Veeam RESTful API & Amazon Alexa

Disclaimer

This project is a private one and not supported by Veeam
I don't have any programming skills. Everthing was put together using copy & paste and trial and error.
This is just a demo, but it can easily be extended with more features.

Purpose

I like Alexa and since I am working at Veeam I thought why not use our RESTful API to use with Alexa :)

This is only a demo how to consume the Veeam RESTful API with Amazon Alexa.

Demo

Overview

Local Setup

Download ngrok
Launch ngrok on a machine that has access to Veeam Backup Enterprise Manager Port 9398
```
ngrok http 5000
```

This will expose localhost:5000 to the public internet. 3. Download and install latest version of Python 3.x 4. Use pip to install required python modules:

pip install requests flask flask_ask unidecode

Download veeam-alexa-demo.py and veeam-alexa.config to the machine that runs ngrok

Edit veeam-alexa.config with your Veeam Backup Enterprise Manager details:

server = "enterprisemanager.dns"
port = 9398
verifyssl = False
admin = "hostname\\Administrator"
password = "verysecurepassword"

Start the Python flask app
```
python veeam-alexa.py
```

AWS Alexa Setup

Goto https://developer.amazon.com/edw/home.html and sign in / create a new developer account
Select Alexa Skills Kit and hit Get started
Hit Add a New Skill
Skill information: Skill Type: Custom Interaction Model
- Language: English (U.S.)
- Name: choose a name
- Invocation Name: veam (write it this way if you want to call the skill using "Veeam"; you can select any other invocation name of course)
- Hit Save and then Next
Interaction model: Launch Skill Builder
- Intent Schema - open the Code Editor on the left
- Use veeam-intent-schema-ENGL.json
- Save & Build Model
Go to Configuration (top right menue button)
- Service Endpoint Type: HTTPS
- Default: use the ngrok https address (step 2 in Local Setup; example: https://19a1e1ff.ngrok.io)
- Provide geographical region endpoints?: No
- Account Linking: No
- Permissions: leave as is (default)
- Hit Next
SSL Certificate
- Select second option: " My development endpoint is a sub-domain of a domain that has a wildcard certificate from a certificate authority"
- Hit Next
Test - Enter Utterances:
- Give me an overview
- How many jobs there are
- Did my jobs run
- How much free space is left
- Give me an overview about my repositories
- How many jobs are running right now
- How large was last night's backup