Got a Virtualization Infrastructure backup strategy yet?

Ever since we deployed and migrated some of our IT infrastructure to Virtualization, backup of those resources, and virtual machines has been a top priority. Once that Virtual Machine (VM) is deleted from the database, there is no way to get it back unless you have another copy of it, cloned it, made a template from it or point in time backup of that VM somewhere other than the datastore it is running on.