SQL Backups - VM, Database, or Physical backup??

Hello All,

I was wondering how you all are dealing with backups of SQL database servers that are Virtual servers.

What I currently do......

For SQL servers that are on VM's, I omit the VM backup from the EBR, and I back up the SQL server through the installed Networker agent, just like it is a physical server. For this backup, I back up everything other than the SQL database volumes on the server. This is so that I am not capturing the databases in the backups a second time, since backup storage is a consideration.

Then, I have separate groups that run the SQL database and transaction log backups.

Is there a better option, or "best practice"?

What I have to take into consideration are two things.....how much disk storage I'm using for the backups, and speed of recovery.

Is it an appropriate option to simply not run any SQL database backups at all, and just run backups of the VM's every few hours (as needed by the transaction logging), or will a VM backup of a SQL server not even clear the logs? I think that doing this would require all databases to be in simple mode. Doing this would allow very quick recovery if we lost a sql server.

What I want to avoid is running a backup of the VM, which captures everything, and then running a SQL database backup. This would essentially capture all data twice, but under different data types, so dedupe may not help.

I guess in short, how are those of you that are very familiar with SQL databases on VM's, doing efficient backups, with fast recovery, while not capturing everything twice?

Thanks all!

Todd