Since my last blog about Consolidated Backup I’ve had a lot of people ask me how it compares to esxRanger.

These 2 products are both competitive and complimentary. They are competitive because both attempt to provide a faster, more efficient solution for backing up your virtual machines. However, there is a key difference. Consolidated Backup provides a “file level” backup that enables you to backup a single file. esxRanger backs up vmdk files (virtual disks) as a single file.

esxRanger makes restoring an entire virtual machine extremely simple by allowing an administrator to restore only 1 file. To restore an entire virtual machine with Consolidated Backup you’d first need to install an operating system (preferably from template). Then you can restore your data from your backup agent.

Conversly, if you wanted to restore a single file using esxRanger, it can be a complicated process. You’d first need to restore the vmdk files associated with the virtual machine, and then restart it in a development environment, start the VM and then copy the needed file. This is far too complicated for just 1 file.

That’s why Vizioncore (developers of esxRanger) developed what they call their 1 - 2 punch. This approach uses both esxRanger and Consolidated Backup thereby providing both file level and “single image” backups, and therefore simplified VM and file restore. You get the best of both worlds.

http://www.vizioncore.com/downloads/1-2%20punch.pdf

http://www.vmware.com/pdf/vi3_consolidated_backup.pdf