Ask Infra
Ask Infra is an AI assistant built into the IaaS Portal. You can ask natural-language questions about your infrastructure - virtual machines, cloud resources, job history, incidents, and more - and receive answers drawn directly from live platform data.
To open Ask Infra, log into the IaaS Portal at itportal.netapp.com and navigate to IaaS --> Ask Infra at the top.
Starting a conversation
When you open Ask Infra for the first time, the chat area is empty and a set of suggested prompts is displayed. Click any suggestion to send it immediately, or type your own question in the text box at the bottom and press Enter to submit.
Press Shift+Enter to insert a line break without sending the message.
During a response
After you send a message, the assistant begins streaming its reply in real time. If the assistant needs to query live platform data (for example, to look up a VM by name or fetch job statistics), a brief tool indicator appears while the lookup is in progress. The indicator disappears once the data has been retrieved and the assistant continues composing the response.
To cancel a response that is in progress, click the Stop button that appears in the input area while streaming is active.
If a message fails to send, a Retry option appears so you can resubmit without retyping.
Conversation history
All conversations are saved automatically and given a title derived from the first message. To browse previous conversations, click the History button in the top-right area of the page. Select any conversation in the drawer to reload it.
To start a new conversation, click New Chat in the top-right area (or press Ctrl+N). To clear the current chat view without creating a new conversation, click the Clear icon next to New Chat.
To delete a conversation from history, open the History drawer and use the delete icon next to the conversation.
Permissions
Ask Infra respects your RBAC permissions. The assistant can only retrieve data you are authorized to view. If you ask about a resource or category you do not have access to, the assistant will indicate that the information is unavailable rather than returning incorrect data.
Ask Infra is read-only in the current version. It cannot create, modify, or delete any resources. All write operations - such as power actions, resizes, and tag updates - must be performed through the standard portal workflows under IaaS --> VM Management.
Example queries
The following examples show the kinds of questions you can ask, organized by topic. Natural-language phrasing is flexible - you do not need to match these examples exactly.
Virtual machines
| Example | What it returns |
|---|---|
| How many VMs do we have? | Total VM count across all providers |
| Show AWS inventory by region | VM counts grouped by AWS region |
| Look up vmwcivapp12-prd | Full details for the named VM - provider, state, tags, account |
| List OCI instances in Phoenix region | OCI VMs filtered to a specific region |
| Check VM stats by provider | Breakdown of VM counts per cloud provider (AWS, Azure, OCI, VMware) |
| Show VMs for app code MYAPP | VMs filtered to a specific application code |
| What is the current state of my-vm-name? | Power state and details for a specific VM |
Cloud resources
You can ask for live provider-level details about a specific resource when you have its native ID.
| Example | What it returns |
|---|---|
| Get details for i-0abc123def456 | Live EC2 instance details from AWS |
| Show OCI instance ocid1.instance.oc1... | Live OCI compute instance details |
| Look up VMware VM by UUID 421abc... | Live vSphere VM details |
The assistant will not guess or infer provider instance IDs. Provide the exact native ID (for example, an AWS instance ID beginning with i-) when requesting live cloud resource details.
Job history
| Example | What it returns |
|---|---|
| What are my recent jobs? | Your most recently submitted operations |
| Are there any jobs currently running? | All pending or running jobs across the platform |
| Show failed jobs from last week | Jobs filtered by failed status and a date range |
| What happened with job abc-123? | Full details and current status for a specific job ID |
| How many jobs ran successfully this month? | Job statistics filtered by status and date range |
| Show jobs submitted by jsmith | Job history for a specific user (requires elevated permissions) |
Incidents
| Example | What it returns |
|---|---|
| Are there any open incidents? | All currently open incidents |
| Show critical incidents this month | Incidents filtered by severity and date range |
| What incidents are linked to job abc-123? | The incident associated with that job |
| Give me a summary of recent incident activity | Incident counts grouped by status and severity |
| What are the comments on incident INC-456? | All comments logged on a specific incident |
Platform dashboard
| Example | What it returns |
|---|---|
| What is the current platform health? | Service health status and operational success rate |
| How many jobs ran in the last 24 hours? | Job counts from the most recent 24-hour window |
My profile and permissions
| Example | What it returns |
|---|---|
| What are my roles? | Your RBAC roles and group memberships |
| What permissions do I have? | Your full list of RBAC permissions |
| Show my onboarded applications | Applications you have registered on the portal |
The categories above reflect the data Ask Infra can access based on your permissions. If a particular category is not returning results, verify that your account has the appropriate RBAC role assigned. Contact the Platform Engineering team if you need access expanded.
