v1.6.0 - 2023-08-08

[jathanism]

Nautobot v1.6

This document describes all new features and changes in Nautobot 1.6.

Release Overview

Added

Custom Field "Markdown" Type (#4006)

A new Custom Field type, "Markdown", has been added. Custom fields of this type can store Markdown-formatted text which will be rendered in the web UI.

Caching of Dynamic Groups and Content Types (#4092)

APIs have been added to allow for caching of the results of looking up an object's content-type or Dynamic Group memberships, as well as for looking up the members of a Dynamic Group itself. These caches are disabled by default but can be enabled by configuring the DYNAMIC_GROUPS_MEMBER_CACHE_TIMEOUT and CONTENT_TYPE_CACHE_TIMEOUT settings respectively. Apps (plugins) that make use of dynamic groups should review the documentation for the APIs to determine how and when to make use of the cache for improved performance.

Interface Redundancy Group (#2825)

Interface Redundancy Group model and related views have been added to allow logical grouping of multiple interfaces under a specific interface redundancy protocol (HSRP, VRRP, CARP, and etc).

Installation Metrics (#4047)

A new setting, INSTALLATION_METRICS_ENABLED, has been added to allow Nautobot to send anonymous installation metrics to the Nautobot maintainers. This setting is True by default but can be changed in nautobot_config.py or the NAUTOBOT_INSTALLATION_METRICS_ENABLED environment variable.

If the INSTALLATION_METRICS_ENABLED setting is True, running the post_upgrade or send_installation_metrics management commands will send a list of all installed plugins and their versions, as well as the currently installed Nautobot and Python versions, to the Nautobot maintainers. A randomized UUID will be generated and saved in the DEPLOYMENT_ID setting to anonymously and uniquely identify each installation. The plugin names will be one-way hashed with SHA256 to further anonymize the data sent. This enables tracking the installation metrics of publicly released plugins without disclosing the names of any private plugins.

The following is an example of the data that is sent:

{
    "deployment_id": "1de3dacf-f046-4a98-8d4a-17419080db79",
    "nautobot_version": "1.6.0b1",
    "python_version": "3.10.12",
    "installed_apps": {
        # "example_plugin" hashed by sha256
        "3ffee4622af3aad6f78257e3ae12da99ca21d71d099f67f4a2e19e464453bee7": "1.0.0"
    },
    "debug": true
}

Platform.network_driver and related fields (4136)

The Platform model has been enhanced to include a network_driver database field and a network_driver_mappings derived property based on the netutils library. For example, if you set a Platform to have a network_driver value of "cisco_ios", the platform.network_driver_mappings property will return a dictionary containing ansible, hier_config, napalm, netmiko, ntc_templates, pyats, pyntc, and scrapli keys corresponding to this entry. These properties can be referenced via the REST API and GraphQL to assist in developing and maintaining Apps, Jobs, or third-party code that interact with devices by using any of these libraries.

If the default derivations provided by netutils are not suitable for your purposes, you can extend or override them by configuring the NETWORK_DRIVERS system setting.

Python 3.11 Support (#3561)

Nautobot 1.6.0 formally adds support for installation and operation under Python 3.11.

Changed

Additional HIDE_RESTRICTED_UI Effects for Unauthenticated Users (#3646)

When HIDE_RESTRICTED_UI is enabled, unauthenticated users are no longer able to view the OpenAPI (Swagger) UI, the GraphiQL UI, or any configured top/bottom banners. Additionally, the page footer on the login page will not display the Nautobot server hostname in this case.

Increased Device.asset_tag maximum length (#3693)

The maximum length of the Device.asset_tag field has been increased from 50 to 100 characters.

Changed Default Python Version for Docker Images (#4029)

The default Python version for Nautobot Docker images has been changed from 3.7 to 3.11.

Removed

Removed Python 3.7 Support (#3561)

As Python 3.7 has reached end-of-life, Nautobot 1.6 and later do not support installation or operation under Python 3.7.

v1.6.0 (2023-08-08)

Added

• #4169 - Added environment variable NAUTOBOT_SESSION_EXPIRE_AT_BROWSER_CLOSE to set the SESSION_EXPIRE_AT_BROWSER_CLOSE Django setting which expires session cookies when the user closes their browser.
• #4184 - Added documentation detailing rack power utilization calculation.

Dependencies

• #4208 - Updated django-rq to 2.8.1.
• #4209 - Relaxed constraint on prometheus-client minimum version to 0.14.1.
• #4173 - Updated drf-spectacular to 0.26.4.
• #4199 - Updated cryptography to ~41.0.3. As this is not a direct dependency of Nautobot, it will not auto-update when upgrading. Please be sure to upgrade your local environment.
• #4215 - Broadened the range of acceptable packaging dependency versions.

