Hi,
Flexclone is required for 3 operations in SMVI
1) Single File restore (only affects SMVI 2.0)
2) NFS datastore mounts - if you're trying to mount NFS datastores using the mount button of SMVI( this is true for SMVI 1.2 and 2.0)
3) Out of place NFS VMDS restores - i.e you are trying to restore the VMDK's in an NFS datastore to a different datastore (only affects SMVI 2.0)
Apart from the above operations all backup and restore operations will work perfectly for 1.2 and 2.0 even without flexclone
Explanantion of out-of-place estore
VIRTUAL DISK RESTORE
SMVI 1.x allows restore at datastore and virtual machine granularity. Restore enhancements in SMVI 2.0
extend restore granularity to one more level adding the capability to restore individual virtual disks (VMDKs)
of a VM.
This feature also allows disks to be restored to a different datastore. This is referred to as out-of-place
restore. This allows VM administrators to test the consistency of the disks before attaching the disk to the
VM. SMVI doesn’t attach the restored disks automatically if the VMDK is removed from the current
configuration of the VM or restored to a different datastore. Out-of-place restore copies the virtual disk files
to the destination datastore after which users have to attach the disks manually.
Does this make sense? Also if you wish to understand the exact technology please check table 2 of the SMVI best practices guide.
http://media.netapp.com/documents/tr-3737.pdf
And I will change the wording in the BPG for FlexClone requirements I understand it is confusing
Regards
Amrita