Table of ContentsView in Frames

Backing up and restoring virtual machines and datastores

Virtual Storage Console for VMware vSphere provides backup and restore features that enable you to create backup copies of virtual machines and datastores and later restore them. In addition, VSC supports using SnapCenter to create and restore backup jobs.

You have several options for working with backups:

You can restore a backup copy whenever you need to. The restore feature provides several options, including:

VSC seamlessly supports backups created using its backup feature and those created using SnapCenter. VSC automatically uses SnapCenter for backups if you are running clustered Data ONTAP 8.2.2 or later and you have registered VSC with SnapCenter. VSC uses its backup feature in the following situations:

SnapCenter provides features such backup policies. Because the backup policies are part of SnapCenter, all instances of VSC that are registered with SnapCenter can access them, not just the VSC instance where they were created.

Both VSC backups and SnapCenter backups are displayed on the same page. VSC automatically checks your environment before displaying information about the current backups or options for creating new backups. There are some small differences in the information displayed depending on whether the backups were created in a VSC environment that supports SnapCenter or a standard VSC environment. There are also differences in the options you have for performing backup and restore operations.

Note: VSC and SnapCenter use some terms differently. For example, if you log in to SnapCenter, you will see that SnapCenter uses the term datasets while VSC uses the term backup jobs.