VDR was not what you say it was, from our point of view it was easy to create offsite backups with VDR due to it letting you set the backup destination to a network file share.
Then you simple back that location up to tape to store off site as part of your regular tape routine.
VDP appears to be a epic fail in its configuration flexibility, lack of logs / details/reporting, and therefore after hours and hours of research I plan to stay at 5.0.0 u2, until VMware fix this half baked "new" way of doing things, hopefully in patches /upgrades to come and we can just skip this 5.1 debacle all together.
VDP appears to be the "Vista" of the virtualisation world.
fingers crossed.