as the storage system is a Netapp, this can be done with Netapp snapshotting which does not use space on the storage.
I tried to do that with a restore of the VMDK, but the restore wizard does not show VMDKs from Netapp snapshots

so as a workaround, I did a "Instant Recovery" of the whole VM and manually attached the VMDK to the test VM.
this is technically exactly what I want to achieve, but I'd like to have only the VMDK instead of the whole VM.
it seems that Veeam B&R cannot do instant recoveries of single VMDKs directly out of the Netapp snapshot. is this really true or do I missing an option?
I don't see a technical reason why this couldn't work, I think it's just not implemented in the restore wizard.
so may this be implemented in v9?
tldr:
single VMDK restore not possible with Netapp snapshots?
will it be possible with v9?