Unitrends MCP Server

An MCP server for the REST API of a Unitrends backup appliance (Recovery Series / Unitrends Backup). It lets an AI agent read the systems an appliance manages, protected assets, running and finished jobs, restorable backups, open alerts and backup success rates and, after explicit confirmation, queue a restore.

• Transport: MCP Streamable HTTP at POST /mcp, health probe at GET /health

• Stateless and multi-tenant: credentials arrive on every request as HTTP headers and are never stored; the appliance login token is obtained per request and discarded with it

• Python 3.12, uv, FastMCP, httpx

• License: Apache-2.0, Copyright 2026 MSPbots.ai

Authentication headers

Where to get them:

• Use (or create) a dedicated user in the appliance's user settings (menu names vary by appliance version). A role that can view systems, assets, jobs, backups and alerts covers the read tools; restores need a role that may run restores.

• The base URL is the address you open the appliance's web UI with. The appliance must be reachable over HTTPS from the environment that runs this server.

• Appliances ship with a self-signed certificate; either install a trusted certificate or send X-Unitrends-Verify-TLS: false.

How credentials are sent to Unitrends: the server calls POST {base}/api/login with the user name and password, then sends every API call with the returned token in the AuthToken header. A 401 triggers one fresh login. Values that look like unresolved templates (${...}) are treated as missing.

A request to /mcp without the three required headers gets HTTP 401 naming the missing ones; a non-https URL or an invalid X-Unitrends-Verify-TLS value gets HTTP 400.

Related MCP server: mcp-cohesity

Tools

All tools return a JSON string. applianceId is a system id from unitrends_list_appliances; omitting it where it is optional covers every system the login can see. Dates are ISO 8601 (2026-06-01 or 2026-06-01T00:00:00Z).

type for jobs is one of backup, restore, replication, archive, ir, flr, certification, backup-copy.

Errors come back as a JSON envelope instead of an exception:

{"error": {"code": "unauthorized", "message": "Unitrends rejected the username or password (login failed)", "retryable": false}}

code is one of not_configured, unauthorized, not_found, invalid_argument, rate_limited, upstream_error; messages from the appliance's result array are passed through. Reads are retried with backoff on 429, 5xx and network errors; the restore request is never retried.

Run locally

uv sync
uv run python -m unitrends_mcp          # listens on 0.0.0.0:8080

or with Docker:

docker build --platform linux/amd64 -t unitrends-mcp:dev .
docker run --rm -p 8080:8080 unitrends-mcp:dev

Configuration (environment variables, all optional): MCP_HTTP_HOST (default 0.0.0.0), MCP_HTTP_PORT (default 8080), LOG_LEVEL (default INFO). Credentials are never read from the environment.

Testing example

# list tools
curl -s http://localhost:8080/mcp \
  -H "Content-Type: application/json" \
  -H "Accept: application/json, text/event-stream" \
  -H "X-Unitrends-Base-URL: https://backup.example.com" \
  -H "X-Unitrends-Username: your-username" \
  -H "X-Unitrends-Password: your-password" \
  -d '{"jsonrpc":"2.0","id":1,"method":"tools/list","params":{}}'

# backup success rate for the last 7 days
curl -s http://localhost:8080/mcp \
  -H "Content-Type: application/json" \
  -H "Accept: application/json, text/event-stream" \
  -H "X-Unitrends-Base-URL: https://backup.example.com" \
  -H "X-Unitrends-Username: your-username" \
  -H "X-Unitrends-Password: your-password" \
  -H "X-Unitrends-Verify-TLS: false" \
  -d '{"jsonrpc":"2.0","id":2,"method":"tools/call","params":{"name":"unitrends_get_success_rate","arguments":{}}}'

Unit tests (no network access needed):

uv run pytest

Delivery notes

• Built on the documented appliance API. Every call uses the endpoints in the official Unitrends API documentation: /api/login with the AuthToken header, /systems, /clients, /jobs/active, /jobs/history, /backups/catalog, /restore/full, /alerts/open and /summary/status.

• Tool count (11). Tool names and required parameters are unchanged; some tools gained optional filters (applianceId, type, limit, severity).

• Restore confirmation. Older versions asked for confirmation with an interactive prompt, which a stateless gateway cannot relay, so restores could not run there. Now unitrends_queue_restore returns a preview unless called with confirm=true; the tool description tells the agent to set it only after the user approves that exact backup and target. It is the only write tool and is annotated destructive.

• Date ranges default to the last 7 days instead of prompting; job history honours the requested range.

License

Apache License 2.0 - see LICENSE and NOTICE.