6.5.1

Table Of Contents
Image-Based Backup and
Restore of a vCenter Server
Environment 7
You can use vSphere Data Protection or a third-party product that is integrated with VMware vSphere
Storage APIs - Data Protection to back up and restore a virtual machine that contains vCenter Server, a
vCenter Server Appliance, or a Platform Services Controller.
vSphere Data Protection is a diskbased backup and recovery solution that is powered by EMC. vSphere
Data Protection is fully integrated with vCenter Server and lets you manage backup jobs while storing
backups in deduplicated destination storage locations. After you deploy and configure vSphere Data
Protection, you can access vSphere Data Protection by using the vSphere Web Client interface to select,
schedule, configure, and manage backups and recoveries of virtual machines. During a backup, vSphere
Data Protection creates a quiesced snapshot of the virtual machine. Deduplication is automatically
performed with every backup operation.
You can use vSphere Data Protection to perform a full image backup of a virtual machine that contains
vCenter Server, a vCenter Server Appliance, or a Platform Services Controller. The virtual machine must
use a fully qualified domain name (FQDN) with correct DNS resolution, or the hostname must be
configured to be an IP address. If the hostname is configured as an IP address, the IP address cannot be
changed.
The following backups and recoveries are not supported:
n
Incremental backups
n
Differential backups
n
Individual disk backups
n
Virtual machines that have snapshots
n
Virtual machines configured with Fault Tolerance
As an alternative to vSphere Data Protection, you can also use third-party products that are integrated
with VMware vSphere Storage APIs - Data Protection.
VMware vSphere Storage APIs - Data Protection is a data protection framework that enables backup
products to perform centralized, efficient, off-host LAN free backup of vSphere virtual machines. For
information about VMware vSphere Storage APIs - Data Protection, see the VMware Web site. For
information about the integration of backup products with VMware vSphere Storage APIs - Data
Protection, contact your backup vendor.
VMware, Inc.
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