Virtual Disk Transport
MethodsLast Updated December 16, 2024
VMware supports file-based or image-level
backups of virtual machines hosted on an ESXi host with SAN or NAS storage.
Virtual machines read data directly from a shared VMFS LUN, so backups are
efficient and do not put significant load on production ESXi hosts or the
virtual network.
VMware offers interfaces for integration of
storage-aware applications, including backup, with efficient access to storage
clusters. Developers can use VDDK advanced transports, which provide efficient
I/O methods to maximize backup performance. VMware supports four access
methods: local file, NBD (network block device) over LAN, NBD with SSL
encryption (NBDSSL), SAN, and SCSI HotAdd.