Oh Yay, Oh Yay, Oh Yay! VMReference have updated their indispensable ESX3 guide!
Download it here, print it out and treasure it, because it will be your friend forever.
Forbes Guthrie you are a king among men!
Edward L. Haletky has put together a rather comprehensive overview document of backups in a VMware virtualised environment that can be found here on vmprofessional.
It covers everything from the speed of the backups to level of compression gained using the following tools:
The article really does go into great detail, even discussing each tool in depth after the comparison matrix.
It is an ongoing document so hopefully it will include Veeam Backup in the next release.
RTFM Education Eric Sloof BBC Football