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:

• generate, by a first plugin, a directory for a virtual machine (VM) from among a plurality of VMs for a restore operation to restore the VM from a snapshot, the plurality of VMs sharing 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 a VM management system, the storage system using a first set of storage volumes to store data for a set of virtual volumes of the VM;
• rename, by the first plugin, a logical object associated with the snapshot;
• call, by the first plugin, the virtual appliance to import the renamed logical object as a virtual volume;
• utilize, by the virtual appliance, an application programming interface (API) to import the virtual volume as a virtual disk, the API creating a virtual disk descriptor file that is stored within the directory;
• and
• attach, by the first plugin, the virtual disk to the VM for the restore operation.

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:
• generate, by a first plugin, a directory for a virtual machine (VM) from among a plurality of VMs for a restore operation to restore the VM from a snapshot, the plurality of VMs sharing 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 a VM management system, the storage system using a first set of storage volumes to store data for a set of virtual volumes of the VM;
• rename, by the first plugin, a logical object associated with the snapshot;
• call, by the first plugin, the virtual appliance to import the renamed logical object as a virtual volume;
• utilize, by the virtual appliance, an application programming interface (API) to import the virtual volume as a virtual disk, the API creating a virtual disk descriptor file that is stored within the directory;
• and
• attach, by the first plugin, the virtual disk to the VM for the restore operation.