Skip to main content

IP Fabric adapter

What is IP Fabric?​

The IP Fabric network infrastructure management platform provides on-demand network discovery, advanced analytics, and in-depth engineering visibility.

Its lightweight discovery capabilities (via SSH or Telnet) quickly detect the current network state, including detailed data for each address and port.

A network model of gathered data reconstructs the topologies for each switching and routing protocol, enabling cross-technology analysis of upstream and downstream relationships.

Dependencies and dependents are calculated for each network element, allowing analysis to represent each aspect of the network in the context of productivity impact on downstream hosts and network devices. The immediate productivity impact of performance and capacity is also calculated for each user and every element.

Sync direction​

IP Fabric → Infrahub

note

Currently, the IP Fabric adapter supports only one-way synchronization from IP Fabric to Infrahub.
Syncing data back into IP Fabric is not yet supported.

Although IP Fabric data cannot be edited, additional information such as Device Attributes and Site Separation rules can be updated from Infrahub data.

Schema​

Our infrahub repository contains an example schema that serves as a starting point for syncing IP Fabric data into Infrahub.
This schema follows best practices for Infrahub, but it does not map the IP Fabric data model one-to-one since Infrahub may have additional use cases.

Schemahttps://github.com/opsmill/infrahub/blob/stable/models/examples/ipfabric/ipfabric.yml

Installing the example schema​

To install the example schema into Infrahub, follow these steps:

mkdir ipfabric-sync
cd ipfabric-sync
curl -o schema.yml https://raw.githubusercontent.com/opsmill/infrahub/refs/heads/stable/models/examples/ipfabric/ipfabric.yml
infrahubctl schema load schema.yml

Configuration​

infrahub-sync allows defining what gets synchronized from a source to a destination. Included in the examples is a config.yml file that matches the example schema.

config.ymlhttps://github.com/opsmill/infrahub-sync/blob/main/examples/ipfabric_to_infrahub/config.yml

To download the example config.yml

curl https://raw.githubusercontent.com/opsmill/infrahub-sync/refs/heads/main/examples/ipfabric_to_infrahub/config.yml > config.yml

Configuration parameters​

The source.name is set to ipfabricsync, instructing infrahub-sync to use the IP Fabric adapter.

The settings dictionary is passed directly to the IP Fabric Python SDK for authentication and connection details. Some of these parameters can be found in the IP Fabric SDK Docs.

Below is a snippet from the example config.yml file:

---
name: from-ipfabric
source:
  name: ipfabricsync
  settings:
    base_url: "https://<IPFABRIC-ENDPOINT>"
    auth: "<TOKEN>"

Schema mapping​

The configuration file allows mapping tables from IP Fabric into Infrahub models. Below is an example showing how to:

  • Set the destination model (InfraDevice)
  • Map source data from IP Fabric’s tables/inventory/devices
  • Specify field mappings between IP Fabric and Infrahub models
schema_mapping:
  - name: InfraDevice
    identifiers: ["hostname"]
    mapping: tables/inventory/devices
    fields:
      - name: hostname
        mapping: hostname
      - name: serial_number
        mapping: sn
      - name: hardware_serial_number
        mapping: snHw
      - name: fqdn
        mapping: fqdn
      - name: model
        mapping: model
        reference: TemplateDeviceType
      - name: location
        mapping: siteName
        reference: LocationGeneric
      - name: platform
        mapping: platform
        reference: InfraPlatform
      - name: version
        mapping: version
        reference: InfraNOSVersion

This configuration specifies:

  • The destination model is InfraDevice.
  • The source table being synced from IP Fabric is tables/inventory/devices.
  • The table URI can be found by selecting Table Description in any IP Fabric table and copying everything after the version in the URL description.

For more details, refer to the IP Fabric API Docs.

Important notes​

  • The name key in the destination model corresponds to the Infrahub attribute.
  • The mapping key in the destination model corresponds to the key in the IP Fabric payload to use.
  • If reference is used, it links to a model that has been synchronized prior to this model.

Generating the models​

infrahub-sync relies on additional Python files, but these can be generated automatically from config.yml.

To generate the necessary models, run:

infrahub-sync generate --name from-ipfabric --directory ipfabric-sync

Running the sync​

To synchronize data from IP Fabric to Infrahub, use the following command:

infrahub-sync sync --name from-ipfabric --directory ipfabric-sync