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NetBox Plugin Ideas

Propose and vote for your most-wanted NetBox plugins!

Status Completed
Categories Visualization
Created by Jeremy Stretch
Created on May 15, 2023

DC floor plan display & management

Create and display datacenter floor plans, comprising racks as well as other common objects, such as air handler, power equipment, and support structures. The floorplan should render as a two-dimensional grid, showing the position, orientation, name, and facility ID of each rack. Drag-and-drop repositioning would be ideal but not necessary if racks can be arranged by grid ID.

Further functional criteria:

  • Floor plans should be scoped by site or location.

  • The size of reach floor plan should be configurable (grid height & width).

  • The floor plan should include a directional compass indicating real world orientation.

  • The floor plan should include a scale. (A fixed scale ratio is probably sufficient.)

  • Controls should be provided to move and rotate individual racks on the floor plan.

Use case

This would enable users to document and manage datacenter floor plans natively in NetBox.

Open items

Further research into candidate UI libraries for this is needed.

Bounty Tier $2000
Bounty Sponsor NetBox Labs
  • Attach files
  • Jeremy Stretch
    Reply
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    Sep 5, 2023

    Congratulations to Tony Nealon for implementing this idea! Check out his netbox_floorplan plugin on GitHub. As promised, Tony has been awarded the $2,000 USD bounty for his work.

  • Benjamin Burgschat
    Reply
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    Aug 29, 2023

    The status is set to "in development". Our company needs such a plugin, and we currently have the plan to develop a very minimal, rather static plugin to keep our initial effort low and because our Javascript know-how is not particularly large. But we can also imagine to support this plugin.

    Is there a possibility to participate and a more detailed status of the development?

  • Jeremy Stretch
    Reply
    |
    Jun 28, 2023

    A bounty has been offered for the implementation of this idea by NetBox Labs!

    Summary

    This plugin should provide a graphical representation of a datacenter floor plan, illustrating the position and orientation of individual racks that are managed in NetBox. It should also display ancillary objects such as structural columns, cage fencing, and miscellaneous equipment to accurately depict the real world environment.

    Criteria

    • Floor plans can represent the following object types:

      • Racks

      • Free-standing devices

      • Walls/fencing

      • Columns/blocked area

    • Racks and devices must link to their corresponding NetBox objects.

    • A floor plan must have a configurable height and width corresponding to a scale.

    • A floor plan must be assigned to a site.

    • The X and Y coordinates, height and width, and orientation must be stored for each object appearing on a floor plan.

    • Users can reposition objects on a floor plan by clicking and dragging.

      • Objects must “snap” to a common grid to aid in the alignment of objects with one another.

    • Users can rotate objects on a floor plan in 45-degree increments using mouse and/or keyboard controls.

    • Arbitrary areas of the plan can optionally be designated as hot or cold space.

    • The ability to create, modify, and delete floor plans can be controlled using NetBox’s native permissions management system.

    • Maps must have the ability to be rendered/exported as SVG images.

    • Any external libraries on which the plugin depends must be licensed under a qualifying open source license.



  • Martin
    Reply
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    Jun 1, 2023

    Why totally reinvent the wheel?

    Maybe just use the OSM-Indoor-Model ( https://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Indoor_Mapping ) which provides a lot of tools already (and has nice and shiny rendering/export functions)