Network Administration Visualized 4.6.0
Milestone information
- Project:
- Network Administration Visualized
- Series:
- 4.6
- Version:
- 4.6.0
- Released:
- Registrant:
- Morten Brekkevold
- Release registered:
- Active:
- No. Drivers cannot target bugs and blueprints to this milestone.
Activities
- Assigned to you:
- No blueprints or bugs assigned to you.
- Assignees:
- 6 John-Magne Bredal, 9 Morten Brekkevold
- Blueprints:
- No blueprints are targeted to this milestone.
- Bugs:
- 16 Fix Released
Download files for this release
Release notes
=======
Network Administration Visualized release notes
=======
Please report bugs at https:/
existing bug reports, go to https:/
Known problems
==============
The recommended SNMP library for use with ipdevpoll is `pynetsnmp`. If you
choose to go with the original TwistedSNMP, the latest version (0.3.13)
contains a bug that manifests in table retrieval operations. Timeouts and
retries aren't handled properly, and this may cause slow or otherwise busy
devices to be bombarded with requests from NAV. The `contrib/patches`
directory contains a patch for TwistedSNMP that solves this problem. The
patch has been submitted upstream, but not yet accepted into a new release.
NAV 4.6
========
To see the overview of scheduled features and reported bugs on the 4.6 series
of NAV, please go to https:/
Dependency changes
------------------
NAV now requires the :mod:`markdown` Python library, to ensure proper
rendering of documentation in the browseable API.
The :mod:`IPy` Python library is now required to be at least version *0.81*.
IPAM (IP Address Management)
-------
This release introduces the IP Address Management tool, sponsored by the
Norwegian University of Science and Technology (NTNU).
Inspired by the already existing Subnet Matrix tool (reachable from NAV's
Report tool), IPAM was developed to assist in IP address management tasks,
using NAV's existing IP address prefix registry.
NTNU has, like many other higher education institutions in Norway have lately,
been merged with several other institutions, vastly increasing the number of
assigned IP address blocks to manage.
Whereas the Subnet Matrix can visualize a single network scope at a time, IPAM
was built to visualize multiple scopes interactively, and to allow for the
visualization of nested scopes. The tool includes search and filtering
capabilities, including functions to search for unallocated subnets of
specificed sizes and mark them as reserved (via SeedDB).
Static routes
-------------
Along with the IPAM tool, comes the new opt-in ipdevpoll plugin
`staticroutes`. This plugin re-implements the static routes plugin from
:program:
option of a more complete IP prefix registry.
If you wish to automatically collect statically configured routes from your
routers into NAV's prefix registry, you can add this plugin to you inventory
job - or, since your static route configuration isn't likely to change very
often, configure a separate ipdevpoll job with a much larger interval (e.g. 24
hours).
Collecting a router's entire routing table via SNMP can be taxing for some
routers, which is why this plugin is not enabled by default. The plugin can
also be configured to throttle the rate at which it sends SNMP requests to
routers.
Prefix information page and usage tags
-------
A new per-prefix information page has been added, complementing the VLAN
information page.
As before, NAV will automatically collect the usage category of VLANs/subnets
based on the NTNU router port description convention, if this is employed.
Now, prefixes can be tagged with additional usage categories manually, through
the new prefix information page.
Valid usage categories are, as before, editable through SeedDB
Link aggregation support
-------
Information about any type of aggregated link discoverable through the
``IEEE8023-
A new event type, ``aggregateLink
``linkDegraded`` and ``linkRestored`` alerts has been introduced. If link is
lost on an interface known to be part of such an aggregate it will cause NAV to
generate a ``linkDegraded`` alert for the aggregated interface.
Aggregation status of ports is also displayed in each port's details page.
Multi- and fullscreen dashboards
-------
Users can now have multiple named dashboards. A default dashboard can be
selected, which will be the first dashboard loaded when browsing the NAV front
page. Any "add graph to dashboard"-type button in NAV will add widgets to your
default dashboard, and widgets can easily be moved between dashboards.
A new "Compact dashboard" mode maximizes your screen real estate, by scaling
down the content and removing the spacing between widgets, while a new
fullscreen mode takes your dashboard and browser into full screen mode, using
the browser fullscreen API.
Each dashboard is individually configured using the dashboard menu to the
right. This enables you, for instance, to have a different number of columns
for each dashboard.
New dashboard widgets
-------
New dashboard widgets are introduced:
Alert
This widget can monitor binary sensor values or arbitrary Graphite metrics
of a an otherwise boolean nature, to be used as an alert indicator. UNINETT's
use-case for this is showing the status of the server room physical security
system on the NOC screens.
PDU load
A very specific plugin to display the power load status of APC power
distribution units (these are the only PDU units currently known to be
supported by NAV) on a room-by-room basis. UNINETT's use-case for this is
planning rack placements based on power consumption.
UPS status
A graphical widget to display the inputs, outputs and status of any
NAV-supported UPS.
Rooms with active alerts
A version of the status widget that aggregates and summarizes alerts by
room.
Hierarchical locations
-------
Hierarchies of locations can now be defined. SeedDB will now present locations
as a tree of entries, and parent locations can be selected from a dropdown
when adding a new location.
Selecting a location for a maintenance task, will implicitly include its full
sub-hierarchy of locations, as will filtering on locations in the status tool.
Location hierarchies are not yet respected by alert profiles and the Netmap.
Please note that the bulk import format for locations has changed to include the
parent location as the second field. Both the ``parent`` and the ``description``
fields are now optional. This makes it consistent with how organizations are
imported.
Business reports
----------------
A new "Business reports" tool was added. This tool is meant for more complex
reports than the pure SQL tabular reports NAV already sports. Each report must
be implemented as Python code.
Currently, two reports are implemented: A monthly device availability report
(with selectable months), and a monthly link availability report (with
selectable months). Both reports are based on NAV's alert history.
Juniper EX switch series workaround
-------
If you have Juniper EX switches, you may be interested in the new
``juniperdot1q`` :program:
``dot1q`` plugin.
Juniper's implementation of ``Q-BRIDGE-MIB`` (the main MIB module used to
retrieve information about 802.1Q VLAN configuration) has multiple bugs,
several of which Juniper will not admit are bugs. The main issue for any NMS
using this MIB to get VLAN information is that parts of their implementation
uses opaque, internal VLAN IDs instead of public VLAN tags.
You may already have seen that the VLANs NAV has discovered on your EX
switches seem wrong. This is due to that implementation bug. The
``juniperdot1q`` plugin will use a Juniper proprietary MIB, if supported by
the device, to translate internal VLAN ids to public VLAN tags.
This functionality was implemented as a separate plugin, due to the pernicious
nature of the Juniper bugs. If you wish to test the plugin, simple replace the
reference to the ``dot1q`` plugin with ``juniperdot1q`` in the
:file:`
navuser command line
-------
A new command line program, :program:`navuser`, has been introduced. This
program provides some simple means of manipulating NAV (web) accounts from the
command line, which can be useful from a configuration management perspective.
