Home > Data Protection > PowerProtect Data Manager Appliance > PowerProtect Data Manager Appliance: VMware Virtual Machine Protection Using Transparent Snapshots > VM Direct Engine considerations
The VM Direct Engine (VMDE) runs on the PowerProtect appliance itself and is available for TSDM operations without having to perform any specific configuration. In terms of scale, TSDM supports up to 180 concurrent VM backups. This embedded VMDE is suitable for most TSDM use cases.
External VMDE can be used with TSDM for cases where 300 concurrent VM backups and scale of up to 5000 VMs with multiple vCenter servers are required.