Here's an excerpt from a whitepaper I have
"NetBackup for VMware provides an alternate-client backup technology for VMs with integrated file recovery capabilities (Figure 3). In conjunction with VMware Consolidated Backup off-host data protection technology, NetBackup 6.5 builds on and significantly enhances VMware Consolidated Backup. Basic VMware Consolidated Backup integration is included with NetBackup 6.5. Enhanced Granular File Restore from a vmdk backup was originally released with NetBackup 6.5.1 and has been enhanced for NetBackup 6.5.2 (and later) with additional features such as incremental backups.
Advantages:
-- Two restore options are available from a single backup; single file restore or entire (vmdk level) VM restore.
-- NetBackup integration with the VMware Converter technology greatly simplifies restores of VMs (extremely useful in disaster recovery scenarios).
White Paper: Data Protection: Backing up VMware with Veritas NetBackup
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-- All backed up data is correctly referenced in the NetBackup catalog to the originating VM.
--Backup impact on the target VM and other VMs hosted on the same physical machine is minimized.
-- No NetBackup client software needs to be installed on the VM or inside the ESX Service Console. Optionally, client software can be installed to assist with file level restores.
-- Integrated with VMware Virtual Center to provide easy VM discovery.
-- Distributed Resource Scheduling (DRS) and VMotion aware.
-- File level incremental backups are now possible (requires NetBackup 6.5.2 or higher and VMware Consolidated Backup Framework 1.1 or higher—Windows only). This can significantly reduce backup times, data stored on disk/tape, and backup impact.
-- Supports SAN, iSCSI and NAS environments. Datastores created on NAS require NetBackup 6.5.2 or later and the VMware Consolidated Backup Framework 1.1 or later.
-- With the NetBackup 6.5.3 release, a VMware provided VSS Writer is supported within the VM. VSS Writer can provide basic application (and database) backup functionality by quiescing the application before the VMware Consolidated Backup snapshot is created. VSS support is only available when using the ESX 3.5 U2 or later release as well as the VMware Consolidated Backup Framework 1.5 or later.
Disadvantages:
-- A VMware backup proxy is required. This can be hosted on a Windows 2003 or 2008 server and in many cases can be hosted on the same server as a NetBackup media server.
-- Live (hot) application or database backups require additional pre- and post-backup processing to ensure backup data consistency.
-- Granular file restore and incremental backups are currently available only for Windows VMs.