To add a vSphere environment in Portal, you must deploy a vSphere Agent in the vCenter environment where you want to back up and restore VMs.
Note: To add a vSphere version 6.5 environment in Portal, you must install a vSphere Recovery Agent. See Add a vSphere 6.5 environment.
As shown in the following diagram, you use Portal to manage the Agent and jobs, back up VMs to a secure, remote vault, and restore VMs, VMDKs and files and folders.
You do not have to install the vSphere Agent on each VM you want to back up; a single vSphere Agent can support as many as 1000 VMs managed by a vCenter Server. The Agent supports both ESXi and ESX hosts, and does not require the VMware ESX Service Console.
The vSphere Agent is pre-installed in a VM, and provided in Open Virtualization Appliance (OVA) format. You can deploy the OVA file and configure the vSphere Agent using the following steps:
1. Deploy the vSphere Agent in the vCenter where you want to back up VMs. See Deploy the vSphere Agent.
2. Configure Network Settings for the vSphere Agent.
3. If you are not using a DNS server, add static entries for your vSphere environment. See Add Static Entries on the vSphere Agent for the vCenter and ESX(i) Servers.
4. Set the vSphere Agent Time Zone.
5. Register the vSphere Agent with vCenter Server.
6. Register the vSphere Agent with Portal.
7. Configure the vSphere Agent in Portal.
8. By default, the Agent enables Changed Block Tracking (CBT) for VMs. If you want to stop the Agent from enabling CBT, you can change the CBT setting. See Change the CBT Setting for the vSphere Agent.