Re: Snapcenter for VMware without vCenter ?

There's this post about using snapshots for NFS-based vCenter:

https://community.netapp.com/t5/Data-Backup-and-Recovery/Restore-Vcenter-VM-per-SMVI-without-running-vcenter/td-p/114262

Unrelated to SnapCenter: I used to use built-in vCenter backup schedule to dump data to external location.

https://docs.vmware.com/en/VMware-vSphere/8.0/vsphere-vcenter-installation/GUID-8C9D5260-291C-44EB-A79C-BFFF506F2216.html

I restored it twice (6.7U3 and 7.0U1, back then) after some plugins messed vCenter up, by deploying vCenter with a script (10-15 min), and then restoring data from my HTTPS backup. It worked fine both times. But my environment didn't have any of the challenges from the list of limitations:

https://docs.vmware.com/en/VMware-vSphere/8.0/vsphere-vcenter-installation/GUID-08A65FD6-FB9E-4969-AE37-1F209F272B77.html

The links are for vSphere 8, but the info for 6 and 7 is similar.

Different destinations: don't know if SnapCenter can do it, but you can snapshot-and-FlexClone the destination - not sure if that would work for you.

Another possibility - if SC or cloning isn't feasible - would be backup to S3.

https://docs.netapp.com/us-en/bluexp-backup-recovery/concept-backup-to-cloud.html

VMware-specific bit: https://docs.netapp.com/us-en/bluexp-backup-recovery/task-restore-vm-data.html

This also requires a working vCenter, it appears.