VMware and Agent question- 2 different topic

Hi,

I have 2 question in my mind

Question 1.

what is the purpose of Agent? for eg: Netbackup for Oracle.

We do backup of oracle database with out agent by taking "ALL LOCAL DRIVES" in this all the database files will be backed up.

at the time of restore we will restore it as file system and db admin will do the necessary steps to bring up the db

Where as How Agent works in this senario?..What is the difference and advantage of using AGENT?

I know for FS backup it sees as normal files but here How Agent sees the DB?

I dint find any docs or tech note for my questions. pls share your taughts.

Question 2:

This is regading VMWare VADP backup using version 7.5.0.6.

do we need VSS and VMtools for VM query based policy backup? please explain.

Thanks

Chan