python-appassure

A Python wrapper for the AppAssure 5 HTTP API.

AppAssure

Features

Backup, replication and disaster recovery in a single solution

• Restore your entire server and retrieve all of your data in seconds
• Protect your workloads on VMs, physical servers and in the cloud
• Restore to dissimilar systems, physical or virtual
• Recover Microsoft(tm) Exchange, SQL Server(tm) and SharePoint(tm) applications
• Ensure built-in disaster recovery with hot standby VMs

-- Dell.com

AppAssure and Dell

First acquired by Dell in 2012, AppAssure is now a part of Dell Software. Dell AppAssure products (including the DL and DR family of backup appliances) are already a key part of the Dell's award-wining data protection portfolio which includes NetVault Backup and vRanger. With Dell data protection software and appliances, you can match your backup needs to your business and build the most efficient and effective solution for your business.

-- Dell.com

Installation

git clone https://github.com/rshipp/python-appassure.git
cd python-appassure
python setup.py install

Usage

This library is well documented using Python docstrings, so if at any point you get lost, try reading the documentation using Python's built-in help() function, or simply browsing the source code.

The usual method of using the library is:

1. Import the required modules and classes
2. Set up a session object.
3. Pass the session into a new API interface.
4. Use the interface.

Because the API uses a non-standard time format, a few time-related methods are included in the appassure.api.AppAssureAPI class that might come in handy.

Examples

Here's a simple example using the ILocalMountManagement Core interface.

# Import the interface(s) you want to work with, and the session
# manager.
from appassure.core.ILocalMountManagement import ILocalMountManagement
from appassure.session import AppAssureSession

# Set up a session. The same session can be used for multiple
# interfaces.
session = AppAssureSession('myappassure5coreserver', 8006, 'Username',
        'password')

# Pass the session to the interface(s) on creation.
mounts = ILocalMountManagement(session)

# Call methods from the interface. Response data can be accessed
# with object or dictionary syntax.
mounts.getMounts().mountInfo
mounts.getMounts()['mountInfo']

Some methods take simple parameters.

mounts.dismount('my_named_mount')

Others must be passed in either valid XML data, or a dictionary object that will be converted to XML by the the library. Here's an example using raw XML.

mountData = """
  <agentIds>
    <agentId>1627aea5-8e0a-4371-9022-9b504344e724</agentId>
    <agentId>1627aea5-8e0a-4371-9022-9b504344e724</agentId>
  </agentIds>
  <force>true</force>
  <isNightlyJob>true</isNightlyJob>
  <jobId>1627aea5-8e0a-4371-9022-9b504344e724</jobId>
  <jobStartsCount>4294967295</jobStartsCount>
  <nightlyJobTransactionId>1627aea5-8e0a-4371-9022-9b504344e724</nightlyJobTransactionId>
  <mountPoint>String content</mountPoint>
  <recoveryPoint>String content</recoveryPoint>
  <shareAllowedGroup>String content</shareAllowedGroup>
  <shareName>String content</shareName>
  <type>None</type>
  <volumeImagesToMount>
    <string xmlns="http://schemas.microsoft.com/2003/10/Serialization/Arrays">String content</string>
    <string xmlns="http://schemas.microsoft.com/2003/10/Serialization/Arrays">String content</string>
  </volumeImagesToMount>
"""
mounts.startMount(mountData)

Some API methods require data to be in a certain order- in these cases, Python's collections.OrderedDict must be used instead of the built-in dict type. Another example identical to the one above, but using an OrderedDict object:

from collections import OrderedDict

mountData = OrderedDict([
    ('agentIds', {
        'agentId': [
            '1627aea5-8e0a-4371-9022-9b504344e724',
            '1627aea5-8e0a-4371-9022-9b504344e724',
        ],
    }),
    ('isNightlyJob', 'true'),
    ('jobId', '1627aea5-8e0a-4371-9022-9b504344e724'),
    ('mountPoint', 'String content'),
    ('recoveryPoint', 'String content'),
    ('shareAllowedGroup', 'String content'),
    ('shareName', 'String content'),
    ('type', 'None'),
    ('volumeImagesToMount', {
        'string xmlns="http://schemas.microsoft.com/2003/10/Serialization/Arrays"': [
            'String content', 'String content'
        ],
    }),
])
mounts.startMount(mountData)

You might find that you need to pass in or read timestamps from the API. Using the methods built in to the time module of this library can help make that easier. The formatTime(time), deformatTime(string), and reformatTime(string) methods all use Python's datetime module to make dealing with timestamps in the format expected by the AppAssure API easier. Note that all timestamps sent to or recieved from the AppAssure API should be UTC.

import datetime
from appassure import time

time.formatTime(datetime.datetime.utcnow())

Contributing

NOTE: Dell changed the AppAssure documentation, so the script doesn't work anymore. You can still access the docs and build the interfaces manually:

• Core: http://documents.software.dell.com/DOC308890
• Agent: http://documents.software.dell.com/DOC308944

Old info

AppAssure has quite a few of what it calls interfaces available, all of which have been implemented (but not fully tested) at this time. Most of these were semi-automatically generated by the bash script in the tools folder that will pull from the AppAssure documentation and automate most of the implementation process. (You do, however, still need to enter the wrapper XML tag for the XML request body, if that exists.)

If there is no XML request body for a method, just press enter. You will not be prompted for request bodies for methods that use the GET or DELETE HTTP verbs.

Pull requests and issues are welcomed; if you find a bug, please report it!