Skip to content

Diode agent

The Diode Agent is a lightweight network device discovery tool that uses NAPALM to streamline data entry into NetBox through the Diode ingestion service. The following is a basic set of instructions to get started using Diode Agent on a local machine.

Requirements

The Diode NAPALM Agent requires a Python runtime environment and has the following requirements:

Install the agent

Clone the agent repository: 

cd /opt
git clone https://github.com/netboxlabs/diode-agent.git
cd /opt/diode-agent/

Create a Python virtual environment and install the agent: 

python3 -m venv venv
source venv/bin/activate
pip install /opt/diode-agent/diode-napalm-agent --no-cache-dir

Create a discovery configuration file

The agent requires a configuration file to provide an inventory of devices to be discovered. A sample configuration file is provided with the agent.

Create a copy of the sample configuration file: 

cp /opt/diode-agent/diode-napalm-agent/config.sample.yaml /opt/diode-agent/config.yaml

Edit the config.yaml to suit the environment:

  • The config section needs to be updated to reflect the Diode server environment
  • The data section should include a list of all devices (and their credentials) to be discovered
diode:
  config:
    target: grpc://localhost:8081
    api_key: ${DIODE_API_KEY}
  policies:
    discovery_1:
      config:
        netbox:
          site: New York NY
      data:
        - hostname: 192.168.0.32
          username: ${USER}
          password: admin
        - driver: eos
          hostname: 127.0.0.1
          username: admin
          password: ${ARISTA_PASSWORD}
          optional_args:
            enable_password: ${ARISTA_PASSWORD}

Tip

Variables (using ${ENV} syntax) can be referenced in the configuration file from environmental variables or from a provided .env file.

Tip

The driver device attribute is optional. If not specified, the agent will attempt to find a match from NAPALM supported drivers.

Note

Detailed information about optional_args can be found in the NAPALM documentation.

Supported network device drivers

The default supported drivers are the natively supported NAPALM drivers:

  • Arista EOS ("eos")
  • Cisco IOS ("ios")
  • Cisco IOS-XR ("iosxr")
  • Cisco NX-OS ("nxos")
  • Juniper JunOS ("junos")

Run the agent

The agent must be run in the Python virtual environment created earlier. To run the agent with the discovery configuration file: 

diode-napalm-agent -c config.yaml

Verify

The Diode agent is successfully installed if the command diode-napalm-agent returns: 

usage: diode-napalm-agent [-h] [-V] -c config.yaml [-e .env] [-w N]

Diode Agent for NAPALM

options:
  -h, --help            show this help message and exit
  -V, --version         Display Diode Agent, NAPALM and Diode SDK versions
  -c config.yaml, --config config.yaml
                        Agent yaml configuration file
  -e .env, --env .env   File containing environment variables
  -w N, --workers N     Number of workers to be used