If you are using VMware vSphere 5.1 or previous versions, you can choose VMware Data Recovery plugin to backup and restore your VMs. If you are using vSphere 6.5 or previous versions, then you can use VMware Data Protection to do that. However, if you are using later version, you will need a third-party software to replace them.
VMware vSphere is the industry-leading enterprise virtualization platform. If you are looking for a suitable backup solution for your VMware vSphere ESXi virtual machines, then you may have noticed VMware vSphere Data Recovery.
VMware vSphere Data Recovery (VDR) is an official virtual machine backup tool that uses a virtual machine appliance and a client plug-in to centralize the scheduling of backup jobs. The VMware Data Recovery plug-in supports VM backup and restore via the Microsoft Volume Shadow Copy Service (VSS).
Unfortunately, starting from vSphere 5.1, VMware Data Recovery plug-in has been replaced by another official backup software VMware Data Protection (VDP). Furthermore, VMware Data Protection was also announced the End of Availability (EOA) on April 5, 2017.
That makes vSphere 6.5 is the last release that includes vSphere Data Protection, after that, vSphere will no longer include official backup software. You may need to migrate your backup schedules to a third-party software that based on VMware vSphere APIs – Data Protection. Next, this article will introduce you to an efficient software for VMware data recovery vSphere 6 and later versions.
With vSphere 6.5 become the last release that includes vSphere Data Protection, VMware has decided to exit the data protection market and focus its investments on VMware vSphere Storage APIs.
If you still rely on VDP, you will need to migrate your backup policies to other third-party software. If you still haven’t chosen one, here I introduce you to a reliable VMware backup software AOMEI Cyber Backup, it enables you to backup multiple VMs in 5 steps. And it offers you the following benefits.
✦ Agentless Backup: create complete and independent image-level backup for VMware ESXi and Hyper-V VMs. ✦ Support Free ESXi: AOMEI Cyber Backup support both paid and free versions of VMware ESXi. ✦ Flexible vSphere Backup: batch backup large numbers of VMs managed by vCenter Server, or multiple VMs on a standalone ESXi host. ✦ Multiple Storage Destinations: backup to local drive, or network destinations like Windows share or NAS. ✦ Automated Execution: create backup schedules to automate backups daily, weekly, monthly. ✦ Role Assignment: allows one administrator to create sub-accounts with limited privileges.
AOMEI Cyber Backup supports VMware ESXi 6.0 and later versions. You can click the following button to download the software.
*You can choose to install this VM backup software on either Windows or Linux system.
1. Bind Devices: Access to AOMEI Cyber Backup web client, navigate to Source Device >> VMware >> + Add VMware vCenter or Standalone ESXi host. And then click … >> Bind Device.
2. Create Backup Task: Navigate to Backup Task >> + Create New Task, and then select VMware ESXi Backup as the Device Type.
3. Run Backup: Click Start Backup and select Add the schedule and start backup now, or Add the schedule only.
4. Restore from Backup: Navigate to the backup task you want to restore, click ... > Restore to open the wizard.
Or you can click Backup Management > History Versions. Specify a VM and select a restore point from the left list.
5. Start Restore: Choose to Restore to original location or Restore to new location. And click Start Restore to recover the virtual machine in place.
▶ Restore to new location: Create a new VM in the same or another datastore/host directly from the backup to perform out-of-spacre recovery, saves the trouble of re-configuring the new VM.
Regular backup and restore are essential to protect the VM data. If you are using VMware vSphere Data Recovery or VMware Data Protection to backup VMware ESXi VMs, you will need to migrate to another backup software, since they won’t be included in the later versions of vSphere 5.1 and vSphere 6.5 respectively.
However, if you have multiple VMs that need to be backed up and restored, using native ways may be laborious. Therefore, in most cases, IT staff will choose a suitable third-party VMware backup software to replace VMware Data Recovery and VMware Data Protection for them.
In this article, I introduced an efficient software to perform VMware data recovery vSphere and later versions. It enables you to centrally manage and automate the backup and restore of multiple VMware ESXi and Hyper-V VMs. Free yourself from the heavy workloads.