What you can do with SnapCenter Plug-in for VMware vSphere

The SnapCenter VMware plug-in enables other SnapCenter plug-ins to create application-consistent backups of virtualized applications (virtualized MS-SQL, Oracle, and Exchange databases). To take application-consistent backups of virtualized applications, you must deploy the SnapCenter Plug-in for VMware vSphere in addition to installing the appropriate application-specific SnapCenter plug-ins. You use the SnapCenter GUI to perform your data protection operations.

• You can back up VMs, underlying VMDKs, and datastores using the SnapCenter vSphere web client that is provided by SnapCenter Plug-in for VMware vSphere. When you back up a datastore, you back up all the VMs in that datastore.
• You can back up on demand or according to a defined protection schedule.
• You can define custom prescripts and postscripts before or after backup jobs to enable automation or custom action depending on your data protection needs.
• You can create mirror copies of backups on another volume that has a SnapMirror relationship to the primary backup, or perform a disk-to-disk backup replication on another volume that has a SnapVault relationship to the primary backup volume, in addition to the backup Snapshot copy.
• You can select crash-consistent or VM-consistent backup Snapshot copies when you define the policy.

You can restore an entire VM to the original ESXi host, not to an alternate ESXi host. When you restore a VM, you overwrite the existing content with the backup copy that you select, and also unregister the original VM. You can restore data from either a primary backup or from a secondary backup on a different volume.

You can restore a virtual disk of a VM to the original VM or to an alternate datastore.

You can restore one or more files, or one or more folders, in a virtual disk.

You can attach one or more virtual disks from a primary or secondary backup to the parent VM (the same VM that the virtual disk was originally associated with) or an alternate VM. This makes it easier to restore one or more individual files from a drive instead of restoring the entire drive. You can detach the virtual disk after you have restored the files you need.

You can mount a datastore from a backup if you want to access files in the backup. You can either mount the backup to the same ESXi host where the backup was created or to an alternate ESXi host that has the same type of VM and host configurations. You can unmount a datastore backup when you no longer need to access the files in the datastore.

• The web client interface in vCenter displays an overview of the status of completed VM and datastore backups (primary and secondary), mount, and restore jobs. The vCenter interface also displays the number of protected and unprotected VMs.
• You can monitor a VM or datastore job and view details associated with each job. You can also download logs for individual jobs for effective trouble-shooting in case of job failure.
• You can view and download (HTML or CSV format) backup, restore, mount and protected/ unprotected VM reports, and customize the reports by applying filters like time range, job status type, resource groups, and policies.

The SnapCenter VMware plug-in creates plug-in specific RBAC roles (SCV Administrator, SCV View, SCV Backup, SCV Restore, and SCV Guest File Restore) to control and coordinate access of users logging in to the vCenter interface. This provides better control and prevents inadvertent manipulation or unauthorized access of resources.