Infrahub combines Git-driven workflows with a graph database to deliver a flexible, version-controlled data management platform. It’s built to handle complexity, adapt over time, and scale with your automation.
When moving beyond scripts, teams building an infrastructure automation stack need to choose what has historically been called a “source of truth”: a central place to store and manage infrastructure data.
Point tools like NetBox and Nautobot offer structured databases and user interfaces to replace inventory spreadsheets. Some teams use files in a GitOps workflow that offers version control. Custom-built systems can model unique aspects of the business not available with standard databases.
While these tools can all serve as a source of truth in some sense, each one comes with tradeoffs that become painfully apparent as you try to evolve or scale your infrastructure.
Infrahub takes a broader approach.
Relational
Limited or complex
Limited or complex
GitOps and Infrastructure as Code (IaC) are common approaches for managing infrastructure, especially in cloud environments.
In this model, configs are stored as text files (usually YAML or JSON) in a Git repository. Changes are made through pull requests, reviewed by team members, and then go live through a CI/CD pipeline.
GitOps brings version control, peer review, and automation into the infrastructure workflow. It works especially well for repeatable cloud tasks, like provisioning cloud resources with Terraform or managing Kubernetes configurations.
Teams tend to choose GitOps because it fits with how developers already work, keeps a record of changes, and supports automation.
But Git isn’t a database. It doesn’t have a structured data model, a way to enforce consistency, or tools for querying and organizing complex data.
Storing data in text files gives you flexibility, but it doesn’t work well when you have a lot of complex topology data, as you do in on-premises and hybrid environments. The data can be hard to search, hard to validate, and hard for non-developers or other systems to use.
In GitOps, there’s no built-in way to define a schema, connect related data, or maintain structure over time.
Infrahub keeps the helpful parts of GitOps—like version control and CI integration—but adds the missing foundation: a flexible, schema-aware platform built on a graph database.
With Infrahub, teams can define and evolve their own data models, run native queries, and manage infrastructure data in a structured, collaborative way.
GitOps is great for automating deployments. Infrahub adds the data layer needed to scale that automation across hybrid, on-prem, and complex environments.
NetBox and Nautobot are well-known tools built to act as a source of truth for infrastructure.
They were originally created to manage things like IP addresses, device inventories, and network diagrams. Over time, they’ve added support for more use cases in network and data center automation.
Nautobot is a fork of NetBox that adds plugin support and some custom logic options, but both tools are built on the same core model.
These platforms are a good fit for teams that want structured data and a web-based interface without having to build something from scratch. They use relational databases with predefined schemas to help store and visualize infrastructure data, making them a solid starting point for many network automation projects.
The challenge comes when teams need to go beyond what the base schema allows. While you can add some extra data using JSON fields, it’s hard to truly extend the data model in a way that’s easy to manage and scale over time.
And because these tools are built on relational databases, it can be difficult to handle complex or changing relationships in the infrastructure.
They also lack key features like built-in version control for the schema and CI/CD integration, which are essential for teams who want to treat infrastructure data like code.
Infrahub solves these issues with a flexible data model backed by a graph database.
It makes it easy to map complex relationships, version changes, and collaborate across teams. Versioning, peer review, metadata, and CI pipelines are all built in.
That means teams can evolve their infrastructure models as needs change in a platform that supports both structure and adaptability.
While NetBox and Nautobot offer a helpful starting point, Infrahub provides the full foundation needed for scalable, service-driven automation.
When GitOps and point tools like NetBox aren’t enough, many organizations choose to build their own internal systems to manage infrastructure data.
This route offers total control. Teams can create a custom schema, build their own APIs, and tailor everything to fit existing workflows. For companies with unique infrastructure needs, it can feel like the most direct way to get exactly what they want.
Often, these tools are born of necessity, when nothing else fits. And in theory, a custom app can do anything the team imagines. But in practice, these systems are hard to build, costly to maintain, and rarely scale well.
