ESX to ESXi Replication and Backup

[irobot8]

Hi all,
We have a client that wishes to deploy three production ESX Servers (3.5 Update 4 | Build: 153875) with VMWare Infrastructure Foundation, and one ESXi Server to allow for Veeam Replication and Backup to a separate site for disaster recovery purposes.
Can anyone advise as to whether or not it will be possible to replicate and backup ESX virtual machines to ESXi? Also, is this possible without VMWare Consolidated Backup?
Many thanks,
IR8

[vbussiro]

An Esxi can't be a replication destination. Only ESX can do that, no matter VCB is involved.

[Vitaliy S.]

Veeam Backup 3.0 offers full support of ESXi for backup only. Unfortunarely, it is not possible to make replication to ESXi.

And it is possible to backup/replicate VMs both with and without the VCB proxy, you should use Network Backup instead. At network backup, the data of a VM is retrieved directly from the ESX host through the local area network.