Feature Request: Cable - Planned Status

[deadlance]

I've seen it in other threads but nothing recently, mostly from a couple years ago, but I'd love to see the ability to "plan" a cable move.

Currently a cable can have 2 end points. The cable can be marked as planned or active. Ideally, I'd like to be able to "plan" a cable move that leaves the currently connected cable alone, but allows me to use the same interface and "plan" to move the cable to a different interface.

For example, my organization is planning to upgrade a bunch of spine and leaf switches during a data center relocation project. We have the entire datacenter installed currently, full documented in Netbox. All of the cables traced, gbics as inventory items per port, etc.

Currently we've installed a 2nd copy of netbox and copied data from our production server down to the test server so we can modify these cable endpoints and do all our planning, and then we'll have to export / import that data back into production when we're done. Ideally, when doing a cable trace, we'd be able to see the existing "connected" cable path, and the new "planned" path side by side, export "planned" cables to hand off to a tech, etc.

Perhaps once the button to "mark as connected" is clicked, it can use the "planned" cable to overwrite the currently existing "connected cable"

In addition, a "planned" rack view vs an "installed" rack view would be pretty idea. That way we could just plan hardware moves in the same rack, plan the cables, etc., and then build out the data center from the planned view and when it's finished we can mark as installed.

Currently the second instance of netbox and copying data works, but it's not ideal.

[jeremystretch]

You should check out the netbox-branching plugin, as it allows you to do exactly this.