Abstract: Methods and systems for applications and/or virtual machines (“VM”) are provided. As an example, one method includes registering a storage system configured to store data for a VM; creating a policy for the VM for generating a VM backup by a storage management system interfacing with the storage system and a cloud-based microservice; storing, by the cloud-based micro-service, a copy of the VM backup at a cloud-based storage; receiving, by the cloud-based micro-service, an indication from the storage management system of a successful execution of a pre-restore operation upon unregistering the VM from a VM management system; and copying, by the cloud-based micro-service, VM data from the VM backup stored at the cloud-based storage to the storage system for executing a restore operation to restore the VM backup at the storage system.

Abstract: Methods and systems for protecting virtual machines is provided. One method includes identifying a plurality of volumes of a primary storage system for storing a plurality of data containers of a virtual machine (“VM”); generating a consistency group (“CG”) snapshot of the plurality of volumes; associating a single instance storage clone of each data container of the VM from the CG snapshot to an active file system of the primary storage system; and generating metadata for representing a VM backup as a set having each of the single instance storage clone of each data container.