Some more info on VMware Data Recovery

There's been a lot of talk about using VMware Data Recovery with ESX 4 and vSphere and what it does and doesn't do. We'll get the negatives out of the way first. vDR isn't a VCB replacement so if you still need a VCB proxy in your environment that will still need to be maintained. vDR doesn't write directly to tape. vDR's de-dupe technology is target based.. Therefore, you will experience disk space savings but all those redundant blocks will still be sent over the network.

Okay, now that we have some of the obvious negatives out of the way, let's talk about why vDR is really awesome. It comes as a virtual appliance so there's nothing to build or configure as far as the device goes. There's also a plugin that install directly into vSphere and your backups can be managed by the vSphere client (no 3rd party apps required!). There are many more cool features and there's also an experimental plugin that will allow you to perform file level restores from windows VMs.

vDR vs. Veeam and detailed install instructions

Here is a link that lists a vdr and veeam comparison as well as install instructions with screenshots:

http://searchstorage.techtarget.com.au/articles/34373-How-to-install-and-operate-VMware-Data-Recovery-Manager

Install and Configure Video

Here is the first part of an installation video. This is pretty cool and shows the different interfaces.

http://www.dabcc.com/media.aspx?id=505