PowerProtect Data Manager 19.10 Virtual Machine Protection Quick Start Guide

PowerProtect Data Manager and VM Direct Overview

VM Direct is the protection engine within PowerProtect Data Manager that allows you to manage and protect virtual machine assets. Depending on the vSphere version and the virtual machine protection policy options selected, VM Direct can protect virtual machines by using traditional VMware APIs for Data Protection (VADP) snapshots, or by using the Transparent Snapshot Data Mover (TSDM) protection mechanism introduced in PowerProtect Data Manager version 19.9.

The PowerProtect Data Manager software comes pre-bundled with an embedded VM Direct engine, and allows you to deploy additional external VM Direct engines. The embedded VM Direct engine is sufficient for virtual machine crash-consistent protection policies that use the TSDM protection mechanism. Dell EMC recommends that you deploy external VM Direct engines for VADP data protection operations because the embedded VM Direct engine has very limited capacity for running concurrent backups. The embedded VM Direct engine is automatically used as a fallback proxy for performing VADP backup and restore operations when the external VM Direct engines fail or are disabled.