Methods and Systems for Protecting and Restoring Virtual Machines

Methods and systems for protecting virtual machines is provided. One method includes discovering, by a first plugin, from a virtual machine ("VM") management system, a plurality of VMs that share a logical data store having a plurality of virtual volumes used for storing data for the VMs by a storage system registered with the first plugin and a virtual appliance of the VM management system; obtaining, by the first plugin, from the virtual appliance, metadata and storage layout of a set of virtual volumes used by a VM to store data; using a first application programming interface (API), by the first plugin, for identifying a first set of storage volumes used by the storage system to store data for the set of virtual volumes; and creating, by the first plugin, a consistency group ("CG") having the identified the first set of storage volumes and generating a snapshot of the CG.