Netdisco is a web-based network management tool suitable for small to very large networks. IP and MAC address data is collected into a PostgreSQL database using SNMP, CLI, or device APIs. Some of the things you can do with Netdisco:

• Locate a machine on the network by MAC or IP and show the switch port it lives at
• Turn off a switch port, or change the VLAN or PoE status of a port
• Inventory your network hardware by model, vendor, software and operating system
• Pretty pictures of your network

See the demo at: https://netdisco2-demo.herokuapp.com/

Netdisco includes a lightweight web server for the interface, a backend daemon to gather data from your network, and a command line interface for troubleshooting. There is a simple configuration file in YAML format.

Docker Deployment

The containers need some directories present in the mounted volume. In a directory of your choice, create this structure and allow the netdisco uid in the container (901) to write into it:

cd $directory_of_your_choice
mkdir -p netdisco/{logs,config,nd-site-local} 
sudo chown -R 901:901 netdisco

(this step is necessary on Linux hosts and can be omitted in the OS X and Windows versions of Docker)

Download docker-compose.yml into the same directory and start everything

curl -Ls -o docker-compose.yml https://tinyurl.com/nd2-dockercompose
docker-compose up

This will start the database, backend daemon, and web frontend listening on port 5000. If you have a device using the SNMP community public, enter it in the Netdisco homepage and click "Discover".

The default configuration is available in netdisco/config/deployment.yml. The backend and web daemons will automatically restart when you save changes to this file. Logs are available in netdisco/logs/.

The netdisco-do utility can be run like this (run it without <action> to get help):

docker-compose run netdisco-do <action>

Local web or backend plugins can be installed into netdisco/nd-site-local/ as per our documentation. Finally, the PostgreSQL data files are stored in netdisco/pgdata/ and we do not advise touching them (unless you wish to reinitialize the system).

The web frontend is initally configured to allow unauthenticated access with full admin rights. We suggest you visit the Admin -> User Management menu item, and set no_auth: false in deployment.yml, to remove this guest account and set up authenticated user access.

Other username, password, database connection, and file locations, can all be set using environment variables described in our wiki. Of course the database container is optional and you can connect to an existing or external PostgreSQL server instead.

Docker Requirements

• Docker 20.10.0 (Linux) or Docker Desktop 3.3.0 (Win/Mac)
• docker-compose 1.28

Getting Support

We have several other pages with tips for understanding and troubleshooting Netdisco, tips and tricks for specific platforms, and all the configuration options.

You can also speak to someone in the #netdisco@libera IRC channel, or on the community email list.

Upgrading

Pulling new images and recreating the containers with docker-compose down ; docker-compose pull ; docker-compose up --force-recreate is all there is to it. When our database image starts it always updates the DB schema to the latest release. To upgrade your own PostgreSQL database, run:

docker-compose run --entrypoint=bin/netdisco-db-deploy netdisco-backend

Credits

Thanks to Ira W. Snyder and LBegnaud for inspiration. Thanks also to the PostgreSQL project for great examples of docker magic. We build with the support of the excellent GitHub Actions service.