netbox-community
Abillity to select disk divider
NetBox version
v4.1.3
Feature type
Change to existing functionality
Proposed functionality
Disk size changed from GB to MB, but divider is set to 1000 instead of 1024. Import to Netbox that uses Bytes will show wrong disk size see bug report https://github.com/netbox-community/netbox/issues/17631
Use case
Field used to be GB, is now MB Field collected from VMM is in Bytes, 1024 Bytes is 1KB, 1024KB is 1MB, 1024MB is 1GB, 1024GB is 1TB Netbox uses 1000 Bytes as 1KB, 1000MB as 1GB Example Importing a value of 50000 MB on virtual disk is shown as 50GB While converting from bytes to MB 52428800 Bytes is 51200MB
In Netbox, 51200 MB is converted to 51,2GB which is not correct
if I convert the bytes 52428800/1MB = 51200 MB which is correct, but shown wrong (52428800/1GB)*1000 = 50000MB which is wrong, but shown correctly
Problems occur if the disk is larger than 1TB
(1 073 741 824/1GB)*1000 = 1024GB which is wrong, will be shown as 1.02 TB
Correct would be to not use humanizenumbers as conversion will be wrong A posible solution would be to add ability in configuration to choose between 1000 and 1024
image vs edit image
To get value 60GB, the MB value should be 61440MB
But if I change value the converted value shown under virual disk is image
We use netbox as source for our billing, and as a workaround they now divide the MB number by 1000 The correct way would be for billing to devide by 1024
Database changes
Not sure, but is it possible to add a setting in configuration.py to enable selection between 1000 and 1024
External dependencies
None that I can think of
Default of this should operate on the existing methodology (conversion == 1000, not 1024).
Do add tests to ensure that the configuration parameter works as intended too.
Upvote on this. Would like the ability to specify whether we want to use GB or GiB, and then have the correct conversion.
Another upvote, other applications linked to Netbox use GiB so provisioning and billing need some ugly fixes.
A vote from us also. Also VM RAM display seems to have changed from GiB to GB, could this setting affect RAM also?
Perhaps out of scope of this specific FR, but could the upgrade script respect this configuration paramter, and mutliply existing values by 1024 instead of 1000 if set?
For context, we were due to upgrade our Netbox this week but have decided to hold off as it would cause all of our disk sizes to be wrong, as we use GiB and MiB currently.
Happy to raise a new FR if that is more appropriate.
We also noted the problem this week while preparing for an update to 4.1 I looked a bit at the code and the changes seem to be pretty straight forward. Maybe someone can give some feedback for the solution I pushed to my fork and if positiv I will create a pull request. I created two new config options, one for the disk and one for the RAM divisor. I also included this setting in the migration script. https://github.com/Haeki/netbox/commit/09b771507f0d41c4be38fe852da1d944b4bffbac
Isn't it common to use for memory (RAM) size calculations a base of 1000 and for disk size calculations a base of 1024?
I think most, if not all operating systems display both disk and memory in MiB/GiB (so 1024) by default.
Windows task manager displays as GB but the units are actually GiB
Linux top by default displays as MiB or GiB
Linux df -h displays as G but the units are GiB
Linux docker stats displays as GiB
vCenter web UI displays as GB but the units are actually GiB
Proxmox displays as MiB or GiB
Azure displays as GiB (but the pricing calculator displays as GB but the units are actually GiB)
AWS displays as GiB
Digital Ocean displays as GB in some places and GiB in others, but units are actually GiB
The JEDEC standard uses 1024 as the divider, which is where a lot of these come from: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/JEDEC_memory_standards
I would argue that 1024 should be the default divider for Netbox (as it used to be, and we have built automation around), and size labels should show as GiB etc. But this PR will meet our needs, and those with a differing opinion to our own.
Couldn't have said it better myself. Awesome comment! Looking forward to this being merged into master. And I agree, 1024 should definitely be default 😊👍