Note
Use the administrative shell to interact with the sandbox VM in NetMRI. The sandbox is rigorously isolated from the rest of the system but allows root access to its internals, utilities, and services. A shared disk partition is also created for use between the sandbox VM and the broader system.
As previously noted in this chapter, NetMRI provides a dedicated virtual machine environment, called the Sandbox, where Perl/Python scripts are automatically run on behalf of the user. Perl and Python also provide access to operating system internals, interacting with appliance services, performing data I/O operations, and reading from and writing to blocks of appliance memory.
The sandbox runs an instance of the same operating system kernel as the NetMRI appliance, which is a standard Unix variant, with the normal operating system utilities and file system. You can install Perl/Python modules into the sandbox environment and use them for scripting. You can install any Perl/Python distributions, executables and modules into the sandbox environment. The NetMRI sandbox environment provides a Perl/Python interpreter and supporting modules to support script execution.
The NetMRI Sandbox is available in two forms. Physical appliances with 8 GB of RAM or more automatically run the sandbox as a virtual machine inside of NetMRI. In this configuration, the sandbox is referred to as a local sandbox. All other platforms, including virtual platforms, cannot run a local sandbox. To take advantage of Perl/Python scripting functionality, these platforms support a separate sandbox VM configuration, which must be set up and registered with NetMRI. In this configuration, this is referred to as a remote sandbox.
NetMRI appliances with 8GB or more of RAM can also use a remote sandbox to increase available resources to the local sandbox (e.g. CPU, memory, disk, etc) to solve more complex use cases. In those cases, the sandbox resources are governed by the hypervisor.
You download the Sandbox VM image from Infoblox Support.
Platforms supporting a local sandbox automatically perform the necessary setup and configuration steps; platforms that need a remote sandbox require a manual setup and configuration process. The topic Setting up a Remote Sandbox describes remote sandbox setup and configuration.
Note
A remote sandbox VM is not automatically upgraded when NetMRI is upgraded. If you deploy a remote sandbox and later upgrade NetMRI, the remote sandbox continues to report and run its originally deployed version. When you upgrade between major versions, for example, from 7.3.3 to 7.4.1, you must download a new Sandbox VM file from Infoblox and then redeploy the remote sandbox. When you upgrade between minor versions, for example, from 7.4.1 to 7.4.2, you do not need to redeploy the sandbox. An exception to this is the upgrade to the 7.4.3 minor version which requires the remote sandbox redeployment. Backup any customizations made to the remote sandbox (installed Perl/Python scripts, libraries, configuration, etc...) before redeployment.
To access the Sandbox for a NetMRI appliance or VM instance, do the following:
- Access the administrative shell using an admin account, following the instructions in the Administrative Shell topic.
- Enter the
sandboxlogincommand at the shell prompt.
Type exit and press Enter at any time to close the sandbox and return to the Administrative prompt.