Vembu StoreGrid Plugin 1.2

[Paul]

Hello,

Due to the community requests (Thread Link) I created a plugin for Vembu's backup solution.

Vembu and StoreGrid are registered trademarks by Vembu Inc. and are not owned by me.

Main purpose of the plugin: Monitoring and Basic Actions over Store Grid Server.

Features:

• View lists of resellers, customers, clients, backups, alarms and events.
  
• View detailed informations for resellers, customers, clients, backups, alarms and events.
  
• Configurable notifications for alarms and events by severity.
  

Supported Commands:

• Activate / disable resellers, customers, clients and backups.
  
• Delete resellers, customer and clients (Recursive delete for resellers and customers is configurable).
  
• Disable web access for resellers, customers and clients. (Note. Because enable web access / update web access password requires a new password to be inputed these commands are not enabled until PC Monitor supports input boxes in the API).
  
• Upgrade trial client to paid client.
  
• Acknowledge and anotate alarms with a hardcoded text (The text will be configurable in the future versions).
  
• Clear alarms (all or a single one) with a hardcoded text (The text will be configurable in the future versions).
  

Alarm commands got disabled since StoreGrid does expose the API calls for them but there is no functionality implemented at this moment.

No client version because of their limited API, if the will update their client API I will implement a plugin for the client too.

There is a chance that some data will be displayed as-received from StoreGrid API because of the lack of documentation. You can improve the display of data by providing me examples of all possible cases for that particular item. For example:

Backup Status:

- 1: Enabled

- 0: Disabled

- 2: Unknown

Thank you for helping improve my plugin.

My release is open-source bound by no license. That being said you can freely modify, distribute, claim as your work, sell and / or include in your copyrighted material as long as it doesn't breach PC Monitor's license or terms and conditions.

Download Link: Click. (Version 1.2).

Changes from 1.1:

• Fixed critical bug where no detailed screen would show because of new Vembu API
  
• Fixed minor formatting problem that was omitted in 1.1
  
• Added more debug logging
  

Changes from 1.0:

• Fixed some formatting problems
  

Any feedback and plugin ideas will be appreciated.

Screenshots:

Thank you for using my plugin!

Paul.

Edited May 22, 2012 by Paul

[JHimmelbauer]

great work!

[marinhd]

Fantastic! Thank you very much. Some feedback.

Under customer details for a customer. Backup space alloted and used not accurate. Ex: Backup space used listed in plugin is 208674807 megabytes. In Storegrid Server it shows for the same customer: 398.02 GB or 407572.48 Mb

In order to delete client backup. Need to enter 4 digit security code... (Not sure if this is possible based on Plugin API design.)

Great job though and I look forward to seeing where this goes as Vembu has definitely showed much interest in this now.

[Marius]

Great plugin. Maybe the PIN can be preset in the future using the plugin configuration screen in PC Monitor?

[Paul]

Under customer details for a customer. Backup space alloted and used not accurate. Ex: Backup space used listed in plugin is 208674807 megabytes. In Storegrid Server it shows for the same customer: 398.02 GB or 407572.48 Mb

In order to delete client backup. Need to enter 4 digit security code... (Not sure if this is possible based on Plugin API design.)

Great job though and I look forward to seeing where this goes as Vembu has definitely showed much interest in this now.

Hello,

Regarding the wrong formatting for backup space alloted this will definately be fixed in the upcoming version. However for deleting a backup does vembu require a 4 didgit pin or you want this to be as a security test only for the plugin?

If PC Monitor API will include this feature you can bet I will include it in my plugin.

Thank you for using my plugin .

Paul.

[marinhd]

I don't think that Vembu includes it though having that as an option in the API from pcmonitor would be great!

I think you need to use the encryption key to delete a backup as that is what I recall from the GUI but not sure about here. I will have to test with something as all jobs I have are production.

Thanks

[Paul]

I can tell you one thing for sure. Vembu's api call on Delete Backup command is requiring only backup id, backup name, client id and client name. If it doesn't work then vembu must fix it on their side too.

[marinhd]

Another great thing to be able to see is the bandwidth used for a backup. Have had times where people complain about slow internet connection and seeing the realtime utilization similar to the network interface traffic. Ability to throttle the connection down. Though I bet this will require API improvements by Vembu.

[Paul]

StoreGrid at this moment can only show current bandwidth throttling rules that are already configured for that particular item. Realtime bandwidth and changes to the throttling rules are not supported by StoreGrid's API.

Edit: New version is scheduled at 05/03/2012.

Updated first post with version 1.1 .

Edited March 5, 2012 by Paul

[Paul]

With the release of Vembu© StoreGrid© 4.2 they have changed the API structure thus making my plugin unusable. I've already fixed the problem and submitted the new version to Mobile PC Monitor. Also I've finished all the fixes at the size formatting problems.

! Warning ! - Do NOT install the plugin version 1.2 on any StoreGrid© Server that is bellow 4.2 as it will not work. ! Warning !

As always if you encounter any problem with my plugin feel free to let me know!

Paul.

[Paul]

With the release of input controls do you have any interest in updating my plugin to support some features like user creation, editing, reports.

If so, what feature are you interested in?

[Wizard17]

Great work!

 

Would it be possible to make a change though to be able to load the plugin more than once, once for every backup-server we have ?

I succeeded doing so by changing the plugin dll-name but then the config seems to tie to the plugin name (or cinternal class?) meaning

if I change the config in one plugin it also changes in the other plugin...

