Netbox plugin: sync VM description

[jcharaoui]

In Xen Orchestra, we use the description under each VM name to store functional descriptions of the machines.

Unfortunately, that information isn't transferred into NetBox upon sync.

It would be great if that description was sync'd to the NetBox VM comments field, or another custom field (to avoid clobbering possibly existing data).

[olivierlambert]

That's not an easy decision to make 🤔

• "Comments" could be great, however, they are meant to be a full text field supporting Markdown in Netbox. In XAPI, it's a very shorter field just meant to describe the VM (not "potential work to do on it", or more structured data)
• Adding a "description" field means a bit more work for the admin on Netbox side.

That's always the challenge when "plugin" things to each other. Where to stop syncing details where it fits less between both tools.

Do we want Netbox to have objects closer to XAPI or to stay "standard"? Do you know what's going on with VMware equivalent plugin for Netbox?

[jcharaoui]

Adding a "description" field means a bit more work for the admin on Netbox side.

If it's like adding the UUID field, that's really not "work"; w/ NetBox 3.0.x, this is really fast/easy to do. And if XOA finds the field isn't present, then just skip it. I'm not sure how this works on the VMWare side, since we don't use a plugin for it.

As for the NetBox comments field, you're right, it would be a better fit for #5792 :)

[olivierlambert]

Okay let's go for this first step:

1. Netbox: adding a description field for VM objects
2. If it exists, XO will sync the VM description