Fixed

• #3985 - Added error handling in JobResult.log() for the case where an object's get_absolute_url() raises an exception.
• #3985 - Added missing get_absolute_url() implementation on CustomFieldChoice model.
• #4222 - Fixed a bug in which Job ChoiceVars could sometimes get rendered incorrectly in the UI as multiple-choice fields.
• #4175 - Changed custom field clean to not populate null default values.
• #4204 - Fixed failing Apps CI by downgrading jsonschema<4.18.
• #4205 - Fixed failing Apps CI due to missing dependency of toml.

v1.6.0-rc.1 (2023-08-02)

Added

• #2825 - Added InterfaceRedundancyGroup and related views, forms, filtersets and table.
• #3269 - Added ability to cache DynamicGroup memberships in Redis to improve reverse lookup performance.
• #3269 - Added ability to cache ContentType lookups in Redis to improve performance.
• #3561 - Added support for Python 3.11.
• #4006 - Added Markdown custom field type.
• #4044 - Added ability to use @action(detail=True) decorator for registering additional non-standard GET views to a NautobotUIViewSet.
• #4047 - Added ability for Nautobot to send installation metrics.
• #4118 - Added documentation for troubleshooting integration test failures via VNC.
• #4136 - Added network_driver database field to the Platform model.
• #4136 - Added network_driver_mappings derived attribute on the Platform model.
• #4136 - Added CONSTANCE_DATABASE_CACHE_BACKEND = 'default' to settings.py, which should improve performance a bit.
• #4136 - Added support for NETWORK_DRIVERS config setting to override or extend default network driver mappings from netutils library.
• #4161 - Enhanced NautobotUIViewSet to allow Create and Update methods to have their own form classes.

Changed

• #3646 - Redirect unauthenticated users on all views to login page if HIDE_RESTRICTED_UI is True.
• #3646 - Only time is shown on the footer if a user is unauthenticated and HIDE_RESTRICTED_UI is True.
• #3693 - Increased Device model's asset_tag size limit to 100.

Dependencies

• #3561 - Updated celery dependency to ~5.3.1.
• #3561 - Updated django-auth-ldap optional dependency to ~4.3.0.
• #3561 - Updated django-cacheops dependency to ~6.2.
• #3561 - Updated django-celery-beat dependency to ~2.5.0.
• #3561 - Updated django-constance dependency to ~2.9.1.
• #3561 - Updated django-cors-headers dependency to ~4.2.0.
• #3561 - Updated django-cryptography dependency to ~1.1. Note that this dependency will be removed in Nautobot 2.0.
• #3561 - Updated django-extensions dependency to ~3.2.3.
• #3561 - Updated django-filter dependency to ~23.1.
• #3561 - Updated django-health-check dependency to ~3.17.0
• #3561 - Updated django-prometheus dependency to ~2.3.1.`
• #3561 - Updated django-redis dependency to ~5.3.0.
• #3561 - Updated django-storages optional dependency to ~1.13.2.
• #3561 - Updated django-tables2 dependency to ~2.6.0.
• #3561 - Updated django-taggit dependency to ~4.0.0.
• #3561 - Updated django-timezone-field dependency to ~5.1.
• #3561 - Updated django-tree-queries dependency to ~0.15.0.
• #3561 - Updated drf-spectacular dependency to ~0.26.3.
• #3561 - Updated graphene-django dependency to ~2.16.0.
• #3561 - Updated Jinja2 dependency to ~3.1.2.
• #3561 - Updated jsonschema dependency to permit versions up to 4.18.x. Note that versions back to 4.7.0 are still permitted, so this dependency may not necessarily auto-upgrade when updating Nautobot.
• #3561 - Updated MarkupSafe dependency to ~2.1.3.
• #3561 - Updated mysqlclient optional dependency to ~2.2.0.
• #3561 - Updated napalm optional dependency to ~4.1.0. Note that as a result of this update, the following indirect package dependencies are no longer included by default when installing Nautobot with NAPALM: ciscoconfparse, dnspython, loguru, passlib, tenacity, toml, win32-setctime.
• #3561 - Updated packaging dependency to ~23.1.
• #3561 - Updated Pillow dependency to ~10.0.0.
• #3561 - Updated prometheus-client dependency to ~0.17.1.
• #3561 - Updated social-auth-core optional dependency to ~4.4.2.
• #3561 - Updated social-auth-app-django dependency to ~5.2.0.
• #3561 - Updated various development-only dependencies to the latest available versions.

Fixed

• #4178 - Fixed JSON serialization of overloaded/non-default FilterForm fields on Dynamic Groups.

Removed

• #3561 - Dropped support for Python 3.7. Python 3.8 is now the minimum version required by Nautobot.
• #3561 - Removed direct dependency on importlib-metadata.
• #3561 - Removed direct dependency on pycryptodome as Nautobot does not currently use this library and hasn't for some time.

Contributors

• @MeganerdDev
• @timizuoebideri1
• @whitej6
• @glennmatthews
• @gsnider2195
• @HanlinMiao
• @itdependsnetworks
• @bryanculver
• @snaselj
• @grelleum
• @jfach

New Contributors

• @MeganerdDev made their first contribution in Add Markdown custom field type #4007

Full Changelog: v1.5.24...v1.6.0

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This discussion was created from the release v1.6.0 - 2023-08-08.