Bootstrapping a Source of Truth in a Brownfield Environment: Field-Tested Patterns

Going through the challenges of initializing a SoT in an already existing environment, a few design and implementation patterns to solve them (consolidating a by-spine with a few basic fields, aligning all referentials on this and then iterating on it, for example). Common mistakes and finally how to maintain it over time.

It is based on my experience as a network automation consultant who designed and implemented a dozen SoTs (mostly NetBox and a few Infrahub instances) in diverse enterprise environments.