Disassociate between interface FHRP group assignment options and interface IP address

[hzc12321]

NetBox version

v4.2.5

Feature type

Change to existing functionality

Proposed functionality

Existing functionality : When trying to assign FHRP groups to interfaces, only FHRP groups with a related IP address assigned are displayed as options. (I didn't really read the code, but from the system behaviour, "related" means the FHRP group must be assigned an IP address of the same subnet prefix as the interface IP)

Proposed functionality : When trying to assign FHRP groups to interfaces, all FHRP groups should be displayed as options regardless of any relationship between the FHRP group IP and interface IP

There isn't a need to worry about being too hard to find the right FHRP group when hundreds of groups being displayed as mentioned in #8435 . The purpose of "Avoiding the user from having to select from hundreds of potential groups" is already achieved by another functionality where users are allowed to type and quick search within the column.

Related issues :
#18975
#18696

Use case

This is a removal of unnecessary existing restriction. It's not a must that each interface's IP address is under the same parent prefix as the FHRP group's VIP, there could be additional mechanisms like NAT in the middle. For example : We have a whole dedicated subnet specifically used as F5 load-balanced service VIPs, and the VM interface IPs are not from the same subnet.

There is an existing workaround; Assigning FHRP groups to the interface before assigning a physical IP, but this is not clean and not scalable. Once the interface IP is specified, it's painful when there is a need to modify its FHRP group assignments.

Database changes

No response

External dependencies

No response

[github-actions]

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[jmiezitis]

Would be great to see this implemented. hzc12321 has provided a well thought out description of what is needed and meets my use case perfectly. The only difference is we are using a FortiGate virtual service functionality to provide an external public IP address in front of internal (RFC1918) servers.

[jeremystretch]

If implemented, this should include expanding the q (search) filter to also match on group ID.