Traditional Restore vs. Restore from Storage Snapshots

Many organizations use storage snapshots for data protection. Storage snapshots allow for very low RPO: they have minimal impact on storage performance and can be created in seconds. Administrators can schedule snapshots to be created several times a day or even every hour.

In virtual environments, restore from storage snapshots can be difficult. Storage snapshots are created per-volume; a volume typically holds data for several VMs. For this reason, restore from storage snapshots is not a simple rollback operation — it is a multi-task process. When an administrator restores a VM from the storage snapshot manually, he/she needs to perform the following actions:

1. Present a storage snapshot to an ESX(i) host.
2. Perform an HBA rescan.
3. Mount the storage snapshot to the ESX(i) host.
4. Browse the storage snapshot to locate VM files (VMDK).
5. Add the VM to the inventory or copy VM files to another VMFS datastore.
6. Power on the VM.
7. Perform restore operations.
8. Perform cleanup operations after VM data restore is completed.

As a result, the restore process takes much time. If you need to restore guest OS files and application objects from a VM on the storage snapshot, the procedure will be even more complicated.

Veeam Explorer for Storage Snapshots fully automates operations of mounting storage snapshots to ESX(i) hosts. You only need to select an ESX(i) host to which the storage snapshot will be mounted, and Veeam Explorer for Storage Snapshots will perform all other operations automatically.

Veeam Explorer for Storage Snapshots does not convert storage snapshots into backups. It uses them “as is” and lets you restore VM data directly from native storage system snapshots. You do not have to to install any agents or perform additional configuration actions.