[Discuss] Manual or third-party ESX(i) backup?

[Scott Ehrlich]

>From a fundamental viewpoint, what is the difference between manually
copying VMs from  the server to the backup system and using a
commercial product, being SRM or third-party?

What might we be missing manual vs third-party (or SRM) product?

I am not looking at/for assumptions of how the computing environment
is set up - simply what do we:

- vital elements gained from an add-on product

- vital element we might lose from manual preservation

If we manually preserved, and lost the VM or the server, and rebuilt
with original media, could we simply copy the manually preserved
copies back over and be operational again, or are the add-on options
the only way to make this happen?

Thanks.

Scott