We recently migrated from Alcatel-Lucent’s VitalQIP to Infoblox for our IPAM (IP Address Management) solution. I hope to make a more detailed post reviewing Infoblox in the future, for now I’ll stick with the issue of integrating with the API interface. One of our goals for the past few years has been to enable MAC address registration essentially turning off the dynamic nature of DHCP. This would prevent someone from connecting any device to our internal network and getting a DHCP issued IP address. It certainly not a complete solution to the security dilemmas but it would be a good first step.
I do most of my work with CentOS and RedHat Linux because those are the distributions that my organization supports internally (even if I’m one of two people that support Linux across the entire organization). In this case I was working with a CentOS 5.7 server but I was having an issue compiling and installing the Infoblox Perl modules.
LWP::UserAgent version 5.813 required–this is only version 2.033
When I attempted to compile the Infoblox Perl modules I received the following errors;
LWP::UserAgent version 5.813 required--this is only version 2.033 at /usr/lib/perl5/site_perl/5.8.8/Infoblox/Agent.pm line 3. BEGIN failed--compilation aborted at /usr/lib/perl5/site_perl/5.8.8/Infoblox/Agent.pm line 3. Compilation failed in require at /usr/lib/perl5/site_perl/5.8.8/Infoblox/Session.pm line 19. BEGIN failed--compilation aborted at /usr/lib/perl5/site_perl/5.8.8/Infoblox/Session.pm line 19. Compilation failed in require at /usr/lib/perl5/site_perl/5.8.8/Infoblox.pm line 8. BEGIN failed--compilation aborted at /usr/lib/perl5/site_perl/5.8.8/Infoblox.pm line 8. Compilation failed in require at ./ibcli.pl line 78. BEGIN failed--compilation aborted at ./ibcli.pl line 78.
This was with Perl 5.8.8 on CentOS 5.7 x64, unfortunately it seems this is a known issue with the version of LWP::UserAgent that is currently being distributed via the CentOS repository.
I was able to spin up a new CentOS 6.0 x86 server which was running Perl 5.10.1 and didn’t experience this problem.
The installation was pretty straight forward (except for the issue above) but the API reference manual does a very thorough job of detailing all the possible installation methods on both Windows and Unix/Linux. I just opened a browser to one of the Infoblox appliances and downloaded the Perl modules.
https://10.1.1.1/api/dist/CPAN/authors/id/INFOBLOX/
Just replace the IP address of 10.1.1. with the IP address of your Infoblox appliance. I’m not sure why Infoblox hides their manuals behind their support portal, I just don’t understand why companies do that. You can find the manual right here, Infoblox_API_Documentation_6.1.0.pdf.
Cheers!
Companies hide documents to their API because they selfishly want everyone buy support from them.. Also, a lot of companies keep their documents, database design unclear on purpose. Its a lot of money on the hour for support.
Thanks for the post.. so someone did get this integration working.. other than people who once worked or currently working with infoblox.
Hi Harish,
The Perl library that’s available for Infoblox is really quite good. I would agree that some companies are much better at empowering their users than others.
I’m just starting to look into provisioning solutions around NETCONF and XML on Cisco and Juniper equipment.
Cheers!
Hey thanks for the info — this helped me get my API working as well.
Could you have a look at this perl/infoblox question in case you have encountered this issue while working with the infoblox api?
Thanks :-)
http://stackoverflow.com/questions/16130752/infoblox-perl-api-error-1002-arguments-missing-or-incorrect-when-creating-dns-z
I see you’ve already figured out the solution.
Cheers!
Yes indeed– but thanks for checking, appreciate it!
I am wondering if I should keep the infoblox pair after the 60-day trial… I only have about 15 nodes in this network, so I’m not sure if I should invest in the full licenses. I do like the AD integration and the HA features. Do you know which is the smallest edition they offer in grid mode? is it the virtual V810?
Keep up the awesome work :-)
great ! thanks for the info. that helped a lot !
After upgrading the infoblox appliance our scripts using the API stopped working and we needed to update the Infoblox.pm
That’s a great point….
Don’t forget to update your Perl modules after you upgrade the software on the Infoblox appliances.
Thanks for the comment!