Home > Data Protection > PowerProtect Data Manager Appliance > Dell PowerProtect Data Manager Appliance: Protection for Existing and Modern Workloads > Restoring Virtual Machines
After virtual assets are backed up as part of a virtual machine protection policy, in the Data Manager Appliance UI image-level and file-level recoveries can be performed from individual or multiple virtual machine backups, and also restore individual virtual machine disks (VMDKs), to their original location. Restoring individual VMDKs to an alternate virtual machine on the same or a different vCenter server is supported from Data Manager Appliance version 5.13.0.0.
Recovery options include the following:
Starting with Data Manager Appliance version 5.16 and later, a Restore to Original VM operation can be performed on a deleted virtual machine. The virtual machine is recreated using the original vSphere VM Instance UUID, preserving its history and backup copies. If an original data location or resource no longer exists, you can select an alternate. The effective result is that the deleted virtual machine exists again, even if it is now in a different location or is using a different resource.
Note: For restore to new and instant access VM restore, Data Manager Appliance version 5.13.0.0 onwards provides the “Restore BIOS UUID” option to restore the BIOS UUID that was associated with the virtual machine at the time of backup.
Restore Plans, introduced in Data Manager appliance version 5.14.0.0, enables you to perform mass restore (restore at scale) for virtual machine restore and disaster recovery operations with minimal steps in the PowerProtect Data Manager UI. Restore plans enable you to orchestrate and automate the restore of multiple virtual machine assets protected by PowerProtect Data Manager.
Restore plans support many of the same virtual machine restore workflows already available in PowerProtect Data Manager, including Restore and Overwrite Original VM, Create and Restore to a New VM, Instant Access Restore, and Instant Recovery.
The use of restore plans is not supported for the following types of virtual machine restores:
You can use VMware Distributed Resource Scheduler (DRS) with Create and Restore to New VM and Instant Access VM restore operations. Using DRS enables a VM to be automatically restored to the most efficient ESXi host in a cluster.
For more details about VM backup and recovery with Data Manager Appliance, see PowerProtect Data Manager Appliance Administrator Guide for DM5500.