Please clarify how to Backup and Restore Exchange 2010 on SBS 2011 with Acronis SBS Edition

I find it very hard to get a concise accurate statement about Exchange backup etc. I'd like comments/confirmation that what we say below is correct/best practise ? Am I missing something.. ?

We have used Acronis for many years on SBS 2003. We found the only practical method was a full backup using VSS of the system. Acronis SBS Edition can only backup and restore an entire Exchange DataBase (EDB) , you cant directly get a users mailbox ? The Acronis Restore for Exchange product, which is double the price of the SBS edition anyway, (so tripple the price all up) is not yet available for Exchange 2010 anyway I understand ?

If we want to restore we can restore the EDB and its logs directory, do a soft recovery on this, then mount in a Recovery Storage Group and extract a specific users mailbox (eg using ExMerge) .. often to a PST for them to mount and copy required data.
We do this regularly as a test, and occasionaly in anger to fix probs. Its VERY unwieldly in a largish site .. restoring an entine 45GB EDB to get one users PST, to get one folder or item they may have deleted.. that often "Recover Deleted items" seems to not help with.. (but thats another story)...

Exchange Circular Logging must be on, (is by default in 2003) else logs grow uncontrollably. You could do a separate NTBackup of the EDB which can truncate logs after a backup, but no additional flexibiliy in this as I understand ? So wasted effort and time.

In SBS 2011 (with Exchange 2010) , a similar situation exists. With Acronis SBS Edition still only able to backup at the EDB level, and any restores are either the entire EDB or most likely the entire EDB to a RecoveryDB (similar to 2003).

So we backup with VSS option, do multi volume snapshot (this is important to ensure the logs ,which by best practise are on a sep volume to the EDB, are consistent with the EDB) . And must turn on Exchange Circular Logging (off by default in 2010). (I forgot to do this on one site and have 26,0000 x 1MB log files in 1 month for a 45GB EDB )

To restore, get the EDB and Logs dirs , restored to a RECOVERYDB folder.
Run eseutil to check EDB and Logs states, then do a soft recovery, then create a Xch recovery DB, and mount the recovery store..
Then use powershell cmdlets to recovery the entire mailbox to a "recovered items folder" in a live mailbox (the only option) and you can then manipulate the items to get what you want hopefully. There is no way to directly export a PST from a recoveryDB any more.. the mailbox must be restored to a live user mbox then you could export that to a PST if desired, but not really needed.

If you muck up the Log file backups (eg dont do multi volume.. or worse dont backup at all) I think you can still do a hard recovery of the EDB and get it back to some consistent state (to when the last logs were written). But by design MS make updating the EDB a low priority task and assume you have reliable logs to recover from.. So you could loose considerable data without the logs ? Any guesses how much ? Are we talking minutes/hours/days even ? Seems stupid design if so that a Small Business server would delay updating a DB for more than tens of seconds or minutes in a worse case ?

Why do Microsoft (and Acronis) make all this so hard and mumbo jumbo ? I'd love to see a stat about how many SBS sites have no or ineffective exchange backups, even Acronis sites (who for example dont do a multivolume snapshot so logs are useless ?)
And how many ever do a successful test (or real) restore ? We are IT support professionals and have struggled big time to get this far wading thru all the complex documentation about VSS Writers etc and doing it on dozens of sites.. How is a Small Business supposed to cope with this .. really !

I keep thinking I am missing something.. surely no one would design such a complex and cumbersome process for protecting data ?

By the way for Lotus Notes its trivial.. one mailbox is a NSF file, and as long as you backup with a snapshot product the file is consistent and restoreable.. period.

Thanks for reading, and look forward to some comments/confirmation/corrections of my understanding ? What do others do ? Any practical alternatives ?

rgds .. Peter