VMware Consolidated Backup (or VCB) is a group of Windows command line utilities, installed on a Windows system, that has SAN connectivity to the ESX Server VMFS file system. With VCB, you can perform file level or image level backups and restores of the VM guests, back to the VCB server. From there, you will have to find a way to get those VCB backup files off of the VCB server and integrated into your normal backup process. Many backup vendors integrate with VCB to make that task easier. Contrary to what it sounds like VCB IS NOT a traditional backup application because it doesn’t do anything to get the data off the system and onto external media nor does it have a GUI interface.
Figure 1: Image Source: VMware.com