Having one PCMonitor client handle all our backup-servers would be nice...

For now, I'm forced to have one server per PCMonitor client, which is of course a bit cumbersome and confusing which client serves which backup-server...

 

[Paul]

I will implement multi-server functionality on the next version. You should expect a new version during this week.

 

Paul.

[Wizard17]

That would be mega-cool!!!

 

Another question, unrelated though, v1.2 should allow you to get notifications of vembu-alarms ? If yes, how to configure, since I've tried boht unchecking all filter-options aswell as having them checked...

I don't get any notifications however. Browsing alarms, events, resellers, etc. does work...

 

Am I missing something in PCMonitor client itself perhaps ?

[Paul]

No, that alone should work. I will take a look at it when I add the new feature, sounds like a bug.

 

Thanks.

 

Edit: Is there anything else you would like to do from my plugin?

Edited February 7, 2013 by Paul

[Wizard17]

Well, the plugin now gives three folders on the main page of PCMonitor, Reseller, Alarm and Event List...

Perhaps enable a way in the plugin to configure this, like: I'm not so much interrested in the Alarm and eventlist, and would like to trade that space with the bottom mentioned feature.

Second to that, it would be nice if the Folder displayed would show the total amount of used space, eg. Reseller would show total used space for the server,

under there, total space for a customer, etc... Much like total space for a Harddisk is shown right under the item itself...

No Idea if that's at all possible, but that would be very cool :-) These two combined (enable config of this in plugin) would even be cooler...

 

Lastly, if, next to enableing to show reseller, alarm and/or eventlists, it would be even cooler for the first, reseller-list, I could specify a "path" to start from...

Right now, I have to browse into it, like reseller\Default Reseller\Customers to get to the list that I would like to have on the main-page...

All our customers get stored under the default reseller, so being able to start the listing from there would be nice...

Combined with the multi-server stuff I would get a total list of items from all our customers, as they are divided over the different backup-servers...

So, in a blink of an eye, I would then see all customers and their used space. And clicking on one of them would then browse deeper into it like it does now...

 

I'm not so interrested in the event and alarmlists simply because the way Storegrid displays this information is cumbersome...

Having the ability to get a notification from desired alarms/events on the other hand if very useful and would make these lists unnecessary in my humble opinion...

 

Since I'm working for a company that does alot with Storegrid and monitoring such as PCMonitor (we're partners with Vembu and trying to with PCMonitor), my Boss would be interrested in donating some kind

of compensation to you for extending the possibilities of this plugin for that matter. Not in any way as "kind of" a pressure to  make it work this way or something like that, but just to show gratitude for anything

in this kind of direction you can come up with/are able to make happen with the available API's for that matter. As our business grows and number of customers and servers increase,

we are heavily trying to invest and search for ways to improve our services this way. Having our two main areas of service combined in one outstanding tool is certainly a huge pro compared to having seperate

tools for the same jobs ofcourse, both in terms of management and operation...

[Paul]

my Boss would be interrested in donating some kind of compensation to you for extending the possibilities of this plugin for that matter.

Please send my regards to your Boss and please ask him to take the compensation and donate to charity. I like doing my 'extra' work for free thus I will not accept any monetary rewards for my plugins.

I will be looking over the plugin changes over the weekend. Also maybe you can apply some pressure on Vembu to extend their API to support more things because at the moment it's a complete mess and very hard to work with, I've tried multiple times to ask them to add some features for the API but nothing happened.

I will post here an update when I have completed the new version.

Thank you for using my plugin .

Paul.

[Wizard17]

I know for 100% what you mean. I've dealt with their API myself and made a monitoring web service with it, and had to make alot of changes to the standard (non-API) php-files of the webserver in order to get done what I wanted, but since then we have expanded such that it would require a complete rewrite which we simply don't have the time for. Hence the look for other solutions and that's how I stumbled upon PCMonitor and your plugin :-) Which API version are you using ? In other words, are you using the latest ?

[Paul]

If my plugin still works the it's latest. They like to change parameter count for methods when they update breaking my plugin so if it works I'm using latest

Edited February 25, 2013 by Paul

[Wizard17]

Hi Paul,

 

According to Vembu, the latest API is API Version 2010­May­01...

Pretty old to say the least...

 

How's the plugin coming, any news on that front ?

[Paul]

Yes, I have started working on it today. I finished most of it but I will post the updated version tomorrow. Are you interested in any other features (other than the ones you already requested)?

 

Paul

[Wizard17]

Updated version is still 1.2, in other words, I should simply redownload 1.2, or the new version is not online yet ?

 

FOr now, I don't have any more requests.

When I get the new version, I'll test it and post my finding, with or without new requests/changes.

 

Many thanks in advance so far...

 

[Paul]

Update: I did not forget about the plugin update, however it requires some backend changes that require me some extended time to find the best way to do it without over engineering it.

[queeg505]

Quick question on this plugin, I get access correctly and events displayed but when I drill down to the "Client List" level where all my clients servers are and then click on a server name it displays "Invalid Item"  rather than listing the backups?

[Paul]

That is indeed problematic. I am going to need a plugin diagnostic log (trace.log), version of the server and complete steps to reproduce this.

 

To get plugin diagnostics, enable diagnostic logging from Manager -> Settings -> Diagnostics and then click on the Enable Diagnostic Logging. Reproduce the error on the mobile device then go to PC Monitor's installation directory, clear the file trace.log of any personal data it may contain then please sent it to me via PM on this forum.

 

I will do my best to repair this problem in the upcoming release.