Chapter 5 · Audit and drift
NetBox says what should exist. The audit proves what does.
Records drift: a server gets moved, a failed part is swapped, someone racks a box without telling anyone. Audits compare three independent views of reality against NetBox and list every difference, so it can be fixed before it causes an outage.
📷
Physical walk-through
Technicians scan each asset label. Each scan confirms the device, its serial number and its rack position.
📡
SNMP sweep
Every device is asked its real name, model and serial over SNMP. A swapped chassis or wrong serial shows up immediately.
🛰️
Discovery probe and monitoring
A network probe and LibreNMS report everything that answers on the network, including devices NetBox has never heard of.
Sample audit report: Dallas Data Center 1
Generated from the demo NetBox. Most devices match; the differences below are what the audit exists to catch.
| Device | Rack / U | Finding | Source | Action |
|---|