{"id":9404,"date":"2020-03-30T10:12:00","date_gmt":"2020-03-30T00:12:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/nsrd.info\/blog\/?p=9404"},"modified":"2020-03-30T10:12:03","modified_gmt":"2020-03-30T00:12:03","slug":"basics-finding-unprotected-virtual-machines-with-networker","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/nsrd.info\/blog\/2020\/03\/30\/basics-finding-unprotected-virtual-machines-with-networker\/","title":{"rendered":"Basics \u2013\u00a0Finding Unprotected Virtual Machines with NetWorker"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Most environments these days have a high percentage of virtualisation. It’s not uncommon to see 90% or more of all systems within an environment virtualised, so confirming all those resources are protected is critical.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Within the NetWorker GUI, it’s quite simple to see which virtual machines are protected. Using the HTML5 GUI for instance, you can manually scan through the resources for a vCenter server to see their protected status:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"
Manually reviewing protection status list<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

The steps shown above are:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

  1. Click “Protection” in the left-hand pane.<\/li>
  2. Click “VMware vCenters” under Protection.<\/li>
  3. Select the vCenter server you want to view the inventory for.<\/li><\/ol>\n\n\n\n

    You can then scroll through the inventory and visually see the virtual machines that are protected or not \u2013 a virtual machine shown in blue, bold text, with a dot, is protected. A grey virtual machine is not a member of a protection policy.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

    You can also get the NetWorker GUI to only show you the protected, or unprotected guests:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

    \"\"
    Manually listing only the unprocted clients<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

    The steps shown above are:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

    1. Click “Protection” in the left-hand pane.<\/li>
    2. Click “VMware vCenters” under Protection.<\/li>
    3. Select the vCenter server you want to view the inventory for.<\/li>
    4. Click the filter option, and change it from “All” to “Unprotected”.<\/li><\/ol>\n\n\n\n

      By applying the “Unprotected” filter, the only<\/em> virtual machines listed in the inventory are the unprotected ones.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

      But what about doing it from the command line? Well, for that, you’ll have to leverage the NetWorker REST API. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

      To check that out, I’ve written a Perl script that you can use to poll a NetWorker server to retrieve a list of unprotected virtual machines. (This assumes you’ve got the “curl” utility on your system, and also requires the JSON Perl module installed.) Since you need to authenticate against a NetWorker server to retrieve configuration details from the REST API, this prompts you for the server, username and password. If running this in a production environment, you might want to reconfigure that process for greater security, but as a proof of concept, you’ll get the idea.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

      Here’s an example output from the script:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

      [Sun Mar 29 15:29:28]\n [\u2022  ~\/projects\/util-Perl  \u2022]\n pmdg@hala \n $ .\/list-unprotected-vms.pl <\/strong>\n Find Unprotected Virtual Machines\n Server? orilla.turbamentis.int<\/strong>\n Username? pmdg<\/strong>\n Password? SuperSecretPassword<\/em><\/strong>\n 39 Unprotected Virtual Machines:\n     oaktier.turbamentis.int:2kpro\n     oaktier.turbamentis.int:2kpro_recovery\n     oaktier.turbamentis.int:aal\n     oaktier.turbamentis.int:aal_Backup\n     oaktier.turbamentis.int:adamantium\n     oaktier.turbamentis.int:binar\n     oaktier.turbamentis.int:cent38\n     oaktier.turbamentis.int:centaur<\/pre>\n\n\n\n
      (Since you can have multiple vCenter servers protected by NetWorker, the script provides output in the format vCenterServer:VMName<\/em>.)<\/p>\n\n\n\n
      The script used can be downloaded from here<\/a><\/strong>. You’ll need an appropriately configured Perl environment to run in, but it should give you an idea of how simply you can pull this data out of NetWorker.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
      Most environments these days have a high percentage of virtualisation. It’s not uncommon to see 90% or more of all…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":9405,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[16,1357],"tags":[1249,1087],"class_list":["post-9404","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-networker","category-vproxy","tag-networker","tag-vmware"],"aioseo_notices":[],"aioseo_head":"\n\t\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t