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Configuration Backup

Validity supports device configurations backups to remote Git or S3 server(s).

Backup provisioning

  1. Follow the steps described in the Quickstart: Polling article to set up all the entities required for device polling.

  2. Polling is done when the Data Source is synced. In most cases it will be the default Validity Polling Data Source, but you are free to create your own one with the type device_polling.

  3. Create a Backup Point which describes a place where the Data Source with the configs has to be uploaded.

Example using pynetbox:

import pynetbox

nb = pynetbox.api('http://localhost:8000', token=nb_token)

validity_polling = nb.core.data_sources.get(name="Validity Polling")

nb.plugins.validity.backup_points.create(
    name='my_github_repo',
    data_source=data_source.id,
    upload_url='https://github.com/amyasnikov/my_repo',
    method='git',
    parameters={"username": "amyasnikov", "password": github_token}
)

Backing Up

There are several options to trigger the backup process:

  • Press "Back Up" button on the Backup Point page.

  • Specify Backup After Sync: True in the Backup Point settings. This will trigger the backup process each time the respective data source sync occurs (no matter via GUI button, API or somehow else).

  • Execute RunTests script with Sync Data Sources: True option (Backup After Sync: True is required as well).

Options for periodic backup

There are several options to provision periodic configuration backup process (e.g. daily, each 6 hours, etc):

  • Provision RunTests script to start regularly using Interval script parameter. This will run everything at once:

    1. poll the devices (perform data source sync)
    2. execute compliance tests
    3. back up the data source

  • If you don't want to run the tests via scheduler and want backup only, you can create tiny NetBox Custom Script inside your NetBox and configure it to run periodically.

from core.models import DataSource
from extras.scripts import Script, ObjectVar

class SyncDataSource(Script):
    data_source = ObjectVar(model=DataSource)

    def run(self, data, commit):
        data['data_source'].sync()

Execution of this script triggers the sync of the DataSource (and hence the backup process for bound Backup points with Backup After Sync: True).

  • Wait till periodic Data Source sync is implemented in the core NetBox. There is an issue for it, upvotes are appreciated.