Manage Nodes / Entities: Bulk Deletion of Interfaces

pasqualonem

Problem:

There is often a need to delete a bunch of interfaces as the things attached to them have been decommissioned.

In the legacy "manage nodes" view, while you can easily select "Interfaces" from the drop down, none of the "Group by" options pertain to interfaces. If you want to find interfaces on a particular node or in a particular group, or with a particular custom property, you cannot do this.

Let's say I'm trying to find several interfaces on a particular node.

While you can search by node name, this searches all fields for the input. If, like us, you put information about the connected node and port in the interface alias, you will get interfaces on the node you care about, and also those interfaces that connect to the node (because the node name is in the interface alias). If the interfaces you care about are on multiple nodes, your only hope is if they all have something in common in the interface alias. You can't even select interfaces that are of a certain status ("Down", for example).

In the new "Manage Entities" page, you are again unable to easily select interfaces by properties of the interfaces. You can select each node, and then select the interfaces on the node, but there is no way to easily select the interfaces themselves.

Potential Solution:

Allow selection of interfaces (by any property) on the new "Manage Entities" page.

moob_steven

I agree that the new Manage Entities page needs improvement for bulk management of interfaces in addition to just nodes.

You CAN add interfaces from multiple devices to the "related entities" inspector on the right using the carrots over on the right, and you CAN use the search function to narrow that selection (wildcards work, but might just be searching the description field) but when you have your selection of interfaces ready to edit, you can only edit their custom properties (or delete them)... The new Manage Entities page seems to not have the ability to bulk edit interfaces. Only custom properties can be bulk edited for interfaces currently in the new Manage Entities page. (For nodes, bulk edit allows both types of editing.)

My use case is wanting to check the "unplugged rather than down" checkbox for several hundred interfaces on occasion.

I did have a frustration with the old Manage Nodes page when bulk editing interfaces... I have to click the checkbox to select every interface individually.