Br10s

Hello people, Does anyone know "tried & tested" backing up VMware ESXi (Free edition) to an external NAS and restored that data with it all working fine. I would really like to take clones of the VMware images as storage is not an issue but I'm finding it hard to find a cost effective soloution to snapshot the image. If any of you know of a soloution you have tried and tested or know a working method I would be grateful for a reply on this subject. Thanks Bri