topic Re: Clone volume through vcenter API in Application Integration

Clone volume through vcenter API

nicholas_alston — Thu, 21 Apr 2016 14:42:43 GMT

I was wondering if it's possible to call Nimble vCenter Plugin processes directly, either through PowerCLI, the Restful API, or some other method. The vCenter plugin allows a very easy method to clone a datastore, without the manual process of reconfiguring the cloned volume for usage in vCenter. Please see the following page, to see what I'm referring to:

Nimble Storage InfoSight

There is no mention of how to do this without using the GUI. Essentially, i would like to incorporate this functionality in an automation process i'm working on, using vRealize Orchestrator and vRealize Automation. If it's feasible to make these kinds of calls, i would like to build a set of Orchestrator workflows for Nimble related functionality.

Re: Clone volume through vcenter API

rugby0134 — Thu, 21 Apr 2016 14:48:32 GMT

YES! These are hundreds of example in connect if your search for PowerCli and/or REST. Here's a few links:

Nugget:Useful vSphere PowerCLI commands + ways to execute Nimble CLI within PowerCLI

Using PowerShell to provision Nimble Zero Copy Clone to ESXi server

Re: PowerShell Module

Nimble OS 2.3 – REST API

Re: Clone volume through vcenter API

nicholas_alston — Thu, 21 Apr 2016 15:13:04 GMT

Hi Kevin,

I did run across all of the threads you mentioned, however I was really hoping to be able to call the vCenter plugin function directly. vRealize Orchestrator runs on a linux appliance, and as such using any of these methods would require additional servers and tools that are cumbersome to manage. The REST API is very nice, however it doesn't handle anything on the vCenter side. Again, being able to call the plugin function directly would handle the process start to finish, without needing multiple individual calls to both the storage and vcenter, which I would like to avoid.

Re: Clone volume through vcenter API

rugby0134 — Thu, 21 Apr 2016 15:35:20 GMT

I don't see anything in the manuals to support this, but maybe someone has built something...

Re: Clone volume through vcenter API

rshekar42 — Thu, 21 Apr 2016 15:40:30 GMT

Hi Nicholas,

The vCenter Plugin uses an internal REST API on the Nimble OS. Those APIs are currently not documented for customer use.

Are you looking for vRealize Orchestrator integration or access to APIs so that you could create the workflows?

Re: Clone volume through vcenter API

nicholas_alston — Thu, 21 Apr 2016 16:07:25 GMT

Hi Raja,

I am looking for either to be honest. If i could call that API function directly i could build my own workflow, if there are pre existing workflows that accomplish this that would work as well. Basically we are using vRealize Automation to allow our developers to provision their own machines. These machines have an attached disk that is approximately 1.5tb in size. As such the only feasible method of cloning is to clone at the Nimble level, any other method would very quickly use all of our storage, not to mention the time requirements. Since vRealize Automation uses Orchestrator on the backend, i was hoping to find a solution with as few external dependencies as possible. Most of my infrastructure is Linux, so having to maintain windows environments and tools to support this is undesirable.

Re: Clone volume through vcenter API

kbhandarkar87 — Wed, 21 Nov 2018 09:06:03 GMT

Hi Nicholas,

I am running into a similar situation where I want to automate the volume creation/deletion through Nimble storage vCenter Plugin using Powershell. From the above discussion I understand that Nimble vCenter Plugin API's are currently not exposed to Custiomer use.Were you be able to find any API's for Nimble storage vCenter Plugins?

can you also please share if you have found any work around to achieve your requirement.?

Regards,

Karthik

Re: Clone volume through vcenter API

mula_e — Fri, 09 Jul 2021 10:29:44 GMT

Hey there,

Stumbled across this thread , indeed this is something that we would like to do. As the original poster mentioned, it would be easier to be able to initiate a clone using vCenter / Nimble plugin.

Thanks!

Re: Clone volume through vcenter API

mamatadesaiNim — Mon, 12 Jul 2021 22:54:15 GMT

There is something, unsupported. Would you be willing to try it, and provide feedback?

--m