asd-infra-autoNetBox LabsCisco Catalyst CenterRed Hat AnsibleInfrastructure AutomationCiscoRed HatAutomation
Learning path
Automating Network Inventory and Assurance with NetBox and Catalyst Center
Skill Level
Intermediate
Duration 2 hours
Updated Jul 7, 2026
About this learning path
This Learning Path shows you how to build a source-of-truth-driven automation solution with Cisco Catalyst Center, NetBox, and Ansible. You'll sync live inventory into NetBox using Orb Agent and Diode, drive Ansible playbooks off a NetBox dynamic inventory, and close the loop by writing live device health scores back into NetBox.
Your instructors
Prerequisites
- Basic familiarity with Cisco Catalyst Center: comfortable navigating Discovery, Assurance/Health dashboards, and Network Hierarchy, since each challenge relies on Catalyst Center as the source of live device and health data.
- Basic familiarity with NetBox: including devices, sites, custom fields, and API tokens, since NetBox serves as the source of truth that every challenge reads from and writes back to.
- Working knowledge of Ansible and YAML: you'll edit inventory files, run ansible-inventory and ansible-playbook, and interpret playbook tasks, so comfort with basic Ansible concepts and YAML syntax (indentation-sensitive) is expected.
- Comfort with a Linux/command-line environment: use of VS Code with the WSL extension, and running shell commands (curl, systemctl, docker, git), so basic CLI proficiency is assumed.
What you'll learn
- How to keep NetBox continuously synchronized with Cisco Catalyst Center using Orb Agent and Diode: understanding the pipeline, configuration, and how to verify a healthy, automated sync.
- How to build a NetBox-Driven dynamic Ansible inventory: generating API tokens, filtering devices by custom fields, and running playbooks that query Catalyst Center using NetBox as the source of truth.
- How to query and evaluate live device health data from the Catalyst Center Assurance API, applying threshold logic to classify devices as healthy or degraded.
- How to write live assurance data back into NetBox, extending a static inventory into an operationally aware source of truth that downstream automation and tooling can act on.