Here is a great tech tip use case to help you automate the process to quickly and safely make bulk VLAN changes across your network.
This powerful use case came from a NetMRI customer that has a massive server migration happening over the next year where VLAN changes are necessary. The customer will migrate 20 servers per night for the next year. In addition, the IT team wanted to automate the process so a junior engineer could safely follow this process and not have to engage a level 3 engineer (who are always swamped with other more critical tasks).
A major challenge is extremely limited documentation of where the servers are currently connected to the network. The ability to accurately gather that information is critical to successfully handle the massive requirements quickly and safely.
Infoblox NetMRI was used to help solve this major challenge by leveraging scripting and listing capabilities to automate this task.
The simple and fast process included these key parameters:
- Step 1 – Get a list of the MAC address of the 20 servers that will be changed that night.
- Step 2 – Import that list into the NetMRI user interface under Config Management > Job Management > List
- Step 3 – Create a CCS script that will find all of the current MAC addresses of the devices that are current connected to it. Then use the list to perform a look up and see if the server MAC address is part of the results.
- Step 4 – The script also does a port check to make sure the change is to an “access” port and not a “trunk” port. If the server MAC address is part of the look up and it’s not a trunk port, the VLAN is changed automatically by NetMRI.
- Step 5 – Repeat this process for each bulk change to VLAN by importing a new server MAC list and using the same script.
Thanks to Infoblox Professional Service expert Sif Baksh for his help in documenting this process.
I hope you find this Tech Tip valuable and if you have any great use cases, please share to the communtiy as well.
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