How to backup VMware vSphere 4?

[AlexHeylin]

 Am I right in thinking that BE 12.5 offers no support for native (host based, not VCB or guest based) backup of vSphere 4 servers and the guest VMs?

[Hemant_Jain]

Yes, you are right, Backup Exec 12.5 would continue to use VCB for backups and not the Vstorage APIs.

Please mark it a solution, if this is useful.
Thanks

[JT_T]

Next release of Backup Exec, BE 2010 (if that's the final name) will do backups of vSphere guests using new VMware Storage Apis, until new version you have to use VCB.

[fwolf]

Do I have to install a special agent at the VMware server?

[Colin_Weaver]

BE 2010 AVVI with ESX 4 (vSphere) does not require anything to be installed on either the Virtual Center Server or ESX host server. However to do application level GRT you will need to install the RAWS software inside your virtual machines.