📺 ppdmwatch

Real-time terminal monitoring dashboard for Dell PowerProtect Data Manager — the nsrwatch equivalent for PPDM

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Overview

ppdmwatch polls the PPDM REST API every few seconds and renders a live, color-coded curses dashboard in your terminal — showing job health, storage system capacity, running sessions, and active alerts. It also runs as a background daemon that writes rotating logs and fires threshold checks automatically.

If you have used nsrwatch for NetWorker, this is the same idea for PowerProtect Data Manager.

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Features

🖥️ Interactive TUI

Panel	What It Shows
📋 Server Summary	Protection + system jobs for the past 24 h — total · running · OK · failed · canceled · queued
💾 Storage Systems	Every registered Data Domain — name · health status · % capacity used
▶️ Running Sessions	Live activity list — ID · type · status · asset name · progress
🔔 Messages & Alerts	Color-coded feed — CRITICAL (red) · WARNING (yellow) · INFO (white)

⚙️ Background Daemon

Capability	Description
🔄 Auto-polling	Configurable interval (default 5 s TUI / 30 s daemon)
📁 Rotating logs	Up to 5 × 10 MB log files under a configurable log directory
🚨 Threshold alerts	Fires on critical alerts, failed jobs, and storage > 85 %
🤖 AI alert summaries	Claude Haiku integration — structured tool use forces a {root_cause, action} pair on failures (5-min cooldown). Predictive mode fires when failed jobs or max storage % climb 3 consecutive polls, asking Claude to predict what breaks next
🏥 Health endpoint	GET /health HTTP endpoint (default port 8080) returns JSON status — HTTP 200 when connected, 503 when not. Designed for systemd ExecStartPost health checks and NSSM monitors
🐧 systemd-ready	Drop-in unit file + one-shot install.sh for Linux
🪟 Windows support	NSSM wrapper instructions included

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Requirements

• Python 3.8+
• Dell PPDM 19.10+ (REST API v2)
• requests, urllib3
• anthropic (optional — enables AI alert summaries via --ai-key)

pip install -r requirements.txt

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Getting Started

# 1. Clone
git clone https://github.com/Moodswing9/ppdm-watch.git
cd ppdm-watch

# 2. Install dependencies
pip install -r requirements.txt

# 3. Launch interactive TUI
python ppdmwatch.py --host ppdm01.example.com --username admin --password secret

Self-signed certificates? Add --no-ssl-verify — common in lab and on-premises environments.

Background Daemon

python ppdmwatch.py \
    --host ppdm01.example.com \
    --username admin \
    --password secret \
    --daemon \
    --poll 30 \
    --log-dir /var/log/ppdmwatch \
    --no-ssl-verify

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TUI Preview

 PPDM WATCH | CONNECTED | Health: HEALTHY (98%) | Updated: 2026-04-28 09:15:42 UTC | Press q to quit
────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────
┌─ Server Summary ───────────────────────────┐┌─ Storage Systems ───────────────────────────┐
│ Protection Jobs (24h): Total: 312  Run:  2 ││ dd9900-a.example.com     HEALTHY   41.2% used│
│   OK: 308  Fail:   1  Canceled:   1        ││ dd9900-b.example.com     HEALTHY   38.7% used│
│ System Jobs (24h):     Total:  18  Run:  0 ││                                              │
│   OK:  18  Fail:   0  Canceled:   0        ││                                              │
│ Queued: 0  |  OK w/ Errors: 2              ││                                              │
│ Critical Alerts: 0  |  Warnings: 1  |  Info: 4                                            │
└────────────────────────────────────────────┘└──────────────────────────────────────────────┘
┌─ Running / Queued Sessions (2) ────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┐
│  Activity ID                          Type            Status       Asset                   │
│  a1b2c3d4-...                         PROTECT         RUNNING      prod-k8s-namespace      │
│  e5f6g7h8-...                         REPLICATE       RUNNING      oracle-db-01            │
└────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┘
┌─ Messages & Alerts ────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┐
│  [WARNING] Storage system dd9900-a nearing capacity threshold                              │
│  [INFO] Scheduled maintenance window begins at 22:00 UTC                                   │
└────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┘

