Can a WFA workflow invoke Protection Manager to protect a newly created dataset?

[stephenr]

Hi,

I'm looking for examples of WFA workflows where the newly created volumes / qtrees get added to a Protection Manager policy.

Cheers

Steve

[hill]

Steve,

We do have something that does just this.  That said, it's not quite ready for sharing on the communities just yet.  We hope to post this very soon.  Please contact me offline for what we can share with you immediately.

Thanks,

Kevin

[niels]

Hi Kevin,

anything new in this regard?

I've a customer who is looking into creating policies and datasets after creating the primary resources.

In the current version of WFA (2.0.1) I haven't seen any command related to Protection Manager.

regards, Niels

[shailaja]

Hi Niels,

In 2.0.1, there are a few commands in the certified list related to Protection manager, mainly to create a dataset and add a volume to dataset.

Screenshot for the same:

Other than that, there is also a workflow put together by Dave at

https://communities.netapp.com/docs/DOC-17802

Thanks,

Shailaja

[niels]

Thanks Shailaja.

I overlooked those. For whatever reason I expected them to be part of a scheme different from "storage".

I'll see what I can achieve using them in regard to the customer's requirements. He explicitly asked about creating policies but I need to dig deeper what exactly the final workflow should contain.

regards, Niels

[niels]

I played around with the two available commands and they are too limited to effectively interact with protection manager. It's not even possible to assign a protection policy to the newly created dataset, even if the policy already exists.

Anything in the works to have more integration of WFA into Protection Manager?

additional things I'd be looking for minimally are:

- ability to define/change meta data of a dataset (i.e. general properties and naming properties)

- assign a protection policy to a dataset

- assign resource pools to (primary)/backup/mirror for automated provisioning

- assign provisioning policy for (primary)/secondary provisioning

Besides "assign" I'd also like to see "create", but I understand that this may be a bigger effort, especially for policies and schedules.

regards, Niels

[shailaja]

Hi,

Well, Dave's zip/dar file in the link given above (https://communities.netapp.com/docs/DOC-17802) has few commands like dataset with protection policy and also adding volumes to specific nodes of a dataset.

Other than that, a set of custom commands will have to be written for the requirements above.

Thanks,

Shailaja

[niels]

Thanks for the hint. I'll look into those, and be it just to get ideas for custom commands.

regards, Niels

[bdave]

Hi Niels,

The best way for WFA to interact with [ Protection Manager / Unified Manager (OCUM) / DFM ] depends on how OCUM is installed and if you prefer CLI commands over SSH or don't mind working with lower-level ZAPI calls. 

• If OCUM is installed on a Linux host, it's typically easy to use NetApp's SSH PowerShell cmdlet to issue DFM commands.  This is the easiest.
• If OCUM is installed on Windows,
  • some people have installed an SSH server service to do the same as above.  But, some people can't or won't do this.
  • The examples I wrote and posted use Perl to issue ZAPI calls to the DFM server.  This works with Windows or Linux.  Downside is that it requires installing Perl and the NMSDK perl modules, etc. on the WFA server.  Again, some people can't or won't do that.
  • Brian Atkins wrote and posted some excellent OCUM/DFM interaction examples that use PowerShell for making ZAPI calls.  His post is here: https://communities.netapp.com/docs/DOC-25414  This also works with Linux or Windows and requires no customization on either the WFA server or the OCUM server.  This is the most portable / supportable method in my opinion.

Hope this helps,

Dave