Patent attributes
Embodiments provide granular recovery of virtual machine backups by generating the virtual machine backups comprising virtual disks that are configured as iSCSI targets; exposing, with an iSCSI server, the virtual disks as a logical unit number to an iSCSI client; performing SCSI read operations from the virtual disk using defined application program interfaces (APIs); and mounting a backup save set comprising the virtual disk files as a local disk on a computer where data recover is to be performed. Embodiments also emulate virtual disk storage as an iSCSI target by exposing the virtual disk as a logical unit number to an iSCSI client and mounting a backup save set as a local disk in an iSCSI server executing a backup process defining a granularity for data restore operations.