You could be forgiven for thinking … “Dang, that’s a seriously long blog post title!” You’d be right, and there’s a good reason for it.
It’s true to say that Nutanix has always had an extremely strong focus on simplification and friction removal. One of the slogans/taglines that’s been used extensively over the years is “Uncompromisingly Simple”, in fact.
Beyond simplicity itself, Nutanix Calm opens up an enormous range of possibilities, even if you are focusing only on automation. Prototyping applications, blueprinting small- and large-scale app designs, making sure the integration between developers and admin staff is as painless as possible, publishing completed apps to the people that really need them; the users. All are core to Nutanix Calm.
History?
However, those that have been with us throughout this journey will have noticed one thing that’s been “missing”. The reasons why are beyond the scope of this article but there’s been little talk about automating Calm itself. Sure, we can automate and deploy applications quickly from within Calm, but what about controlling and automating Calm from outside Calm? You can probably see where we’re heading … even though this article’s title has probably made that obvious, already. 🙂
Nutanix Calm APIs
Today, Friday 6th September 2019, is when the introductory paragraph becomes relevant. The article title is long because … well … today’s been a long time coming!
I’m happy to finally say the Nutanix Calm API docs are live!
The possibilities that are now available along with this announcement are huge for us. It means we can do things like the following in code:
- Integrate the control of Calm blueprints into external scripts or applications
- Use conditionals to control when a blueprint gets launched
- Use conditionals to control which blueprint gets launched
- Run applications actions on demand by calling the appropriate API from wherever we like
It’s also true that, while APIs as an overall “thing” are definitely nothing new, the ability to automate the automation platform is a critical step in controlling infrastructure.
Check out the documentation
As with all our product-related API documentation, the Nutanix Calm API documentation is available through the direct link you just read or through the API Reference page on the Nutanix.dev Developer Portal.
Existing resources
Beyond the Nutanix Calm API documentation itself, there are already a couple of articles on Nutanix.dev that cover some of the API’s capabilities:
- Launch a Nutanix Calm blueprint via API – Part 1
- Launch a Nutanix Calm blueprint via API – Part 2 (related code samples)
- NutanixDev code samples repository on GitHub
Thanks for taking the time to read this long-winded announcement – it’s an exciting time and we’re looking forward to seeing what our customers come up with next.