A YANG Network Data Model of Network Inventory

Network inventory is a foundation for all types of network management. Network operators need to keep track of the equipment planned and installed in their networks (including product name, manufacturer, product family, embedded software, and hardware/software version). Building a network inventory from management system can be used to control and monitor the actual devices/instances in the network and expose this information in a consistent way to applications that would consume that data. This document does not make any assumptions on these applications. Network Inventory is a collection of data for network devices and their components managed by a specific management system. Per the definition of ,the network inventory model is a network model. The purpose of this document is to define a base network inventory YANG data model that is application- and technology-agnostic. The base data model can be augmented to describe application-specific or technology-specific information. The YANG data model defined in this document conforms to . provides a set of augmentation consideration for extensions of hardware, software, entitlement, and inventory topology mapping.

The key words "MUST", "MUST NOT", "REQUIRED", "SHALL", "SHALL NOT", "SHOULD", "SHOULD NOT", "RECOMMENDED", "NOT RECOMMENDED", "MAY", and "OPTIONAL" in this document are to be interpreted as described in BCP 14 when, and only when, they appear in all capitals, as shown here. This document defines the following terms: Network Inventory is a collection of data for network devices and their components managed by a specific management system. It consists of Network Element (NE), hardware, software, and entitlement/license data. Is a manageable network entity that contains hardware and software units, e.g. a network device installed on one or several chassis, or a network controller which may reside in any computing devices. Is a unit of the network element, e.g. hardware components like chassis, card, port, software components like software-patch, bios, and boot-loader. Is defined by a device vendor, that grants and restricts access to inventory items, such as NE, hardware component, software component.

The network element definition is generalized to support physical devices and other types of inventory objects (e.g., virtual network elements) that can be managed as physical network elements from an inventory perspective. The data model for Network Element presented in this document uses a flat list of network element. Each network element in the list is identified by its identifier, "ne-id". Furthermore, each network element has a "ne-type" leaf. The "ne-type" leaf is a YANG identity that describes the type of the network element. This document defines "physical-network-element" identity. The component definition is also generalized to support any type of component, such as hardware, software, or firmware. The component "class" is defined as a union between the hardware class identity, defined in "iana-hardware", and the "non-hardware" identity, defined in this document. The identity definition of additional types of "ne-type" and "non-hardware" identity of component are outside the scope of this document and could be defined in application-specific or technology-specific companion augmentation data models, such as .

Some of the hardware and software attributes defined in Section 3.1 of are borrowed, such as platform-os version and machine. To be consistent with the component definition, some of the attributes defined in for components are reused for network elements. These attributes include:

Note: Whether the identity of device-type (e.g., optical device, router) is defined in the base model is to be discussed.

The component definition is generalized to both hardware components and non-hardware components (e.g., software components).

The modelling of the hardware components of network elements mainly follow the same approach of [RFC8348]. The hardware components are reported in the list of components of a network element and for each component the mandatory 'class' leaf is used indicate the type of component (e.g., chassis, module, and port). The relationship between typical inventory objects in a physical network element can be described as shown in :

| /sub-slot | | | +--------------+ +-----------+ || ||1:N \/ +-----------+ | port | +-----------+]]> The "iana-hardware" module [IANA_YANG] defines YANG identities for the hardware component types in the IANA-maintained "IANA-ENTITY-MIB" registry. Some of the definitions taken from [RFC8348] are actually based on the ENTITY-MIB [RFC6933]. For the additional attributes of specific hardware, such as CPU, storage, port, power supply is defined in the hardware extension.

This document defines "software-rev" of NEs and components, which are basic software attributes of a Network Element. The software and hardware components share the same attributes of the component and have similar replaceable requirements. Generally, the device also has other software data, for example, one or more software patch information. The software components of other classes, such as platform software, BIOS, bootloader, and software patch information, defined in the software extension . Note: Whether the software patch is in the base inventory model is to be discussed.

This document defines the basic network inventory attributes applicable to typical network scenarios. For finer-grained and specific management scenarios, the relationship between this model and other models is illustrated in .

The following tree diagram provides an overview of "ietf-network-inventory" module.

../component-id +--rw parent-rel-pos? int32 +--rw parent-component-ref +--rw hardware-rev? string +--rw firmware-rev? string +--rw software-rev? string +--rw serial-num? string +--rw mfg-name? string +--rw part-number? string +--rw asset-id? string +--rw is-fru? boolean +--rw mfg-date? yang:date-and-time +--rw uri* inet:uri ]]>

The YANG module specified in this document defines a data schema designed to be accessed through network management protocols such as NETCONF [RFC6241] or RESTCONF [RFC8040]. The lowest NETCONF layer is the secure transport layer, and the required secure transport is Secure Shell (SSH) [RFC6242]. The lowest RESTCONF layer is HTTPS, and the required secure transport is TLS [RFC8446]. The Network Configuration Access Control Model (NACM) [RFC8341] provides a means of restricting access to specific NETCONF or RESTCONF users to a preconfigured subset of all available NETCONF or RESTCONF protocol operations and contents. Thus, NACM SHOULD be used to restrict the NSF registration from unauthorized users. There are a number of data nodes defined in this YANG module that are writable, creatable, and deletable (i.e., config true, which is the default). These data nodes may be considered sensitive or vulnerable in some network environments. Write operations to these data nodes could have a negative effect on network and security operations. Some of the readable data nodes in this YANG module may be considered sensitive or vulnerable in some network environments. It is thus important to control read access (e.g., via get, get-config, or notification) to these data nodes. These are the subtrees and data nodes and their sensitivity/vulnerability: <<<to be completed>>>

TBD