Backing up your virtual environment does not have to be as challenging as it seems. Actually if you do it right it should be rewarding when compared with physical servers backup. You can restore VM from images backup much easier than you ever did with physical servers. Yes, you were able to restore physical servers from images backup as well but that had never been fun or easy to do. Restoring a physical machine from image backup had always meant fuzzing with drivers issues specially when using different hardware from the source. As virtual machines run independently from the physical hardware, they can be restored from images quickly to any host without caring about the hardware difference. This is alone is a huge advantage.

Nonetheless all the advantages that virtual machines have when it come to backup and restore, you will still need to choose the right virtualization aware backup solution to ensure you get the best mileage of your backup software. Further, your backup solutions from the physical machines day might not always be the best for your virtual environment. Though many of the physical machines backup solutions have been enhanced to work in a much better way with virtual environments, and can still be a great option to backup your environment. Though there is many options in this space & you will always need to assist products against your specific requirements.

Two specialized virtualization backup  & replication solutions that were shining lately, & being recommended by many are:

• Veeam Backup & Replication
• PHD Virtual Backup & Replication

Both of these products offer many great features, & some of them are unique. Below are few to look at:

• VM Instant Restore: Give you the ability to power on your VM from back without having to restore it.
• Backup verification
• De-duplication: You will not have to waste space for backing up duplicate data any more
• Integrated backup & replication within the same product
• From zero to ready to backup your VMs in 10 minutes
• Easy to use, no complicated settings to fuzz with.
• Single file restore from image with ease
• Application consistent image backup

Although both products offer great features & might seems very similar on their main features, they still have differences. To find out which one of them fit your environment better, you might want to look at the comparison posted few days ago by ITComparison Team at: Veeam vs PHD Virtual . I believe that comparison is fair and quite informative in case you are deciding which one of the two you are planning to implement. Though keep in mind those are not the only two good Virtualization aware backup solutions aware out there and you should make sure you check out all your options & choose the one that best fit your environment.