Problems usually start as the system grows. Features like version control, peer review, CI/CD integration, and data lineage aren’t built in by default, and adding them later takes serious developer effort.
Updating the schema, creating user interfaces, or enabling cross-team access adds more overhead.
Without full-time ownership, homegrown tools can become fragile, undocumented, or overly dependent on the original developers.
Infrahub gives teams the flexibility of a custom system—like schema control, APIs, and workflow integration—without the burden of building it themselves.
It’s a graph-based data platform with built-in support for versioning, peer review, CI pipelines, metadata, and enterprise services.
Teams can shape the data model to match their needs and rely on a stable foundation designed for long-term use.
For organizations that want to reduce complexity and technical debt while moving faster with automation, Infrahub combines the power of a custom build with the confidence of a managed platform.
A source of truth is typically defined as a system that stores the intended state of your infrastructure—devices, configurations, services, and relationships—so that other tools and teams can reference it consistently.
Infrahub is sometimes called a source of truth, but we think that term is misleading. It suggests there should be a single data source within an organization, which is an unrealistic goal.
What’s needed isn’t one data source, but a data management platform that can reliably sync with, and feed, multiple systems.
Because such a platform acts as a linchpin between many components, it must be flexible and scalable. It also needs to provide clear data lineage so users always know where the data came from and how it’s been used. That’s what Infrahub delivers.
Infrahub Enterprise is an excellent fit for organizations looking to automate large, complex, or unique infrastructure environments where traditional tools fall short. It excels in automation projects that depend on a flexible, reliable data platform, such as data center automation, hybrid infrastructure orchestration, security policy management, operational technology (OT) deployments, and service modeling across diverse environments.
Infrahub Community is useful for getting started with smaller automation projects or exploring a proof of concept.
A graph database stores data as relationships between entities, making it easier to model complex, connected systems like infrastructure.
Relational databases use rigid tables, which can be harder to adapt and query when relationships are deep or frequently changing.
What’s more, graph databases can be designed to easily version just the parts of the data you need. Applications such as SoT tools based on relational databases often have to copy whole tables, which makes their versioning slower, more expensive, and harder to scale.
A customizable schema lets you define your own data model to match your infrastructure, without being locked into predefined fields or structures. This flexibility is essential for scaling and adapting automation over time.
Metadata is data about your data, like who made a change, when, and why. It helps teams track changes, ensure data integrity, and improve automation workflows through better context and auditing.
Idempotency means you can apply the same configuration multiple times without causing unintended changes. It ensures consistency, reliability, and safety in automated deployments.
A query engine lets you search and filter infrastructure data efficiently. Without it, data is hard to access, analyze, or reuse, especially as systems grow in complexity.
A user interface allows non-developers to interact with infrastructure data, review changes, and understand system state without needing to dive into code or command lines.
Infrahub’s flexible, user-defined data model supports any infrastructure type: cloud, hybrid, or on-premises. It can represent services, devices, and configurations across environments, enabling consistent automation from design to deployment.
Yes. Infrahub integrates seamlessly with CI/CD systems, allowing you to automate validation, rendering, and deployment processes as part of your existing workflows.
Yes, Infrahub is open source. You can freely use Infrahub Community under an Apache 2.0 licence, customize it to your needs, and contribute to its development.
Infrahub Enterprise uses the open source edition at its core. It then adds high availability, advanced integrations, performance enhancements, and SLA-backed enterprise support for organizations automating environments at greater scale and complexity.
Open source and forever free. All the schema flexibility and Git-style version control you need to explore infrastructure automation at your own pace.
Built for scale, complexity, and production reliability. Includes high availability, advanced integrations, performance enhancements, and SLA-backed enterprise support.
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From there, you can pick a demo time that’s convenient for you and invite any colleagues who you want to attend.
We’re looking forward to hearing about your automation goals and exploring how Infrahub can help you meet them.