Available MCP tools
Ask Infra is backed by a set of MCP (Model Context Protocol) tools that the AI uses to retrieve live data. The tools are grouped by integration category. Tool access is restricted via user RBAC controls. You may not have access to all Tools.
Inventory
| Tool | Description |
|---|---|
get_inventory | Returns a comprehensive infrastructure inventory summary organized by cloud provider, with breakdowns by region, account, and other dimensions. Supports optional filtering by provider (AWS, Azure, OCI, VMware) and can include a detailed VM list. |
lookup_vm | Looks up a specific VM by name or native instance ID across all providers. Returns full details including provider, state, region, account, and tags. |
Application
| Tool | Description |
|---|---|
get_vms_by_app | Returns all VMs associated with a given application name. Optionally filterable by OS type (Windows or Linux). |
aggregate_vms_by_application | Returns all applications with VM counts, broken down by Windows and Linux. |
get_app_summary | Returns a summary for a specific application including VM counts and OS breakdown. |
get_os_vm_count | Returns total VM counts grouped by OS type across the inventory. |
AWS
| Tool | Description |
|---|---|
call_aws | Executes an AWS CLI command and returns the result. Commands must start with aws. |
suggest_aws_commands | Suggests relevant AWS CLI commands from a natural-language query. |
list_aws_org_accounts | Lists all AWS accounts in the NetApp organization with their IDs and names. |
call_aws_org | Executes an AWS CLI command against a specific named organization account. |
call_aws_config | Executes an AWS Config CLI command for resource configuration queries. |
Azure
| Tool | Description |
|---|---|
run_azure_cli | Executes an Azure CLI command, optionally against a specified subscription. Handles service principal authentication automatically. |
OCI
| Tool | Description |
|---|---|
get_oci_instances_all_regions | Returns OCI compute instances across all regions (Phoenix and Ashburn) and all compartments. Uses the inventory database cache for fast results; falls back to live OCI CLI if the database is unavailable. |
get_oci_compartments | Lists all OCI compartments in the tenancy. |
run_oci_command | Executes an OCI CLI command and returns the result. |
get_oci_commands | Lists available OCI CLI services and top-level commands. |
get_oci_command_help | Returns the help output for a specific OCI CLI command. |
VMware
| Tool | Description |
|---|---|
find_vm_across_vcenters | Searches for a VM by name across all configured vCenters. |
run_vcenter_command | Executes a govc command against a specific named vCenter. |
list_vcenters | Lists all configured vCenters. |
ServiceNow
| Tool | Description |
|---|---|
query_netapp_servicenow | Queries the NetApp ServiceNow CMDB using a SWQL-style filter string and returns matching CI records. |
SolarWinds
| Tool | Description |
|---|---|
get_solarwinds_health | Returns node health status from SolarWinds Orion, with optional filtering by node name or status. |
query_solarwinds | Runs a pre-built SolarWinds query by category (nodes, alerts, performance, interfaces, volumes, events). |
aggregate_solarwinds | Returns aggregated SolarWinds statistics such as node counts grouped by status or vendor. |
execute_swql_query | Executes a raw SWQL (SolarWinds Query Language) query and returns the results. |
Email
| Tool | Description |
|---|---|
send_simple_email | Sends a plain-text email via the corporate SMTP relay. |
send_ai_response_email | Formats and sends an AI-generated response as an email. |
create_csv_and_email | Converts a list of records to a CSV file and emails it as an attachment. |
convert_text_to_csv_and_email | Converts text-formatted tabular data to a CSV and emails it. |
send_email_with_attachments | Sends an email with one or more file attachments. |
The IaaS Portal is maintained by the Platform Engineering team.