Recovering a Protection Domain snapshot to a VM

Kees Baggerman | September 13, 2019

Yesterday one of our SEs mentioned he was talking to a customer and this customer is using MCS between two separate clusters. They were looking for a way to only keep one image updated and they are then looking to use our Protection Domain to replicate it over to the other cluster. Now, they are looking for some automated way to promote that snapshot to a full VM, luckely this is something we can achieve with the Nutanix Powershell commandlets.

From the older blogs I’ve written, the following interfaces are available:

REST API
HTML5 GUI
CLI – ACLI & NCLI
Scripting interfaces (PowerShell)

The following definitions are from the Nutanix Bible as Steve Poitras already explained this:

REST API
The REST API exposes every capability and data point of the Prism UI and allows for orchestration or automation tools to easily drive Nutanix action. This enables tools like Saltstack, Puppet, vRealize Operations, System Center Orchestrator, Ansible, etc. to easily create custom workflows for Nutanix. Also, this means that any third-party developer could create their own custom UI and pull in Nutanix data via REST.

HTML5 GUI (Prism UI)
The HTML5 UI is a key part to Prism to provide a simple, easy to use management interface. However, another core ability are the APIs which are available for automation. All functionality exposed through the Prism UI is also exposed through a full set of REST APIs to allow for the ability to programmatically interface with the Nutanix platform. This allow customers and partners to enable automation, 3rd-party tools, or even create their own UI.

CLI – ACLI & NCLI
The Acropolis CLI (ACLI) is the CLI for managing the Acropolis portion of the Nutanix product. These capabilities were enabled in releases after 4.1.2. The Nutanix CLI is the CLI for managing the Nutanix product and is more heterogeneous across hypervisors.

PowerShell
Windows PowerShell is a powerful shell (hence the name ;P) and scripting language built on the .NET framework. It is a very simple to use language and is built to be intuitive and interactive.

This script will connect to the specified cluster, remove existing VMs with a certain prefix and will search for the available protection domains and will restore the latest snapshot in the defined protection domain. This will awckomplish what is explained in the first header of this blogpost.

# kees@nutanix.com
# @kbaggerman on Twitter
# http://blog.myvirtualvision.com
# Created on September, 2019
# Setting parameters for the connection
[CmdletBinding(SupportsShouldProcess = $False, ConfirmImpact = "None") ]
Param(
# Nutanix cluster IP address
[Parameter(Mandatory = $true)]
[Alias('IP')] [string] $nxIP,    
# Nutanix cluster username
[Parameter(Mandatory = $true)]
[Alias('User')] [string] $nxUser,
# Nutanix cluster password
[Parameter(Mandatory = $true)]
[Alias('Password')] [String] $nxPassword,
# Protection Domain Parameters
[Parameter(Mandatory = $true)]
[Alias('PD_Name')] [String] $pdname,
[Parameter(Mandatory = $true)]
[Alias('VM Prefix')] [String] $vmprefix
)
# Converting the password to a secure string which isn't accepted for our API connectivity
$nxPasswordSec = ConvertTo-SecureString $nxPassword -AsPlainText -Force
$nxpassword = $null?
?
Function write-log {
<#
.Synopsis
Write logs for debugging purposes
.Description
This function writes logs based on the message including a time stamp for debugging purposes.
#>
param (
$message,
$sev = "INFO"
)
if ($sev -eq "INFO") {
write-host "$(get-date -format "hh:mm:ss") | INFO | $message"
}
elseif ($sev -eq "WARN") {
write-host "$(get-date -format "hh:mm:ss") | WARN | $message"
}
elseif ($sev -eq "ERROR") {
write-host "$(get-date -format "hh:mm:ss") | ERROR | $message"
}
elseif ($sev -eq "CHAPTER") {
write-host "`n`n### $message`n`n"
}
} 
# Adding Nutanix PS cmdlets
$loadedsnapins = (Get-PSSnapin -Registered | Select-Object name).name
if (!($loadedsnapins.Contains("NutanixCmdletsPSSnapin"))) {
Add-PSSnapin -Name NutanixCmdletsPSSnapin 
}
if ($null -eq (Get-PSSnapin -Name NutanixCmdletsPSSnapin -ErrorAction SilentlyContinue)) {
Add-PSSnapin -Name NutanixCmdletsPSSnapin
write-log -message "Loading the Nutanix CMDlets"
}
?
# Connecting to the Nutanix Cluster
$nxServerObj = Connect-NTNXCluster -Server $nxIP -UserName $nxUser -Password $nxPasswordSec -AcceptInvalidSSLCerts -ForcedConnection
write-log -Message "Connecting to cluster $nxIp"
if ($null -eq (get-ntnxclusterinfo)) {
write-log -message "Cluster connection isn't available, abborting the script"
break
}
else {
write-log -message "Connected to Nutanix cluster $nxIP"
}
?
# Removing previous VMs with the site prefix
$VMs = get-ntnxvm -SearchString $vmprefix
?
Foreach ($vm in $VMs) {
Write-Log -Message "Removing $($vm.vmName) from $nxIP"
$removeVMJobID = Remove-NTNXVirtualMachine -vmid $VM.vmid
# Make sure the job to remove the VM got submitted
if($removeVMJobID){Write-Log -Message "Successfully removed $($VM.vmName) from $nxIP"}
else{
Write-log -sev Error -Message  "Failed to remove $VM.vmName from $nxIP"
}
?
}
?
# Grabbing all available protection domains 
$pds = Get-NTNXProtectionDomain
write-log -message "Getting all Protection Domain Snapshots"
?
foreach ($pd in $pds) {
# Collect Snapshot Information
$snap = Get-NTNXProtectionDomain -Name $pdname | Get-NTNXProtectionDomainSnapshot
write-log -message "Getting the snashot in the specified protection domain"
?
#Restore snapshot
Restore-NTNXEntity -PdName $pdname -SnapshotId $snap[0].snapshotId -VmNamePrefix $vmprefix | out-null
$VMName = $snap.consistencygroups.split('{}')[1]
Write-log -message "Snapshot $PDName restored as $Prefix$vmname"
?
}
# Disconnect from Nutanix Cluster
Disconnect-NTNXCluster -Servers $nxIP
Write-log -message "Disconnecting from cluster $nxIP"

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# kees@nutanix.com

# @kbaggerman on Twitter

# http://blog.myvirtualvision.com

# Created on September, 2019

# Setting parameters for the connection

[CmdletBinding(SupportsShouldProcess = $False, ConfirmImpact = "None") ]

Param(

# Nutanix cluster IP address