When restoring a full virtual machine, you can restore data to the same destination host and place all disks back to their original datastores; this is an in-place restore.
Virtual machines can also be restored to a different location than where they existed at the time of backup; this is an out-of-place restore. The following options can be used for an out-of-place restore:
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Different vCenter: An entire virtual machine can be restored to a different vCenter. This feature provides the flexibility to distribute restored virtual machines to a location with greater space and resource availability. This will be useful when the virtual machine's original location does not provide optimal space and resources.
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Different ESX server or cluster: By default, a virtual machine is restored to the ESX server where it was at the time of backup; but you can choose to restore to a different ESX server or cluster. Specifying a different location provides the flexibility to distribute restored virtual machines to a location with greater space and resource availability.
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Different datastore: You can specify a different datastore on the destination host. After the restore, the virtual machine is automatically associated to the new datastore.
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Different Resource Pool or vApp: By default, a virtual machine is restored to its original resource pool; but you can select a specific resource pool or vApp on the host. vApp is a customized form of a resource pool.
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Different VM name: By default, a virtual machine is restored with the original name used at the time of backup; but you can change the name when the VM is restored.
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Restore to a VM folder: Select a destination folder on the datacenter.
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Restore with different network adapter: Select a network adapter that is available for the destination.
During full VM restores, the source VM’s instance UUID is retained if the source VM is not present in the destination vCenter where the restore is performed. If the source VM exists in the destination vCenter, a new Instance UUID is created as part of the full VM restore.
Full VM restores to the same vCenter can include vCenter tags and VM storage policies associated with the source VM.
For required permissions, see Permissions for Custom User Accounts.
Redirected Software Snapshot
Restore or Live Sync jobs will fail if the destination ESX server has no access to the snapshot path configured in the VMX file for a virtual machine. This can be an issue if a virtual machine is recovered to a disaster recovery site that does not have access to a software snapshot that was redirected to a different datastore.
Create the snapshotWorkingDir additional setting on the VSA proxy to enable restore and Live Sync jobs to use the specified path if the path configured in the VMX file is not accessible. If neither of those paths is available, the default snapshot location is used.
Enter the value in the following format:
datastore_name/folder_path
For example: Datastore1/TestSnapshotPath