I'm looking for a very simple backup setup with ESXi. Is there any way to just suspend the VMs and copy the VMDK files at night to a network share? If there was a way to do this in a scheduled task, I'd buy vSphere in a heartbeat.
I know that something like this can be done with VMWare Data Recovery, but requires vCenter Server, which seems to be an extra level of complexity I'd rather avoid.
I can see the advantage of moving from VMWare Server to Esxi because it bypasses Windows as a host OS in favor of a lightweight hypervisor. If that hypervisor needs a windows server install just to do backup, it seems like a step in the wrong direction.
PHD Virtual has a backup solution that utilitzes virtual appliance to backup vms to a network storage (CIFS/NFS).
See: http://communities.vmware.com/docs/DOC-10780
Andre