Using the App

This document describes common use-cases and scenarios for this App.

General Usage

PDU Manager lets you operate APC managed PDU (Network Management Card / AOS) outlets directly from Nautobot — powering an outlet on or off, rebooting it, or reading outlet status — using SSH driven by Nornir and Netmiko (the apc_aos driver).

It is built entirely on Nautobot's native power modeling: a PDU's outlets are PowerOutlet components, a powered device exposes a PowerPort, and the relationship between them is a power Cable.

Prerequisites / setup

1. Enable nautobot_plugin_nornir alongside pdu_manager and configure it to read credentials from each device's Secrets Group:

   PLUGINS = ["nautobot_plugin_nornir", "pdu_manager"]
   
   PLUGINS_CONFIG = {
       "nautobot_plugin_nornir": {
           "nornir_settings": {
               "credentials": "nautobot_plugin_nornir.plugins.credentials.nautobot_secrets.CredentialsNautobotSecrets",
               "runner": {"plugin": "threaded", "options": {"num_workers": 10}},
           },
       },
       # Optional: simulate the APC CLI for demos without real hardware.
       "pdu_manager": {"MOCK_CONNECTIONS": False},
   }
   

2. Model the PDU as a Device:

   • Create a Platform with Network driver = apc_aos and assign it to the PDU device.
   • Give the PDU a primary IP (used as the SSH host).
   • Attach a Secrets Group to the PDU device providing SSH Username and Password secrets (access type Generic/SSH).
   • Add a PowerOutlet for each physical outlet, naming each outlet with the APC CLI outlet number as a trailing integer (e.g. Power Outlet 5). The number is parsed from the name — there is no custom field to set.

3. Assign outlets to devices: cable a downstream device's PowerPort to the PDU's PowerOutlet (Nautobot's standard power connection).

The PDU's outlets and their connections, and a downstream device's power port, are just standard Nautobot DCIM components:

Use-cases and common workflows

• Power a device from its detail page: the built-in PDU Power dropdown appears on every device detail page with Status / On / Off / Reboot items. Each item opens the matching Job in a modal with the device pre-filled; click Run Job Now to run it.
• Read outlet status: the Status action reports the state of just the outlet(s) feeding the selected device (running the Status action against a PDU device reports all of its outlets). Results appear in the Job Result.
• Protect devices from power loss: create Power Off Protection rules (under Apps → PDU Manager → Power Off Protections) that match devices by role, tenant, tag, or explicit device. Off and Reboot are then refused for those devices and reported as a Job Failure. Rules can be toggled with the Enabled flag and managed via the REST API at /api/plugins/pdu-manager/power-off-protections/.
• Run a Job directly: under Jobs, run PDU Power Control (choose a device, an optional outlet, and an action) or one of the per-action jobs.

Supporting other PDU vendors

The CLI commands are not hard-coded — they come from a PDU Command Set (under Apps → PDU Manager → PDU Command Sets) that is assigned to one or more Platforms. The default APC AOS set is created automatically; to support a different managed PDU, add a new command set, fill in the verbs that map to the On/Off/Reboot/Status actions, the success string, and the status-parsing regex, and assign your PDU's platform — no code change.

When a power Job runs, it resolves the command set from the target PDU's Platform and uses those commands and the success/parse rules.

Screenshots

The built-in PDU Power dropdown on a device detail page:

Selecting an action opens the Job in a modal with the device pre-filled:

The Job Result reports the outcome — here, a Status read scoped to just the device's outlet:

Power Off Protection rules are managed under Apps → PDU Manager: