The vApp is a management construct that encapsulates one or more virtual machines running in the vSphere environment. The tenant vApp is a higher-level construct that allows vCloud Director to manage vApps and virtual machines running in a multi-tenant datacenter, or in a multi-tenant cloud, based on vSphere.
vCloud API Object Taxonomy shows the objects within a single organization that you can access with the vCloud API.
Multi-tenant and self-service capabilities of vCloud Director provide multiple levels of protection for a vApp. A service provider can offer vApp protection at the system level, the tenant level, or the end-user level, managed by the system administrator, Organization administrator, and end user, respectively. This chapter focuses on the protection provided at the system level, where service providers can employ backup solutions from vendors of data protection software.
This chapter describes how to design software to back up and restore the vApps in a vCloud. To back up or restore a vApp, you need to deal with both the vCloud configuration and the virtual machines that belong to the vApp. In vSphere, a virtual machine is represented by configuration files and virtual disk files.