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All Options

Flag	Default	Description
--host	—	PPDM hostname or IP (required)
--username / -u	—	PPDM username (required)
--password / -p	—	PPDM password (required)
--port	8443	PPDM API port
--poll	5	Polling interval in seconds
--daemon / -d	off	Run as background daemon instead of TUI
--log-dir	/var/log/ppdmwatch	Log directory (daemon mode)
--no-ssl-verify	off	Disable SSL certificate verification
--ai-key KEY	$ANTHROPIC_API_KEY	Anthropic API key for AI alert summaries (omit to disable)
--health-port	8080	Port for GET /health HTTP endpoint (daemon mode only)
--export [FILE]	—	One-shot JSON snapshot — authenticate, collect all data, write to FILE (or stdout if omitted), and exit

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PPDM API Endpoints Used

Panel	Method	Endpoint
Authentication	POST	/api/v2/login
Job Summary	GET	/api/v2/activities
Running Sessions	GET	/api/v2/activities (status filter)
Storage Systems	GET	/api/v2/storage-systems
Alerts	GET	/api/v2/alerts
System Health	GET	/api/v2/system-health

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Project Structure

ppdm-watch/
├── ppdmwatch.py          # Main application — TUI, daemon, API client
├── tests/
│   └── test_core.py      # Pytest suite — 15 unit tests for core logic
├── ppdmwatch.service     # systemd unit file for Linux deployments
├── install.sh            # One-shot Linux installer (venv, user, credentials, service)
├── requirements.txt      # requests, urllib3 (+ optional anthropic)
└── .env.example          # Credential template

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Installation

Linux (systemd)

chmod +x install.sh
sudo ./install.sh
sudo systemctl start ppdmwatch
sudo systemctl status ppdmwatch
sudo journalctl -u ppdmwatch -f

The installer:

• Creates a dedicated ppdmwatch system user
• Sets up a Python venv at /opt/ppdmwatch/venv
• Stores credentials in /etc/ppdmwatch/env (mode 600)
• Installs and enables the systemd unit

Windows (NSSM)

pip install requests urllib3

nssm install ppdmwatch python `
    "C:\ppdmwatch\ppdmwatch.py" `
    "--host ppdm01 -u admin -p secret" `
    "--daemon --log-dir C:\ppdmwatch\logs --no-ssl-verify --poll 30"

nssm start ppdmwatch

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Claude Code Plugin

Install as a Claude Code plugin to get /ppdm-status directly in your terminal:

npx skills add Moodswing9/ppdm-watch -g

This registers the skill and command globally so you can run /ppdm-status from any Claude Code session.

Command	What it does
/ppdm-status	AI briefing from daemon logs — Status · Current State · Active Issues · Trend · Next Action
/ppdm-status --log-dir /opt/ppdmwatch/logs --lines 500	Read from a custom log directory
/ppdm-status --health-port 9090	Poll the live /health endpoint on a non-default port

The skill auto-activates in Claude Code when you ask about PPDM job failures, daemon alerting, curses TUI layout, predictive trend logic, or threshold configuration — no command needed. Requires ANTHROPIC_API_KEY and pip install anthropic.

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More from Moodswing9

Repo	What it does
networker-ppdm	Python REST API clients, unified backupctl CLI, and Claude Code skill for NetWorker, PPDM & Data Domain
ppdm-es-troubleshooter	Browser-based diagnostic dashboard for PPDM Elasticsearch errors — 10 modules, 7 guided workflows, AI Diagnose
claude-deck-generator	AI presentation generator — prompt to .pptx / .html in seconds, powered by Claude AI

👉 Full portfolio: moodswing9.github.io

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License

This project is licensed under the MIT License — see LICENSE for details.

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Built by Moodswing9 · Portfolio