Recently, I wrote about how you can make your life so much easier by using backing up using VMware virtualization-specific application.  It is very robust with features like data-duplication and file level restore.  VMware Data Recovery (or vDR as it is called) is included in vSphere Essentials Pl. more...

Read more at: http://blogs.virtualizationadmin.com/davis/2009/10/28/backups-the-easy-way-using-virtualization/