US Patent 9524215 Systems and methods for managing virtual machine backups

A computer-implemented method for managing virtual machine backups may include (1) identifying a maximum recovery point objective for a virtual machine with a virtual machine disk file on a storage device with snapshot capabilities, (2) identifying an available snapshot of the storage device that contains the virtual machine disk file, (3) determining that the snapshot's timestamp is within the maximum recovery point objective, and (4) constructing a backup of the virtual machine using the snapshot, instead of creating the backup from the virtual machine disk file. Various other methods, systems, and computer-readable media are also disclosed.