To the original VM

You can restore the disks to the same VM from which the disks were backed up. You can either overwrite the original disks or attach the virtual disks without overwriting the original disks.

NetBackup creates a temporary VM to which it restores the virtual disks. Then, NetBackup attaches the virtual disks to the existing, target VM. Finally, NetBackup deletes the temporary VM after the disk or disks are attached successfully.

A special case, called in-place disk restore, replaces all disks of an existing VM with the data in its backup. Raw devices (RDMs) and independent disks are not replaced or deleted. For In-place Disk Restore, the disks are restored to the same disk controller configuration acquired at the time of backup.

To a different VM

You can restore the disks to a different VM.

NetBackup creates a temporary VM to which it restores the virtual disks. Then, NetBackup attaches the virtual disks to the existing, target VM. Finally, NetBackup deletes the temporary VM after the disk or disks are attached successfully.

You can also perform an in-place disk restore to a different VM.

To a new VM

NetBackup creates a new virtual machine and restores the specified disks to the new VM. The new VM is intended to be a container for the restored disks. It does not have enough resources to run most operating systems. After the restore, you should attach the restored virtual disks to a VM that can support them and then delete the restore VM.