Can I back up my entire virtual machine from the Service Console? | VMware

 Yes, but it is not advised. The console services should be left alone to manage the entire virtual machine infrastructure. It's best that backups be performed by separating the applications and data from the operating systems because backups can become quite large very quickly. You should consider a backup of the environments that change frequently (data and applications) with an agent specifically designed to perform this function. A backup of those virtual disks that change infrequently and need VMFS formats should be backed up from the Service Console. These console-based backups should be performed in a powered-down or suspended approach (preferred), or a suspended environment using redo logs as an alternative. All backups performed from a systems console mode must be restored in an all-or-nothing approach. Recovery for a single file or directory can only be accomplished via a backup agent or from a backup to a SAN environment using a variety of different recovery/restoral techniques.