Zerto is simple to install and simple to use, but it gets better with automation! While performing tasks within the UI can quickly become second nature, you can quickly find yourself spending a lot of time repeating the same tasks over and over again. I get it, repetition builds memory, but it gets old. As your environment grows, so does the amount of time it takes to do things manually. Why do things manually when there are better ways to spend your time?
Zerto provides great documentation for automation via PowerShell and REST APIs, along with Zerto Cmdlets that you can download and install to add-on to PowerShell to be able to do more from the CLI. One of my favorite things is that the team has provided functional sample scripts that are pretty much ready to go; so you don’t have to develop them for common tasks, including:
- Querying and Reporting
- Automating Deployment
- Automating VM Protection (including vRealize Orchestrator)
- Bulk Edits to VPGs or even NIC settings, including Re-IP and PortGroup changes
- Offsite Cloning
For automated failover testing, Zerto includes an Orchestrator for vSphere, which I will cover in a separate set of posts.
To get started with PowerShell and RESTful APIs, head over to the Technical Documentation section of My Zerto and download the Zerto PowerShell Cmdlets (requires MyZerto Login) and the following guides to get started, and stay tuned for future posts where I try these scripts out and offer a little insight to how to run them, and also learn how I’ve used them!
- Rest APIs Online Help – Zerto Virtual Replication
- The REST APIs provide a way to automate many DR related tasks without having to use the Zerto UI.
- REST API Reference Guide – Zerto Virtual Replication
- This guide will help you understand how to use the ZVR RESTful APIs.
- REST API Reference Guide – Zerto Cloud Manager
- This guide explains how to use the ZCM RESTful APIs.
- PowerShell Cmdlets Guide – Zerto Virtual Replication
- Installation and use guide for the ZVR Windows PowerShell cmdlets.
- White Paper – Automating Zerto Virtual Replication with PowerShell and REST APIs
- This document includes an overview of how to use ZVR REST APIs with PowerShell to automate your virtual infrastructure. This is the document that also includes several functional scripts that take the hard work out of everyday tasks.
If you’ve automated ZVR using PowerShell or REST APIs, I’d like to hear how you’re using it and how it’s changed your overall BCDR strategy.
I myself am still getting started with automating ZVR, but am really excited to share my experiences, and hopefully, help others along the way! In fact, I’ve already been working with bulk VRA deployment, so check back or follow me on twitter @EugeneJTorres for updates!
Such APIs are crucial, but with the mantra of the product being simplicity I would suggest this leads to a lazy GUI. For such an expensive product that emphasises simplicity, how does that align with an ability to do simple things through the GUI? Do you know how tricky it is to get a small team of guys to all learn the API?! Features like multi VM run books, reports, mass setting changes, VPG defaults, etc should all be in the product GUI, but aren’t. Lazy development may I suggest?
I’m looking at the API for pulling out core items like VPG, source and protected site etc for vSphere tagging, if you have any specific code examples floating around I would be interested in seeing that. I need to build out reporting capabilities for both Operational and charge-back models in vRealize, great post as usual Gene.