PowerProtect Data Manager does not support vSAN ESA. If attempting this, issues are encountered when restoring VMs to vSAN ESA Datastores.
Example error:
Task to reconfigure new VM is unsuccessful: The virtual disk is either corrupted or not a supported format
To check supportability of vSAN ESA, see the latest PowerProtect Data Manager Compatibility Support Matrix at
Dell E-Lab Navigator Data Protection
Current PowerProtect Data Manager Engineering recommendations:
- TSDM preferred.
- vSAN ESA is not officially supported.
- VADP "Restore to new VM" recommended to VMFS DS.
- If VADP is required, the recommendation is NOT TO USE "Restoring disks to original VM" with vSAN ESA until the issue is fixed by VMware. This may result in production VM ending up with its current attached disks modified to zero-byte disks. This may lead to loss or unavailability of data.
- When this article was written, VMware had released a hot patch (8.0.1.00301-22273185 (8.0 U1c + Hot Patch)) solving the "restore to new" workflow. As vSAN ESA is not officially supported, VADP restores are still recommended to VMFS or VSAN-OSA Datastores.