Thanks!  I had looked at 'man vzdump' in version Proxmox-VE 1.1 but there was minimal info there.   I noticed that in version 1.4  'man vzdump' has more info and answers a most of my questions.  I understand that each mode has more or less down time associated with them.  Stop mode = long down time,  Suspend Mode = multiple short down times,  Snapshot mode = no down time.  What I am looking for clarity on is the quality of the backups with each mode.   Perhaps an example might help clarify this:
In the case of backing up a Moodle webserver (MySQL, Apache) were users are uploading documents and changing content during a backup.
What would be the differences in quality and consistency for a backup made with each mode?  
thanks 
Petrus