Nautobot Docker Images

Nautobot is packaged as a Docker image for use in a production environment. The published image is based on the python:3.7-slim image to maintain the most compatibility with Nautobot deployments. The Docker image and deployment strategies are being actively developed, check back here or join the #nautobot channel on Network to Code's Slack community for the most up to date information.

Platforms

Nautobot docker images are currently provided for both linux/amd64 and linux/arm64 architectures. Please note ARM64 support is untested by our automated tests and should be considered in an alpha state.

Tags

A set of Docker images are built for each Nautobot release and published to both Docker Hub and the GitHub Container Registry.

Additionally, GitHub Actions are used to automatically build images corresponding to each commit to the develop and next branches; these images are only published to the GitHub Container Registry.

To get a specific tagged image from Docker Hub or the GitHub Container Registry run:

docker image pull networktocode/nautobot:${TAG}

or

docker pull ghcr.io/nautobot/nautobot:${TAG}

The following tags are available on both Docker Hub and the GitHub Container Registry:

Tag	Nautobot Version	Python Version	Example
${NAUTOBOT_VER}	As specified	3.7	1.2.7
${NAUTOBOT_VER}-py${PYTHON_VER}	As specified	As specified	1.2.7-py3.8
${NAUTOBOT_MAJOR_VER}.${NAUTOBOT_MINOR_VER}	As specified	3.7	1.2
${NAUTOBOT_MAJOR_VER}.${NAUTOBOT_MINOR_VER}-py${PYTHON_VER}	As specified	As specified	1.2-py3.8
stable	Latest stable release	3.7	stable
stable-py${PYTHON_VER}	Latest stable release	As specified	stable-py3.8

The following additional tags are only available from the GitHub Container Registry:

Tag	Nautobot Branch	Python Version
latest	develop, the latest commit	3.7
latest-py${PYTHON_VER}	develop, the latest commit	As specified
develop	develop, the latest commit	3.7
develop-py${PYTHON_VER}	develop, the latest commit	As specified
develop-${GIT_SHA:0:7}-$(date +%s)	develop, a specific commit	3.7
develop-${GIT_SHA:0:7}-$(date +%s)-py${PYTHON_VER}	develop, a specific commit	As specified
next	next, the latest commit	3.7
next-py${PYTHON_VER}	next, the latest commit	As specified
next-${GIT_SHA:0:7}-$(date +%s)	next, a specific commit	3.7
next-${GIT_SHA:0:7}-$(date +%s)-py${PYTHON_VER}	next, a specific commit	As specified

Currently images are pushed for the following python versions:

• 3.7
• 3.8
• 3.9
• 3.10

Info

Developer images networktocode/nautobot-dev:${TAG} and ghcr.io/nautobot/nautobot-dev:${TAG} are also provided with the same tags as above. These images provide the development dependencies needed to build Nautobot; they can be used as a base for development to develop additional Nautobot plugins but should NOT be used in production.

Getting Started

Nautobot requires a MySQL or PostgreSQL database and Redis instance before it will start. Because of this the quickest and easiest way to get Nautobot running is with docker-compose, which will install and configure PostgreSQL and Redis containers for you automatically.

Configuration

Most configuration parameters are available via environment variables which can be passed to the container. If you desire you can inject your own nautobot_config.py by overriding /opt/nautobot/nautobot_config.py using docker volumes by adding -v /local/path/to/custom/nautobot_config.py:/opt/nautobot/nautobot_config.py to your docker run command, for example:

$ docker run --name nautobot -v /local/path/to/custom/nautobot_config.py:/opt/nautobot/nautobot_config.py networktocode/nautobot

Or if you are using docker-compose:

services:
  nautobot:
    image: "networktocode/nautobot"
    volumes:
      - /local/path/to/custom/nautobot_config.py:/opt/nautobot/nautobot_config.py:ro

Docker only configuration

The entry point for the Docker container has some additional features that can be configured via additional environment variables. The following are all optional variables:

NAUTOBOT_CREATE_SUPERUSER

Default: unset

Enables creation of a super user specified by NAUTOBOT_SUPERUSER_NAME, NAUTOBOT_SUPERUSER_EMAIL, NAUTOBOT_SUPERUSER_PASSWORD, and NAUTOBOT_SUPERUSER_API_TOKEN.

---

NAUTOBOT_DOCKER_SKIP_INIT

Default: unset

When starting, the container attempts to connect to the database and run database migrations and upgrade steps necessary when upgrading versions. In normal operation this is harmless to run on every startup and validates the database is operating correctly. However, in certain circumstances such as database maintenance when the database is in a read-only mode it may make sense to start Nautobot but skip these steps. Setting this variable to true will start Nautobot without running these initial steps.

Note

Setting this value to anything other than "false" (case-insensitive) will prevent migrations from occurring.

