That is too bad, I know some vendors (mostly small) that provide a free and simple tool to leverage VSS consistency with the storage array.
Nothing is free - it is just included in the price of the hardware (or other software for the sake of argument). LeftHand is one of such examples, but bear in mind they cannot go (currently) beyond simplistic VSS-based consistency. And this is really no match for a fully blown (albeit chargeable;) SnapMager, GUI-driven backup & recovery tools with catalogs, log truncation, etc.
Does this also mean that snapdrive does not leverage the NTFS writer for VSS? Basically not even the file system snap is consistent?
SnapDrive-triggered snapshots are file system consistent - everything from file system cache gets commited to disk before taking a hardware snapshot.
Regards,
Radek