NetWatch is a cross-platform tool for viewing and automatically remediating network device configuration compliance.

Screenshots

Getting Started

Windows

1. Create a virtual env to separate NetWatch dependencies from system packages: python -m venv venv
2. Enter the virtual env: venv\Scripts\activate.bat
3. Install the packages required to run NetWatch: pip install -r requirements.txt
4. Create a secret key (see Configuration below)

Ubuntu

Installation

Ansible: TBC Docker: TBC Vagrant: TBC

Configuration

There's two methods that allow you to set the required configuration to get you up and running with NetWatch; environment variables and the config file. Currently the only setting that's required is a SECRET_KEY.

SECRET_KEY plays an important role in regards to security. It is used by the underlying web framework for NetWatch (Flask) and also to encrypt various secrets within the app (such as passwords for your nodes). Therefore you should pick a very secure secret and NOT share it anywhere (except maybe your password manager!). If you backup/restore NetWatch to another server, ensure you use the same secret so you can decrypt your credentials.

Note: environment variables take precedence over a config file if both are created.

Environment Variables

When setting env vars all should be prepended with NETWATCH_. So instead of SECRET_KEY you must set NETWATCH_SECRET_KEY

To set the SECRET_KEY on Windows use: set NETWATCH_SECRET_KEY=your-very-secure-secret
To set the SECRET_KEY on Ubuntu use: export NETWATCH_SECRET_KEY=your-very-secure-secret

Config File

config.py is a settings file that lets NetWatch load your configuration, think of it as a .ini file. The file should be created in the data directory.
Note: all settings keys in the config file should be entered in UPPERCASE

Database

NetWatch uses a database to store ongoing activities. By default this is SQLite, but can be changed to a local or remote PostgreSQL instance.

PostgreSQL

To start using a psql database enter the following configuration settings:

• DB_NAME
• DB_USER
• DB_PASS
• DB_HOST
• DB_PORT

Application Stack

NetWatch has been tested on Windows 10 and Ubuntu 16.04 with Python 3.5, but should work on newer versions. The recommended/tested technology stack for NetWatch is...

Service	Technology
HTTP Server	Nginx
WSGI Interface	Gunicorn
Application	Python/Flask
Database	SQLite/PostgreSQL
Device Access	Netmiko