---

NAUTOBOT_SUPERUSER_API_TOKEN

Default: unset

If NAUTOBOT_CREATE_SUPERUSER is true, NAUTOBOT_SUPERUSER_API_TOKEN specifies the API token of the super user to be created; alternatively the /run/secrets/superuser_api_token file contents are read for the token. Either the variable or the file is required if NAUTOBOT_CREATE_SUPERUSER is true.

---

NAUTOBOT_SUPERUSER_EMAIL

Default: admin@example.com

If NAUTOBOT_CREATE_SUPERUSER is true, NAUTOBOT_SUPERUSER_EMAIL specifies the email address of the super user to be created.

---

NAUTOBOT_SUPERUSER_NAME

Default: admin

If NAUTOBOT_CREATE_SUPERUSER is true, NAUTOBOT_SUPERUSER_NAME specifies the username of the super user to be created.

---

NAUTOBOT_SUPERUSER_PASSWORD

Default: unset

If NAUTOBOT_CREATE_SUPERUSER is true, NAUTOBOT_SUPERUSER_PASSWORD specifies the password of the super user to be created; alternatively the /run/secrets/superuser_password file contents are read for the password. Either the variable or the file is required if NAUTOBOT_CREATE_SUPERUSER is true.

---

uWSGI

The docker container uses uWSGI to serve Nautobot. A default configuration is provided, and can be overridden by injecting a new uwsgi.ini file at /opt/nautobot/uwsgi.ini. There are a couple of environment variables provided to override some uWSGI defaults:

NAUTOBOT_UWSGI_BUFFER_SIZE

Added in version 1.3.9

Default: 4096

Max: 65535

The max size of non-body request payload, roughly the size of request headers for uWSGI. Request headers that might contain lengthy query parameters, for example GraphQL or Relationship filtered lookups, might go well over the default limit. Increasing this limit will have an impact on running memory usage. Please see the uWSGI documentation for more information.

This can also be overridden by appending -b DESIRED_BUFFER_SIZE, ex: -b 8192, to the entry command in all Nautobot containers running uWSGI if you are on a release before 1.3.9.

---

NAUTOBOT_UWSGI_LISTEN

Default: 128

The socket listen queue size of uWSGI. In production environments it is recommended to increase this value to 1024 or higher, however depending on your platform, this may require additional kernel parameter settings, please see the uWSGI documentation for more information.

Please see the official uWSGI documentation on listen for more information.

---

NAUTOBOT_UWSGI_PROCESSES

Default: 3

The number of worker processes uWSGI will spawn.

Please see the official uWSGI documentation on processes for more information.

---

SSL

Self signed SSL certificates are included by default with the container. For a production deployment you should utilize your own signed certificates, these can be injected into the container at runtime using docker volumes. The public certificate should be placed at /opt/nautobot/nautobot.crt and the private key should be at /opt/nautobot/nautobot.key. Using a docker run these can be injected using the -v parameter:

$ docker run --name nautobot -v /local/path/to/custom/nautobot.crt:/opt/nautobot/nautobot.crt -v /local/path/to/custom/nautobot.key:/opt/nautobot/nautobot.key networktocode/nautobot

Or if you are using docker-compose:

services:
  nautobot:
    image: "networktocode/nautobot"
    volumes:
      - /local/path/to/custom/nautobot.crt:/opt/nautobot/nautobot.crt:ro
      - /local/path/to/custom/nautobot.key:/opt/nautobot/nautobot.key:ro

Nautobot Plugins

At this time adding Nautobot plugins to the existing Docker image is not supported, however, you can use the Nautobot image as the base within your Dockerfile to install your own plugins, here is an example dockerfile:

FROM networktocode/nautobot

RUN pip install nautobot-chatops

COPY nautobot_config.py /opt/nautobot/nautobot_config.py

Building the Image

If you have a development environment you can use invoke to build the docker images. By default invoke build will build the development containers:

$ invoke build
...
$ docker images
REPOSITORY                                                                TAG                    IMAGE ID       CREATED          SIZE
networktocode/nautobot-dev                                                local                  25487d93fc1f   16 seconds ago   630MB

If you need to build or test the final image, you must set your invoke.yml to use docker-compose.build.yml in place of docker-compose.dev.yml:

---
nautobot:
  compose_files:
    - "docker-compose.yml"
    - "docker-compose.build.yml"

Then you can re-run the invoke build command:

$ invoke build
...
$ docker images
REPOSITORY                                                                TAG                    IMAGE ID       CREATED          SIZE
networktocode/nautobot                                                    local                  0a24d68da987   55 seconds ago   337MB

If you do not have a development environment created you can also build the container using the regular docker build command:

$ docker build -t networktocode/nautobot -f ./docker/Dockerfile --build-arg PYTHON_VER=3.7 .

Docker Compose

An example library for using Docker Compose to build out all of the components for Nautobot can be found within the Nautobot community. Please see https://github.com/nautobot/nautobot-docker-compose/ for examples on the base application, LDAP integration, and using plugins.