Methods and Systems for Protecting and Restoring Virtual Machines

A non-transitory machine-readable storage medium having stored thereon instructions comprising machine executable code, which when executed by a machine, causes the machine to:

• discover, by a first plugin, from a virtual machine (“VM”) management system, a plurality of VMs that share a logical data store having a plurality of virtual volumes used for storing data for the VMs by a storage system registered with the first plugin and a virtual appliance of the VM management system;
• obtain, by the first plugin, from the virtual appliance, metadata and storage layout of a set of virtual volumes used by a VM to store data;
• use a first application programming interface (API), by the first plugin, for identifying a first set of storage volumes used by the storage system to store data for the set of virtual volumes;
• create, by the first plugin, a consistency group (“CG”) having the identified the first set of storage volumes and generating a snapshot of the CG;
• create, by the first plugin, a directory for the VM for a restore operation to restore the VM from the snapshot;
• rename, by the first plugin, a logical object associated with the snapshot;
• calling, by the first plugin, the virtual appliance to import the renamed logical object as a virtual volume for the restore operation;
• utilize, by the virtual appliance, a second API to import the virtual volume as a virtual disk, the second API creating a virtual disk descriptor file for the restore operation, the virtual disk descriptor file stored within the directory;
• and
• attach, by the first plugin, the virtual disk with the VM.

A system, comprising:

• a memory containing machine readable medium comprising machine executable code having stored thereon instructions;
• and a processor coupled to the memory to execute the machine executable code to:
• discover, by a first plugin, from a virtual machine (“VM”) management system, a plurality of VMs that share a logical data store having a plurality of virtual volumes used for storing data for the VMs by a storage system registered with the first plugin and a virtual appliance of the VM management system;
• obtain, by the first plugin, from the virtual appliance, metadata and storage layout of a set of virtual volumes used by a VM to store data;
• use a first application programming interface (API), by the first plugin, for identifying a first set of storage volumes used by the storage system to store data for the set of virtual volumes;
• create, by the first plugin, a consistency group (“CG”) having the identified the first set of storage volumes and generating a snapshot of the CG;
• create, by the first plugin, a directory for the VM for a restore operation to restore the VM from the snapshot;
• rename, by the first plugin, a logical object associated with the snapshot;
• calling, by the first plugin, the virtual appliance to import the renamed logical object as a virtual volume for the restore operation;
• utilize, by the virtual appliance, a second API to import the virtual volume as a virtual disk, the second API creating a virtual disk descriptor file for the restore operation, the virtual disk descriptor file stored within the directory;
• and
• attach, by the first plugin, the virtual disk with the VM.