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Resource manager

In Infrahub a resource manager is responsible for allocating resources out of a resource pool.

Examples:

  • allocating the next available IP Prefix out of a IP Prefix pool
  • allocating the next available IP addresses out of a IP Address pool
  • allocating the next available VLAN ID out of a pool of valid VLAN ID's
  • allocating the next available device ID out of a pool of valid Device ID's

A resource manager in Infrahub allocates resources in a branch agnostic way. When you allocate a resource out of a pool in a branch, then that allocation happens in all the branches.

Depending on how you use the resource manager, it can allocate resources in an idempotent way. This is helpful when you want to use generators that have to behave in an idempotent way.

Resources can be allocated in 2 different ways:

  • Direct allocation: A direct allocation is typically used when you don't need the resource to be related to another node in Infrahub, or if you want establish such a relation at a later time. For example, you want to allocated an IP address out of a pool that is not going to be linked to another node in Infrahub.
  • Relationship resource allocation: A resource can be allocated to a relationship of a node, when you create a new node. For example, when you want to create a device and assign an IP address out of a pool to an interface at device creation time.

Known limitations​

  • We only support resource pools for IP Prefixes and IP Addresses, support for other resource pools will come in future releases
  • Direct resource allocations can only happen from the GraphQL API or the Python SDK, support for allocating resources in the web UI will come in a future release.