netbox-plugin-prometheus-sd

Provide Prometheus http_sd compatible API Endpoint with data from Netbox.

HTTP SD is a feature since Prometheus 2.28.0 that allows hosts to be found via a URL instead of just files. This plugin implements API endpoints in Netbox to make devices, services, IPs and virtual machines available to Prometheus.

Compatibility

We aim to support the latest major versions of Netbox. For now we support Netbox >= 3.3 including bugfix versions.

Check the .github/workflows/ci.yml pipeline for the current tested builds. Other versions may work, but we do not test them explicitly. All relevant target versions are tested in CI.

Installation

The plugin is available as a Python package in pypi and can be installed with pip

pip install netbox-plugin-prometheus-sd

Enable the plugin in /opt/netbox/netbox/netbox/configuration.py:

    PLUGINS = ['netbox_prometheus_sd']

The plugin has not further plugin configuration.

Usage

The plugin only provides a new API endpoint on the Netbox API. There is no further action required after installation.

API

The plugin reuses Netbox API view sets with new serializers for Prometheus. This means that all filters that can be used on the Netbox API can also be used to filter Prometheus targets. Paging is disabled because Prometheus does not support paged results.

The plugin also reuses the Netbox authentication and permission model. Depending on the Netbox configuration, a token with valid object permissions must be passed to Netbox.

GET        /api/plugins/prometheus-sd/devices/              Get a list of devices in a prometheus compatible format
GET        /api/plugins/prometheus-sd/virtual-machines/     Get a list of vms in a prometheus compatible format
GET        /api/plugins/prometheus-sd/services/             Get a list of services in a prometheus compatible format
GET        /api/plugins/prometheus-sd/ip-addresses/         Get a list of ip in a prometheus compatible format

Extended services filters

Apart from standard Netbox filters, services endpoint also supports tenant=<slug> or tenant_id=<id> parameters. The lookup is only executed against the tenant attribute of the object associated with the service.

Config context

The plugin can also discover extra config to inject in the HTTP SD JSON from the config context of the devices/virtual machines. If you have a prometheus-plugin-prometheus-sd entry in your config context with the following schema it will be automatically picked up:

prometheus-plugin-prometheus-sd:
  - metrics_path: /not/metrics
    port: 4242
    scheme: https
  - port: 4243

This allow you to configure those values directly into netbox instead of doing that inside the Prometheus config and filtering each scenario by a specific tag for instance.

If there is only one entry you can also use this form:

prometheus-plugin-prometheus-sd:
  metrics_path: /not/metrics
  port: 4242
  scheme: https

Example

A working example on how to use this plugin with Prometheus is located at the example folder. Netbox content is created by using Netbox docker initializers.

The demo data doesn't make sense, but they are good enough for demonstrating how to configure Prometheus and get demo data to Prometheus service discovery.

Go to the example folder and run docker-compose up. Prometheus should get available on http://localhost:9090.

Push some example devices and objects to Netbox using the initializers:

docker-compose exec  netbox /opt/netbox/netbox/manage.py load_initializer_data --path /opt/netbox/initializers

Netbox content should then be available in the service discovery tab.

Development

We use Poetry for dependency management and invoke as task runner. As Netbox plugins cannot be tested standalone, we need invoke to start all code embedded in Netbox Docker containers.

All code to run in docker is located under develop. To start a virtual env managed by poetry run poetry shell. All following commands are started inside this environment.

In order to run tests invoke the test steps

# Build Docker images
invoke build

# Execute all tests
invoke tests

# Execute unit tests only
invoke unittest

Features should be covered by a unit test, but some times it's easier to develop on an running system.

# Start a local Netbox with docker
invoke start

# Create an user named `admin`
invoke create-user

Visit http://localhost:8000 and log in with the new user. You can now define Netbox entities and test around.

API endpoints for testing can be found at http://localhost:8000/api/plugins/prometheus-sd/

Conventional Commits

This repository follows the Conventional Commits specification for versioning and changelog generation. Conventional Commits provide a standardized way of writing commit messages to convey semantic meaning about the changes made. Each commit message follows a defined format that includes a type, an optional scope, and a message. The types typically include features, fixes, documentation, and more. By adhering to this convention, we ensure clear and automated versioning, release notes, and changelog generation.