local
     hosts: localhost
     gather_facts: False
     tasks:
       - name: Create site within Nautobot with only required information
         networktocode.nautobot.site:
           url: http://nautobot.local
           token: thisIsMyToken
           name: Test - Colorado
           status: active
           state: present
   

2. Create a Device Type & Manufacturer:

   A set of random manufacturers with name Test Manufacturer is created and then a set of test device types, with model DEV-01. Each name string has two digits concatenated at the end.

       - name: Create manufacturer within Nautobot with only required information
         networktocode.nautobot.manufacturer:
           url: http://nautobot.local
           token: thisIsMyToken
           name: Test Manufacturer
           state: present
   
     - name: Create device type within Nautobot with only required information
       networktocode.nautobot.device_type:
         url: http://nautobot.local
         token: thisIsMyToken
         slug: test-device-type
         model: DEV-01
         manufacturer: Test Manufacturer
         state: present
   

3. Create a Device Role:

   Device roles are created from a list of device roles in the example below.

   - name: Create device role within Nautobot with only required information
     networktocode.nautobot.device_role:
       url: http://nautobot.local
       token: thisIsMyToken
       name: Test device role
       color: FFFFFF
       state: present
   

4. Create a Device:

   Finally, a device is created with the role, site, and type previously created.

   - name: Create device within Nautobot with only required information
     networktocode.nautobot.device:
       url: http://nautobot.local
       token: thisIsMyToken
       name: Test Device
       device_type: test-device-type
       device_role: Test device role
       site: Test - Colorado
       status: active
       state: present