Jonathan, one of the key difference’s to note about the 3.x product and 4.0 is the Architecture. In the 3.x product, the vRanger install was a proxy for all backup traffic and putting the product in a VM was not a good idea, when you think about all the backup traffic going to a VM then to a storage target.

With vRanger Pro 4.0 DPP we now have a "Direct to Target Architecture" (http://vizioncorum.com/?p=260), where all backup traffic travels from the ESX hosts directly to the storage target and the product can be happily installed in a VM because vRanger is no longer a proxy for all the backup traffic like in the 3.x product.

With the release of vRanger Pro 4.0 DPP, we just did a rewrite from the ground up to provide a platform that is going to scale with the amount of VM’s image’s that customers wants to backup at one time in a short backup window. Some times when you have this kind of massive undertaking, you loss functionality on its first release and most of time this won’t matter to a customer, that there is a missing feature, they just want the feature, we do understand this. But I will say what you will see, is that once we support ESXi in the product, it will exist in such a way that all backup data can be processed and compressed on the ESXi host before it is sent to the storage target, thus allowing you to configure a “Direct to Target Architecture" even though ESXi does not have a service console. This also allows for a central install of the product, where backup traffic does NOT travel to the product and allows us to scale out the install base of ESXi as if it were ESX with a service console.

John, it sounds like you know or have met David before, I know David personally and professionally. I would be happy to share our ESXi and VCB road map with you, or anyone that would like to chat about this in more detail.