Axcient Appliances

Overview

An appliance is the physical or virtual box running local backups for appliance-based devices (as opposed to direct-to-cloud devices, which have no appliance at all). Every appliance-based device belongs to exactly one appliance; D2C devices never appear under one.

Anti-triggers

• A D2C-only device — it has no appliance and won't appear in any appliance's device list. Use the devices skill directly.
• Vault capacity — an appliance's local storage is separate from vault storage; see the vaults skill for replication-target capacity.

Tools

Tool	Description	Arguments
axcient_list_appliances	Every appliance in the organization	service_id?, include_devices?
axcient_list_appliances_by_client	Appliances for one client	client_id, include_devices?
axcient_get_appliance	One appliance's detail	appliance_id, include_devices?

include_devices defaults to true on all three — pass false explicitly when you only need appliance-level fields and want a smaller response for a large fleet.

Service ID Filtering

axcient_list_appliances accepts an optional service_id — the appliance's 4-character serial/service identifier, useful when a technician has the physical unit's ID label in hand but not its client_id.

Common Workflows

Appliance Inventory for a Client

1. axcient_list_appliances_by_client with the client's ID
2. For each appliance, note model/version fields and the attached device count (from the embedded device list, if include_devices was left at its default true)

Locating an Appliance by Serial

1. axcient_list_appliances with service_id set to the label on the physical unit
2. If nothing matches, the unit may be decommissioned or the service ID was misread — cross-check with axcient_list_clients for the expected client instead of assuming the appliance doesn't exist in the API

Capacity Planning for New Devices

1. axcient_get_appliance for the target appliance with include_devices to see current load
2. Cross-reference against the vault(s) those devices replicate to (see the vaults skill) — appliance-local capacity and vault capacity are independent constraints, and a new device can be fine locally while pushing a private vault over capacity

Error Handling

Appliance Not Found

Cause: Invalid appliance_id, or the appliance belongs to a different organization than the credential Solution: Verify against axcient_list_appliances or axcient_list_appliances_by_client.

Best Practices

• Prefer the client-scoped list when you already know the client — it's one call instead of listing everything and filtering client-side.
• Treat appliance device counts as a proxy for local load, not vault replication health — a fully-loaded appliance can still have current vault/cloud recovery points, or vice versa.

Related Skills

• api-patterns - Authentication, tool catalog, error codes
• devices - Devices protected by a given appliance
• clients - Client-scoped appliance listing
• vaults - Replication targets, independent of appliance-local capacity