Hello Dan,  The problem is getting a differnt OS to understand the VMFS filesystem.   There is a Linux utility, called "VMFS-Tools" that does understand VMFS v3.x. AFAIK, right now it does not support the ESXi v5 format yet.  There's no prebuilt support for what you want to do.  However, you could script the creation of a snapshot, bring it online and mount it on the Linux server.  A benefit is that you get ALL the VMFS files.  VMDKs, VMX, log files, etc..   The bad news, no differential backup.   You could use the Linux BUE agent to backup the files at that point.   When done, script the unmount and snapshot deletion to clean things up.  Regards,   -don 
I've been trying to find some way to do off-host backups of vmfs volumes using EQL snapshots. Is this possible? Backup software I am currenly using is backup exec 2010 r3. I have hit/ve, adbo, and vmware agents already. I just hate using vmware snapshots when eql is so much quicker. Any thoughts? Thank you-dan
off-host backups with vmfs volumes