Overview

Network config tracker is a tool that monitors the configuration changes of your network devices using a gitlab repository. This tool requires integration to the following applications:

• Gitlab which is used for storing the network devices configuration and to monitor the configuration changes.
• NetBox which is used for maintaining the list of network devices to be monitored for configuration changes.

Documentation

Please refer to this link for the documentation.

Support Matrix

List of supported network device platforms and NetBox parameter configuration.

Parameters	Cisco IOS	Cisco IOS-XR	Cisco NXOS	Juniper JunOS
NetBox Platform	Cisco IOS	Cisco IOS-XR	Cisco NXOS	Juniper JunOS
NetBox Status	Active	Active	Active	Active
NetBox Primary IPv4	True	True	True	True
Login Method	SSH	SSH	SSH | NX-API	SSH

Tested working on:

Application	Version
Python	3.9
NetBox	3.4.7
GitLab	14.1.0

Installation

1. Clone this repository and create a virtual environment.

git clone https://github.com/kagarcia1618/Network-Config-Tracker.git
cd network-config-tracker
python3.9 -m venv venv
source venv/bin/activate

2. Install the requirements.

pip install -r requirements.txt

3. Create a new directory named private inside the cloned git repository directory.

mkdir private

4. Prepare the following parameter details:

   • Username - to be used to access and get the running configuration of the network devices.

   admin
   

   • Password - to be used to access and get the running configuration of the network devices.

   password
   

   • NetBox URL - to be used identify the location of local netbox installation.

   https://<hostname | ipv4 address>
   

   • NetBox API Token - to be used to access the NetBox URL API and get the list of network devices to be monitored.

   <api token>
   

   • Gitlab URL - to be used identify the location of local gitlab installation.

   https://<hostname | ipv4 address>
   

   • Gitlab Project Name - to be used to store and monitor the network devices running configuration.

   kenneth/dev-config/tracker
   

   Note: New folder named configs will be created inside the gitlab project for storing the devices running configuration.

   • Gitlab Project API Token - to be used to access the gitlab project via API.

   <api token>
   

5. Generate the encrypted device and application credentials by running credentials.py python script. The script will generate your secret key in the private folder together with the encrypted text file for device and application login access.

python credentials.py

6. Create a custom field named Last Config Change with date as type and assign it to dcim | device. This will be used by this tool to update the last recorded configuration change for a device.

   Note: This tool will also update the device status in Netbox based on the result of fetching the device running configuration from the actual device.

Usage

1. Execute the config-tracker.py python script.

   python config-tracker.py
   

   Note: If you are using linux environment, you may configure a cronjob to regularly execute this job on your preferred time interval. Sample script below will execute the script every 10 minutes and store output logs to a text file.

   crontab -e
   */10 * * * * cd ~/network-config-tracker/ && venv/bin/python config-tracker.py  >> logs/access_logs.txt