> If I remember correctly, you had to first install vCenter and then restore configuration and hope the version you installed is exactly the same as the backup.
Yes, but a scheduler is built in, so it's pretty much set-and-forget. Of course it's a good idea to have monitoring in place for the target and to set reminders to rotate passwords in vCenter if they expire on the target. Scheduling:
I did have one failed restore but that was on me - my backup destination had been down for a while and two minor versions later a plugin broke my vCenter and I didn't have any backups from the previous version (my "latest" was for 2 versions ago). Then I had to go back 2 versions ago, update vCenter, take a backup, and then update vCenter again....
> Honestly, I'm surprised this isnt possible with Snapcenter
Based on the docs, it doesn't seem, but maybe I missed it. I was also curious so I tried to check as much as I could. There may be some scenarios or possibilities that I'm not aware of, so what the other reply said still applies - maybe reach out to some SE from your account team or a partner, both of whom can follow up with the product team.
A crude workaround is to snapshot and FlexClone the DS with vCenter and maybe keep it on a different aggregate. That's 3-4 to get a SnapLock'd clone. If you create a vCenter only volume, or maybe vCenter/AD/DNS/NTP/SnapCenter/VMware Console, you could have enough means of bootstrapping your environment to the point where vSphere is up & running, and then use SnapCenter to recover the rest.