1 Select the ESX server in the Navigation pane and click Backup.
2 On the 1-Time Backup or Schedule Backup tab, VMs display in the Select Items list. To refresh the list, click the Reload icon in the bottom right.
3 Click the Credential icon to the right of the desired VM.
4 In the Set Credentials for the listed Items window, click New Credential and enter the following:
• Credential Name – Name associated with the credential. This is optional.
• Administrative Username – User must have local system administrator privileges or domain administrator privileges.
• Password – Password associated with the username you supplied.
• Confirm Password – Enter the password again to confirm.
• Domain – Name of the Windows domain associated with this credential. This is optional.
• Set as Default – Check this box to set the credential as default for the system. This is optional.
• Application-aware VM image processing – Check this box to enable application-aware backups. Recommended for VMs hosting Exchange and SQL simple recovery model applications.
5 Click Create and Set Credential.
The credential is created and applied to the selected VM.
• If you checked Application-aware VM image processing, a yellow light bulb displays and the credential will be used for backups and restores.
• If you did not check Application-aware VM image processing, a dark gray light bulb displays, indicating the credential has not been enabled for backups and restores.