Back up and restore VMware
Updated: August 25, 2016
System Center Data Protection Manager (DPM) is an enterprise-class backup product that protects a variety of products including SQL Server, Exchange, SharePoint, and file servers running on VMs or physical machines. Many enterprise customers have Hyper-V and VMware deployments and are looking for a single backup solution. DPM 2012 R2 Update Rollup 11 (UR11) adds backup and recovery support for VMware vCenter Server and vSphere Hypervisor (ESXi) versions 5.5 and 6.0. You can configure DPM protection for VMware VMs using the user interface or PowerShell cmdlets.
Supported VMware features
DPM supports the following VMware features:
Agentless backup: With UR11, DPM provides an agent-less VMware VM backup solution - that is, you don't need to deploy a DPM agent on the vCenter or ESXi server to protect the VMs. Instead, just provide the IP address or fully qualified domain name (FQDN), and login credentials used to authenticate the VMware server with DPM.
Cloud Integrated Backup: DPM protects workloads to both disk and cloud. DPM's backup and recovery workflow helps you manage long-term retention and offsite backup.
Detect and protect VMs managed by vCenter: DPM detects and protects VMs deployed on a VMware server (vCenter or ESXi server). As your deployment size grows, use vCenter to manage your VMware environment. DPM also detects VMs managed by vCenter, allowing you to protect large deployments.
Folder level auto protection: vCenter lets you organize your VMs in VM folders. DPM detects these folders and lets you protect VMs at the folder level and includes all sub-folders. When protecting folders, DPM not only protects the VMs in that folder, but also protects VMs added later. DPM detects new VMs on a daily basis and protects them automatically. As you organize your VMs in recursive folders, DPM automatically detects and protects the new VMs deployed in the recursive folders.
DPM protects VMs stored on a local disk, network file system (NFS), or cluster storage.
A single DPM server can protect up to 800 VMs.
DPM protects VMs migrated for load balancing: As VMs are migrated for load balancing, DPM automatically detects and continues VM protection.
DPM can recover files/folders from a Windows VM without recovering the entire VM. This helps recover necessary files faster.
Next steps
To set up System Center DPM protection for VMware follow these steps:
Read the Prerequisites for protecting VMware with DPM before you begin deployment.