Bootstrap¶

Description¶

This App will sync data from YAML files into Nautobot to create baseline environments. Most items will receive a custom field associated with them called "System of Record", which will be set to "Bootstrap". These items are then the only ones managed by the Bootstrap SSoT App. Other items within the Nautobot instance will not be affected unless there's items with overlapping names. There is currently two exceptions to this and those are the ComputedField, and GraphQLQuery models since they can't have a custom field associated. If you choose to manage ComputedField or GraphQLQuery objects with the Bootstrap SSoT App, make sure to define them all within the YAML file, since any "locally defined" Computed Fields and GraphQL Queries within Nautobot will end up getting deleted when the job runs. If an item exists in Nautobot by it's identifiers but it does not have the "System of Record" custom field on it, the item will be updated with "Bootstrap" (or SYSTEM_OF_RECORD environment variable value) when the App runs. This way no duplicates are created, and the App will not delete any items that are not defined in the Bootstrap data but were manually created in Nautobot.

Installation¶

Before configuring the integration, please ensure, that nautobot-ssot app was installed with Bootstrap integration extra dependencies.

pip install nautobot-ssot[bootstrap]

Configuration¶

Once the SSoT package has been installed you simply need to enable the integration by setting enable_bootstrap to True. There are additional settings that allow you to control which Nautobot objects are defined in your data. The settings are pretty straightforward. Assuming that you're copying the example settings below, the bootstrap_nautobot_environment_branch setting will be loaded from the environment variable NAUTOBOT_BOOTSTRAP_SSOT_ENVIRONMENT_BRANCH, or default to develop. The bootstrap_models_to_sync setting defines which models/objects you want to have the App sync to Nautobot. There are a couple of caveats to this functionality. For example, for DynamicGroup objects to sync, the filter criteria need to already exist in Nautobot. So, if you are going to have groups that are filtered on Platforms, Locations, etc, make sure not to include DynamicGroup objects in your Bootstrap Data until those items exist in Nautobot. If these items are also being synchronized in your Bootstrap Data, they will be created in the correct order. The same goes for Golden Config-related Git Repositories. It should go without saying, but the Golden Config App must be installed, for the backup, intended, and template provided_contents items to be available options in your Bootstrap Data along with support of the SoftwareLCM, SoftwareImageLCM, and ValidatedSoftware models from the Device Lifecycle Management app.

PLUGINS = ["nautobot_ssot"]

PLUGINS_CONFIG = {
  "nautobot_ssot": {
        # Other nautobot_ssot settings ommitted.
        "enable_bootstrap": is_truthy(os.getenv("NAUTOBOT_SSOT_ENABLE_BOOTSTRAP", "true")),
        "bootstrap_nautobot_environment_branch": os.getenv("NAUTOBOT_BOOTSTRAP_SSOT_ENVIRONMENT_BRANCH", "develop"),
        "bootstrap_models_to_sync": {
            "secret": True,
            "secrets_group": True,
            "git_repository": True,
            "dynamic_group": True,
            "computed_field": True,
            "tag": True,
            "graph_ql_query": True,
            "software": False,
            "software_image": False,
            "validated_software": False,
            "tenant_group": True,
            "tenant": True,
            "role": True,
            "manufacturer": True,
            "platform": True,
            "location_type": True,
            "location": True,
            "team": True,
            "contact": True,
            "provider": True,
            "provider_network": True,
            "circuit_type": True,
            "circuit": True,
            "circuit_termination": True,
            "namespace": True,
            "rir": True,
            "vlan_group": True,
            "vlan": True,
            "vrf": True,
            "prefix": True,
        },
  }
}

Bootstrap Data¶

Bootstrap data can be stored in 2 fashions.

Recommended Bootstrap data can be stored in a Git Repository and referenced in the app as a Git Datasource. A user should create a Git Repository in Nautobot (including any necessary Secrets and SecretsGroups for access) with the word "Bootstrap" in the name, and with a provided content type of config contexts. This is how the App will locate the correct repository. The data structure is flat files, and there is a naming scheme to these files. The first one required is global_settings.yml. This contains the main data structures of what data can be loaded. ie Secrets, SecretsGroups, GitRepository, DynamicGroup, Tag, etc. You can then create additional .yml files with naming of your CI environments, ie production, development, etc for default values for specific items. This is where the environment variables described below would be matched to pull in additional data from the other YAML files defined in the directory.
Bootstrap data can be stored within the nautobot_ssot/integrations/bootstrap/fixtures directory. Using local files is not recommended as this requires a fork of the plugin and locally editing the YAML data files in the fixtures folder.

A simple structure would look something like this:

global_settings.yml
develop.yml
prod.yml
staging.yml

There are 2 environment variables that control how certain things are loaded in the app.

NAUTOBOT_BOOTSTRAP_SSOT_LOAD_SOURCE - defines whether to load from the local fixtures folder or a GitRepository already present in Nautobot. This setting will get overridden if the user selects something other than env_var in the job's GUI settings.
- Acceptable options are file or git.
NAUTOBOT_BOOTSTRAP_SSOT_ENVIRONMENT_BRANCH - Defines the environment and settings you want to import. I.e. production, develop, staging.