Microsoft’s Exchange team is including a VSS plug-in in Exchange 2007 SP2, which means you will be able to backup Exchange on Server 2008 without purchasing a third-party product. Details of how this works are here.

Note that this feature, which was first promised in June 2008, will likely be appearing just before Exchange 2010. SP2 is promised in the third quarter this year, and Exchange 2010 in the second half; interpreting this ship-date jargon I guess means Exchange 2010 around the end of the year. In other words, it has taken almost a complete generation of the product to ship the fix.