Gold tier virtual machines have a recovery point objective of one hour for image backup.

The transport modes that could be used during the redesign for gold tier virtual machines with a one-hour RPO are Virtual Appliance (HotAdd) and Backup from Storage Snapshots. A transport mode is a method of retrieving VM data from the source storage during backup or replication. Virtual Appliance (HotAdd) is a transport mode that allows a proxy server running on a VM to attach disks of another VM to itself via hot-add SCSI commands and read data directly from these disks. Backup from Storage Snapshots is a transport mode that allows a proxy server to retrieve data from storage snapshots created by supported storage systems without affecting the production VMs or hosts. Both transport modes can improve backup performance, reduce backup window, and minimize impact on the production environment.