---
title: "VAST Admin MCP"
slug: "vast-admin-mcp"
description: "Manage VAST clusters effortlessly with VAST Admin MCP, an open-source, AI-driven tool for monitoring and operations that uses natural language prompts."
updated: 2026-10-28T02:14:35Z
published: 2026-10-28T02:14:35Z
canonical: "docs.vastdata.com/vast-admin-mcp"
---

> ## Documentation Index
> Fetch the complete documentation index at: https://docs.vastdata.com/llms.txt
> Use this file to discover all available pages before exploring further.

# VAST Admin MCP

## Intro

VAST Admin MCP is an open-source [Model Context Protocol (MCP)](https://modelcontextprotocol.io/) server that lets AI assistants interact with VAST clusters for monitoring, listing, and management operations using natural language. Instead of navigating UIs or writing CLI commands, administrators can prompt their AI coding assistant with requests such as "Show me the top 10 views by capacity across all clusters" and receive results in seconds.

It supports both **Cluster Admins** and **Tenant Admins**, runs in **read-only mode by default** for safety, and optionally enables write operations with an explicit `--read-write` flag.

**Resources**:

- [GitHub Repository](https://github.com/vast-data/vast-admin-mcp)
- [Blog Post: Talk to Your Data Infrastructure](https://www.vastdata.com/blog/data-infrastructure-accelerate-infrastructure-management-with-mcps)
- [Video Demo](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HOapySpvUps)

## Prerequisites

- Python 3.10+ (or Docker)
- VAST OS 5.2 and above
- A running VAST cluster with API access
- Username and password (cluster admin or tenant admin)
- An AI assistant that supports MCP (Cursor, Claude Desktop, VSCode, Windsurf, Gemini CLI)

## Step 1: Install VAST Admin MCP

Install via pip:

```plaintext
pip install vast-admin-mcp
```

Alternatively, use Docker:

```plaintext
docker pull vastdataorg/vast-admin-mcp:latest
```

## Step 2: Configure Your Cluster Connection

Run the interactive setup wizard:

```plaintext
vast-admin-mcp setup
```

You will be prompted for:

| Prompt | Description |
| --- | --- |
| Cluster address | IP, FQDN, or URL (e.g., `https://10.0.0.1`) |
| Username | Cluster or tenant admin username |
| Password | Stored securely in system keyring or encrypted file |
| Tenant | Tenant name (for tenant admins) or tenant context (for super admins) |

The configuration is saved to `~/.vast-admin-mcp/config.json`. You can add multiple clusters by running setup again.

## Step 3: Configure Your AI Assistant

Use the built-in `mcpsetup` command to generate the configuration for your AI assistant:

```plaintext
vast-admin-mcp mcpsetup cursor
```

**Expected output:**

```plaintext
🔧 Configuring MCP server for: cursor
   Detected command: vast-admin-mcp
   Detected args: ['mcp']

📋 Cursor Configuration Instructions
   ...
```

Supported assistants: `cursor`, `claude-desktop`, `vscode`, `windsurf`, `gemini-cli`.

To enable write operations (create views, snapshots, support bundles, etc.), add the `--read-write` flag:

```plaintext
vast-admin-mcp mcpsetup cursor --read-write
```

## Step 4: Verify the Connection

After configuring your AI assistant, restart it and test with a simple prompt:

```plaintext
List all VAST clusters
```

The assistant should return cluster information, including name, status, capacity, and version. This confirms the MCP server is running and can reach your VAST cluster.

## Capabilities Overview

**Read-Only Operations (Default)**

The following operations are available without the `--read-write` flag:

| Category | Examples |
| --- | --- |
| Cluster monitoring | List clusters, capacity, status |
| View & tenants | List views, tenants, quotas, and view policies |
| Performance metrics | IOPS, bandwidth, latency for clusters, cnodes, views, tenants |
| Performance graphs | Generate time-series PNG graphs from predefined monitors |
| Dataflow analytics | Tabular data and Mermaid topology diagrams (Hosts -> CNodes -> Views) |
| Hardware topology | CNode and DNode hardware layout with rack locations |
| Data protection | Replication relationships, snapshots, and protection policies |
| Alarms | Active alerts with severity and acknowledgement status |
| S3 access keys | List S3 keys by tenant, user, or access key |
| Support bundles | List existing support bundles |
| User queries | Look up users by prefix with UID, GID, groups, and S3 permissions |

**Read-Write Operations (**`--read-write` **Required)**

| Operation | Description |
| --- | --- |
| Create views | NFS, S3, SMB views with quotas and QoS policies |
| Create snapshots | On-demand snapshots with expiry and indestructible options |
| Create clones | Clone from snapshots with refresh support |
| Create/update quotas | Hard/soft limits for capacity and file count |
| Create support bundles | Standard and custom bundles with 19 preset types, node filtering, and upload to support |

## Prompt Examples

**Monitoring and Investigation**

```plaintext
Show me all tenants across all clusters
Get performance metrics for cnodes on cluster1 over the last 7 days
Create bandwidth and IOPS graph for cluster1 over the last hour
Show me dataflow diagram for 172.21.224.139 on cluster1
Are there any critical alerts on my clusters that were not acknowledged?
Find all views where logical used capacity is greater than 1TB
```

**Multi-Step Reasoning**

AI assistants can chain multiple tool calls automatically:

```plaintext
First, get all available clusters. Then compare views with path "/" across all clusters, showing capacity information.
Show me all tenants on cluster1, for each tenant show me the 5 views with the highest used capacity.
```

**Write Operations**

```plaintext
Create a new NFS view on cluster1 with path /data/newview in tenant1
Create a snapshot named "backup-jan15" for view /data/app1 on cluster1, keep it for 24h
Set a hard quota of 10TB for view path /data/app1 on cluster1, tenant1
Create mini support bundle on cluster1 for the last 5 minutes and upload it to support
```

## Security Model

VAST Admin MCP includes multiple security layers:

| Feature | Description |
| --- | --- |
| Read-only by default | Write operations require explicit `--read-write` flag |
| API shitelisting | Only approved REST API endpoints and HTTP methods are accessible |
| Encrypted credentials | Passwords stored in the system keyring or file-based encryption |
| Tenant isolation | Tenant admins can only access their assigned tenant |
| STDIO transport | MCP runs locally on the same host as the AI assistant -- no network exposure |
| Audit logging | All operations logged to `~/.vast-admin-mcp/vast_admin_mcp.log` |

## Docker Setup (Alternative)

For isolated environments, run via Docker:

Run setup

```plaintext
./vast-admin-mcp-docker.sh setup
```

Configure AI Assistant

```plaintext
./vast-admin-mcp-docker.sh mcpsetup cursor
```

Test CLI

```plaintext
./vast-admin-mcp-docker.sh clusters
```

Docker automatically mounts `~/.vast-admin-mcp` for persistent configuration.

## Additional Resources

- [VAST MCP GitHub Repository](https://github.com/vast-data/vast-admin-mcp) -- source code, issues, and releases
- [Blog: Talk to Your Data Infrastructure](https://www.vastdata.com/blog/data-infrastructure-accelerate-infrastructure-management-with-mcps) -- detailed walkthrough with real-world examples
- [Video Demo](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HOapySpvUps) -- see VAST Admin MCP in action
- [PyPI Package](https://pypi.org/project/vast-admin-mcp/) -- latest release
- [VAST Community](https://community.vastdata.com/) -- questions, feedback, and feature requests