Do you have a backup solution for physical servers? My company purchased esxRanger Pro, but we have not used it. Our CommVault install, using VCB, handles everything we need. We can do file level backups and CommVault reports show us historical information for use in legal discovery.

My company's product esXpress may be another alternative for you.

esXpress does hot VM image backups ( Full and Deltas ) in the virtual space using Virtual Backup Appliances (VBAs), it does not use VCB. Backups can be sent to either network targets ( ftp/ssh/smb ) or to vmfs either local or on your SAN or both network and vmfs at the same time. Lots of other features as well including template backups, backing up VMs with existing snapshots, backup archive management etc.

Our new 3.1 version also includes File Level Backups (its an add-on feature). What happens here is when the VM image level backup is made esXpress will also create a seperate file level backup archive for the folders indentifed to be backed up and will place the archive on a network share.

Also in 3.1 esXpress now does what we call Simple Replication. What this is we use the backups to replicate to another esx host ( could be your DR site ). How this works is the production host sends its delta backups to a backup target ( usually a ftp server but other possibilities exist ), then second host is looking on that target ( usually hourly ) for any new backups and then automatically restores them.

Pete@esxpress