Resources: SMVI to SnapCenter Plug-in for VMware Transition

phoebeg — Wed, 04 Jun 2025 10:26:06 GMT

SnapManager for Virtual Interface vs SnapCenter Plugin for VMware vSphere

	VSC 6.x	SCV 4.x	Comments
Enterprise Features
Management interface through vCenter	✅	✅	All backup and recovery operations are handled through the vCenter interface.
Centralized deployment	⛔️	✅
Backup metadata protection	⛔️	✅	SCV leverages the SnapCenter MySQL database to store backup metadata, allowing the database to be separately backed up and restored.
Windows PowerShell support	✅	⛔️	–
Rest APIs	⛔️	✅
Storage Deployment
SAN (VMware Virtual Machine File System [VMFS]) support	✅	✅
NAS (NFS) support	✅	✅
Advanced Virtual Machine (VM) Integration
Linked mode support	✅	✅	One instance of the SCV plug-in is required for each instance of vCenter.
vCenter RBAC support	✅	✅	–
Data Protection and Management
Backup VMs, VMDKs, and datastores	✅	✅	–
Backup data center	✅	⛔️	–
Backup Now without an existing job or resource group	✅	⛔️	.
Policy-based backup management	⛔️	✅	SCV allows reuse of the same policy for other resource groups and saves time in defining settings such as backup frequency, copy retention, replication, and scripts.
Data Protection and Management (continued)
SVM and cluster management LIF support	✅	✅
Use multiple schedules per backup job	⛔️	✅
Custom snapshot naming	✅	✅
Restore VMs or Virtual Machine Disks (VMDKs) from the primary NetApp^®Snapshot^™copy	✅	✅
Restore VMs or VMDKs from a secondary Snapshot copy	⛔️	✅
Restore datastores	✅	⛔️
Recent snapshot	✅	✅	Suffix _recent to latest snapshot
Restore files or folders on a guest OS	⛔️	✅	Support is on a Windows guest OS only starting with SCV 4.0 for both VMFS and NFS.
Mount datastore from a primary Snapshot copy	✅	✅	The mount operation allows you to access files in the backup, enabling granular recovery.
Mount datastore from a secondary Snapshot copy	⛔️	✅
Attach or detach a VMDK from a primary or secondary Snapshot copy	⛔️	✅	SCV allows restore of files and folders from a Windows or Linux guest OS instead of restoring the entire drive.
Get detailed job monitoring	⛔️	✅
Use a detailed dashboard	⛔️	✅	SCV gives a summary of backup, restore, and mount jobs for the selected duration and the last backup status of VMs.
Get detailed reporting	⛔️	✅	You can view and download HTML and CSV reports of backup, restore, and mount jobs and protected or unprotected VMs.

Benefit of SCV over VSC (6.x)

Better scalability: NetApp SnapCenter Plug-In for VMware vSphere (SCV) supports up to 4,000 VMs per VMware vCenter instance

Better performance: Faster restore operations from a secondary NetApp Snapshot^™ copy by leveraging native NetApp ONTAP^® single-file NetApp SnapRestore^® technology for NFS environments

Richer feature set and protocol support:

Easier management with policy-based backup
Capability to restore from secondary snapshots
Guest file restore (Windows guest OS)
Ability to attach or detach a Virtual Machine Disk (VMDK) from a primary or secondary
Dashboard, reporting, and job monitoring of VM data protection activities
VMware Virtual Machine File System (VMFS) 6 and NFS 4.1 support
Supports FlexGroup
Support restore to alternate location
Large LUN support

topic Resources: SMVI to SnapCenter Plug-in for VMware Transition in SnapManager to SnapCenter Transition

Resources: SMVI to SnapCenter Plug-in for VMware Transition