Infrastructure, Connected
Use NetBox to centralise asset data, map infrastructure relationships, automate workflows and manage equipment throughout its complete operational lifecycle.
Centralised Asset Management
NetBox can be used as a central Asset Management and Source of Truth platform for network and infrastructure equipment, providing a structured inventory of the physical and logical assets deployed across an organisation.
Rather than maintaining separate spreadsheets for switches, routers, wireless access points, firewalls, servers and other infrastructure, these assets can be represented as devices within NetBox and associated with their manufacturer, model, serial number, asset tag, operational status and function.
NetBox’s device model natively supports fields such as serial number, asset tag, device role, hardware type, platform and status, making it well suited to maintaining an authoritative infrastructure asset register.
Assets in Context
A major advantage of NetBox is that an asset is recorded in the context of where it is deployed and how it is being used.
Devices can be associated with regions, sites, buildings or locations and, where appropriate, a specific rack and rack position.
This makes it possible to answer questions such as “What equipment is installed at this site?”, “Which rack contains this switch?” or “How many devices of this model do we operate?” without having to correlate several independent systems.
NetBox can therefore provide both the traditional asset register and a detailed representation of the infrastructure in which those assets operate.
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From Inventory to Operations
NetBox can also record considerably more technical information than a conventional asset database.
An individual network device can be associated with its interfaces, IP addresses, VLANs, cabling, power connections and other infrastructure relationships.
This means the asset record becomes useful throughout the operational life of the equipment rather than simply being a record that the equipment exists.
For example, an engineer investigating a failed switch can identify its physical location, model and serial number while also determining what interfaces, network addressing and physical connections are associated with it.
This is one of the key benefits of using NetBox as both an asset management system and an operational Source of Truth.
Asset Management That Adapts
Where additional asset information is required, NetBox can be extended using custom fields and tags.
Organisations could, for example, record purchase dates, warranty expiry dates, support contract references, purchase order numbers, internal finance asset IDs, replacement dates or lifecycle classifications.
Custom fields are exposed through the NetBox API as well as the user interface, allowing this information to be incorporated into reports and external workflows.
Automation & Integration
Another significant benefit is automation and integration. NetBox provides a comprehensive REST API, allowing asset information to be populated, queried and updated programmatically.
It can therefore be integrated with network discovery, monitoring, configuration management, service desk, procurement and reporting systems.
Rather than requiring engineers to maintain the same information manually in several places, NetBox can act as the authoritative inventory against which other systems are validated or enriched.
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End-to-End Asset Lifecycle
For organisations wishing to extend this further into procurement and lifecycle management, the NetBox ecosystem can support workflows covering equipment purchasing, shipment, spares, installation and eventual retirement.
This provides a potential progression from simply recording deployed assets to managing the journey from planned requirement through procurement and ultimately into operational service.
Asset Management Frequently Asked Questions
Yes. NetBox can maintain the manufacturer, model, serial number, asset tag, status, role and physical location of infrastructure equipment, while providing substantially more structure and relationship information than a spreadsheet.
NetBox is particularly suited to infrastructure assets such as routers, switches, firewalls, wireless access points, servers, appliances, racks and modular hardware. Its primary strength is infrastructure rather than general corporate asset management.
Yes. Assets can be associated with a site and location and, where applicable, a specific rack, rack face and rack-unit position.
Yes. Custom fields can be added to NetBox objects, allowing information such as warranty expiry, purchase date, finance asset number, support contract or replacement year to be recorded alongside the standard NetBox fields.
Yes. Devices have an operational status, and NetBox can therefore be used to distinguish equipment at different stages of its operational lifecycle. Organisations can also customise status choices to better reflect their own processes.
Yes. NetBox provides APIs and is designed to participate in automated infrastructure workflows. This makes it possible to integrate NetBox with discovery, monitoring, provisioning and other management platforms.
Not in the traditional sense. NetBox is primarily an infrastructure Source of Truth, IPAM and DCIM platform. Its strength is that it understands the technical relationships between infrastructure assets. For network and data-centre equipment this can make it considerably more useful operationally than a generic asset database, while integrations and lifecycle extensions can provide additional ITAM functionality.
It creates a single authoritative view of infrastructure. Instead of knowing simply that an organisation owns a particular switch, NetBox can show what it is, where it is, what role it performs, how it is addressed, what it connects to and its current operational status. This turns the asset register into information that can be actively used by engineering, operations and automation processes.
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