William Lam of VirtuallyGhetto.com long ago created a free alternative backup solution for ESXi. It is distributed as a simple script. It was developed over 8 years ago for ESX 3.x and continues to be added to and modified today.
Just yesterday William added a post on his site that it is now available in a self installable VIB format. One of the great things about the VIB is that the program persists now through reboots of ESXi.
The original page for the script GhettoVCB is here: https://communities.vmware.com/docs/DOC-8760
To read more about the latest updates from William and to get to his links for downloading the VIB & offline bundle, click here: http://www.virtuallyghetto.com/2015/05/ghettovcb-vib-offline-bundle-for-esxi.html