The following transport modes can be selected on the Restore Options for All Selected Items dialog:
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Auto: (default) The most suitable transport is selected automatically based on the setup.
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SAN: For directly connected storage using Fibre Channel (FC) or Internet SCSI (iSCSI) protocols; only available if the proxy is on a physical machine.
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HotAdd: Used when the Virtual Server Agent is installed on a virtual machine on an ESX server.
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NBD: Data is transmitted over a TCP/IP connection between the ESX server and proxy.
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NBD SSL: Uses the TCP/IP connection with encrypted data transfer.
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NAS: NAS (network attached storage) transport mode enables the virtual server agent (VSA) proxy computer to read data directly from the network file server (NFS), without going through an ESX host or transferring data over the local area network (LAN).
Note
In most scenarios, restores using SAN and HotAdd transport are faster than NBD or NBD SSL operations; but SAN restores using thin disk provisioning can be slower than LAN restores. Performance can be improved by using NBD for thin disk provisioning, or by setting the transport mode to SAN and specifying thick eager zero disk provisioning.
For more information, see Transport Modes for VMware.