After releasing the Release Candidate in November this year, Trilead has now released version 3.0.018 of its VMware VM backup product VM Explorer. This product is the follow up of version 2.0 which was released in March this year. VM Explorer Backups can be stored on ESX, Windows, Linux and FreeBSD based storage platforms or directly to a SAN. VM Explorer is offered in two editions, the free edition, supporting VMware ESX 3.x and higher with a maximum of 5 devices and a pro edition, which additionally supports vCenter 4 and unlimited devices.
The main new feature is the support for incremental backups, which will work on ESX/ESXi 4.0 but not with the free ESXi edition. To keep track of the changes in the VM, VM Explorer uses the VMware Virtual Disk API, giving the following advantages:
- Support for ESX/ESXi versions 4.1.0.320092 and 4.1.0.320137
- Faster and more stable backups thanks to the official VMware API
- Incremental Backups are now possible
- Thin disks will be backed up only using the used space
- Incremental Restores are possible (restore backup only to a certain date)
