API Roadmap - CSPs and Enterprise

[benyoung]

I posted about this over a year ago and i am still seeing a lot of threads with a similar theme, or end up this way which is coverage issues with the API where operations do not exist or are incomplete. It appears to me that the API development is still almost entirely pinned to Enterprise Manager product and some of the newer cloud connect portal type applications.

It would be great to get some information if possible here about the roadmap, how it is decided, again something i have asked about - is there a working group to consult customers either Enterprise or SP's such as myself to see what we are doing with the product and what might be a useful additions to make so we can provide more functionality to our customers. I for one would be very interested in being part of such a group.

I will start a list below; Some are semi-historic (from my post in Feb last year) are may actually be added / updated in the last couple of v9 updates but it would be good to see what others think are missing

1. creating jobs (not via a clone..)
2. create replication jobs
3. edit replication jobs
4. creating failover plans
5. edit a failover plan (in a useful way not just name and description, everyting under <failoverplaninfo> node)
6. useful failover job triggering - partial etc
7. better filtering and search capability
8. json support
9. administrator type tasks view/lookup so an admin can view and control if required tasks created by other logon sessions (even if its from the same user)
10. query cloud connect job status/sessions info from tenants

I am happy to maintain a list here and or discuss with anyone with similar roadblocks from Veeam - either way interested in hearing from others.

[benyoung]

* Tape / Secondary Destination Management
* Copy jobs exposed as first class citizens

[lasseoe]

In my opinion, all modern software products should have an API first approach, by that I mean if I can do it through a GUI I should also be able to do it through the API. Lots of new'ish (within the last 2-10 years) products will actually have their GUIs utilize their own API, it's far smarter as you don't have to duplicate code and maintain the logic in several places.

[benyoung]

Agreed lasseoe - although I do get it from there perspective where by the product has been around for a number of years and at that time the priority would have been pretty low I suspect and an API first model probably was a step too far.

However, in my opinion the API has lagged too far behind now with no major changes from what I can tell in recent years and certainly a long way off parity or even close to parity with the Powershell side of things due to it's specific use case to support the enterprise manager web client. Although powershell can be made to "work" by wrapping a roll your own api solution around powershell is far from the ideal consumption model especially from a cloud service provider who wants to automate as much as possible.

Fingers crossed there is something going on in the background to modernise it and bring it up in line with the current feature set or atleast a step in the right direction with a few key features

[onthax]

+1 to all of the above, as we are starting to integrate veeam B&R into our automation and other products, finding the API severely lacking on some simple functionality.

[anthonyspiteri79]

Hey all, seems like this old thread has been brought back to life Timing is everything and we certainly understand the current challenges with the existing API, but you can see from our work with Veeam Backup for Office 365 and Veeam Availability Console that we are taking the API First approach seriously. As Ben mentioned, back-porting that into the core platform is in it's self a challenge but something we are aware of. As part of the Product Strategy team we field many requests for product enhancements...APIs are never far away from the top.

[benyoung]

Awesome thanks Anthony I am glad this is still the way it's heading!

[david.plenker]

Do you have any information about the progress on API development? Perhaps a road map for improvements and "new" functions to implemented, such as creating backup jobs?

[nielsengelen]

Hi David, currently there is no roadmap yet available for changes to the API however as Anthony said we are aware of the requests and are listening. If you could list the things you would want to see, that would be great.

[david.plenker]

At the moment we are missing the create job option and json support. The machines we would like to create jobs for are tenant VMs in vCloud and we are making a simple web UI for the tenants to toggle backup with two different retention policies. The backup must be vCloud aware and also backup the vApp. Powershell is the only tool making this possible right now, but Powershell is quite slow and brings some limitations in what platform we use for our own API.

[nielsengelen]

JSON support has been added in update 4.

From the what's new:

Code: Select all

RESTful API
• Added JSON support.
• Added RESTful API coverage for viewing and managing agent-based jobs and their backups.

[spine]

JSON support is great, when will the api documentation be updated with the new features?

[benyoung]

I believe it is still there already - you just need to set the accept header type to start pushing back and forth using JSON payloads.
The documentation however only shows the example payloads as XML, not sure if there are any plans to add both examples to the docs in the future, hopefully

[nielsengelen]

I will let our technical writers know about your request to add JSON output response to the documentation.

[SteelContainer]

+1 for adding 'backup to tape' support to the enterprise manager api.
We heavily use the api for management, billing and alerting and it seems odd to be missing a job type. We are also seeing some increased demand for backups to tape due to ransomware fears.

[oleg.feoktistov]

Thanks, noted!

[swinner]

It's an older thread but as far as i sill missing the Backup to Tape support in the Veeam Enterprise Manager Rest API.

[oleg.feoktistov]

Correct, tape support is not added to EM REST API as we didn't see a high demand for automating it via REST. Thanks!

[dacuna]

Hello oleg.feoktistov ,

Are you saying there's never going to be API support to do Backup to tape? While many companies wish to move away from tapes and backup to cloud, companies like mine still use tape backups. It'll be great if we could have that being supported through API.

Thank you

[oleg.feoktistov]

Hi Daniel,

Not through EM REST API as we decided not to develop it further. However, we switch focus to VBR REST API now, so with the enough demand this feature has good chances to make it there.

Thanks,
Oleg