Add an intelligent Recipe Generator to the IBM Storage Fusion UI

IBM Storage Fusion should provide an intelligent Recipe Generator directly in the Fusion UI.

One of the greatest strengths and most valuable capabilities of IBM Storage Fusion Backup & Restore is its ability to process recipes, enabling application-aware backup and restore workflows for complex OpenShift applications.

Specialized Backup & Restore recipes for business applications should ideally be defined and validated together with the application owners. They know the internal structure, dependencies, data layout, startup and shutdown behavior, required PVCs, relevant custom resources, labels, and application-specific consistency requirements much better than the infrastructure or storage team. However, application owners usually have little or no knowledge of IBM Storage Fusion, Backup & Restore recipe syntax, recipe structure, hook configuration, or the required YAML format. As a result, creating reliable application-specific recipes often requires close collaboration between application teams and Fusion administrators, which can be time-consuming and error-prone.

The Fusion UI should include a guided Recipe Generator that helps both Fusion administrators and application owners create application-specific recipes without having to manually write complex recipe YAML files. The tool should analyze a selected namespace and discover the resources used by the application, including PVCs, Deployments, StatefulSets, Services, Routes, ConfigMaps, Secrets, Operators, custom resources, and other non-standard resource types.

Based on this discovery, the UI should allow users to select or exclude specific PVCs and resource types. It should also support inclusion and exclusion criteria based on resource labels.

The generator should provide reusable and customizable standard hooks, such as scale hooks, check hooks, exec hooks. Users should be able to adjust hook order, conditions, timeout values, target containers, commands, and label selectors through the UI.

Ideally, the generator should also provide a preview of the generated recipe, explain what each section does in understandable terms, and allow exporting or applying the generated recipe after review by the responsible application owner and Fusion administrator.

Business value:
This would make recipe creation easier, faster and less error-prone. It would allow application owners to contribute their application knowledge without requiring deep Fusion or YAML expertise, while still enabling Fusion administrators to review and control the final recipe. This would improve backup consistency, reduce operational effort, and help customers protect complex OpenShift applications more reliably with IBM Storage Fusion Backup & Restore.