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Backing up a Linux system on vmware using "snapshots"

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The site where I work has some Linux servers created as virtual machines 
(VM) using VMWare.  I'm not the systems administrator and have almost no 
experience with VMWare, but I'm trying to satisfy myself that the 
systems are being properly backed up.  The sys admin assures me that 
they are, but his explanations of how it is done are confusing me.

A VMWare virtual machine appears to consist of a large .vmdk file that 
contains the contents of the guest OS (Linus in this case) disk drive, 
plus one or more very small files that contain some control information 
used by VMWare.

One way to backup such a system is to shut down the VM and then copy 
these files to another place.  That is a complete backup.  There are 
other ways, one of which is to use what VMWare calls a "snapshot". 
That's what our sys admin is using.  He likes it because it creates a 
very much smaller file than copying the full .vmdk and associated files. 
  But I'm not sure what the snapshot really is.  The VMWare 
documentation kinda/sorta implies that it's an incremental backup of 
sectors in the .vmdk file that changed since the last snapshot, but I 
haven't found any specific information about how one would use snapshots 
to restore a VM from scratch, for example after a disk failure or other 
error causes an entire VM to be corrupted and unbootable.

There appears to be a "tree" of snapshots that includes a "parent" and 
multiple "children", but the VMWare documentation that I've seen has 
more "go here - click that" instructions than explanations of what's 
happening.

Does anyone know how to use snapshots in backup and to restore after a 
complete crash that totally hoses a system?  Has anyone restored a dead 
system using snapshots?  Can anyone point me to a VMWare document that 
explains this?

Thanks.

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Backing up a Linux system on vmware using "snapshots" Alan Meyer <ameyer2@yahoo.com> - 2011-06-06 16:01 -0400
  Re: Backing up a Linux system on vmware using "snapshots" The Natural Philosopher <tnp@invalid.invalid> - 2011-06-07 00:57 +0100
    Re: Backing up a Linux system on vmware using "snapshots" Alan Meyer <ameyer2@yahoo.com> - 2011-06-06 23:46 -0400
      Re: Backing up a Linux system on vmware using "snapshots" David Brown <david@westcontrol.removethisbit.com> - 2011-06-07 09:23 +0200
        Re: Backing up a Linux system on vmware using "snapshots" Alan Meyer <ameyer2@yahoo.com> - 2011-06-07 15:56 -0400
  Re: Backing up a Linux system on vmware using "snapshots" "F. Michael Orr" <michael_orr25@yahoo.com> - 2011-06-07 08:53 -0500
    Re: Backing up a Linux system on vmware using "snapshots" Alan Meyer <ameyer2@yahoo.com> - 2011-06-07 16:12 -0400
      Re: Backing up a Linux system on vmware using "snapshots" "F. Michael Orr" <michael_orr25@yahoo.com> - 2011-06-08 13:00 -0500
        Re: Backing up a Linux system on vmware using "snapshots" Alan Meyer <ameyer2@yahoo.com> - 2011-06-08 23:31 -0400

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