That is not true. Microsoft Provides the Interface for the Hardware vendors to use the VSS Writer to do disk level Snapshot backups. This comes handy for a Hardware DR solution .Both Netapp and EMC has got their products build on top of the VSS Writer Frame work .I ma sure other vendors also has the same suite.

See the Links

http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/cc785914.aspx

http://www.netapp.com/us/products/management-software/snapmanager-sql.html

My Question is that as of a DBA community , do we recommend this ?. I know some environment they may be force to use this as DR Solution , but do you recommend ?