Acronis Certified Engineer Backup 12.5 Training Guide (EN)
Acronis Certified Engineer Backup 12.5 Training Guide (EN)
Acronis Certified Engineer Backup 12.5 Training Guide (EN)
Backup
Training & Certification
This training guide is bound to the Acronis Backup® and Acronis Backup
Cloud® product portfolio.
ALL RIGHTS RESERVED. PLEASE NOTE THAT ALL OF THE INFORMATION CONTAINED IN THIS MANUAL
AND ANY ADDITIONAL TRAINING MATERIALS PROVIDED TO YOU ARE CONSIDERED COPYRIGHT
MATERIALS OWNED BY ACRONIS THIS MANUAL AND ANY DOCUMENTATION YOU RECEIVE MAY NOT
BE REPRODUCED OR USED IN ANY OTHER WAY WITHOUT THE EXPRESS WRITTEN CONSENT OF
ACRONIS.
ACRONIS, ACRONIS ACADEMY, ACRONIS BACKUP, ACRONIS BACKUP CLOUD, ACRONIS DISASTER
RECOVERY, ACRONIS DISASTER RECOVERY CLOUD, ACRONIS FILES, ACRONIS FILES CLOUD, ACRONIS
NOTARY, ACRONIS NOTARY CLOUD, ACRONIS DATA CLOUD, ACRONIS STORAGE, ACRONIS
SOFTWARE DEFINED INFRASTRUCTURE, ACRONIS STORAGE GATEWAY, ARE TRADEMARKS OF
ACRONIS.
MICROSOFT WINDOWS, AZURE, WINDOWS AZURE PACK, HYPER-V, EXCHANGE, SQL, SHAREPOINT,
ACTIVE DIRECTORY AND OFFICE 365 ARE REGISTERED TRADEMARKS OF MICROSOFT CORPORATION
IN THE UNITED STATES AND OTHER COUNTRIES. LINUX IS A REGISTERED TRADEMARK OF THE LINUX
FOUNDATION. VMWARE VSPHERE, VCENTER, ESX AND ESXI ARE REGISTERED TRADEMARKS OF
VMWARE, INC. CITRIX XENSERVER IS A REGISTERED TRADEMARK OF CITRIX SYSTEMS, INC. RED HAT
VIRTUALIZATION AND RED HAT ENTERPRISE LINUX ARE REGISTERED TRADEMARKS OF RED HAT, INC.
ORACLE VIRTUAL MACHINE SERVER AND ORACLE DATABASE ARE REGISTERED TRADEMARKS OF
ORACLE CORPORATION. PARALLELS SERVER BARE METAL IS A REGISTERED TRADEMARK OF
PARALLELS INTERNATIONAL GMBH. NUTANIX AHV VIRTUALIZATION IS A TRADEMARK OF NUTANIX
INC. ODIN SERVICE AUTOMATION IS A REGISTERED TRADEMARK OF INGRAM MICRO INC. APPLE
MAC, APP STORE, IOS, IPHONE, IPAD AND OS X ARE REGISTERED TRADEMARKS OF APPLE, INC.
GOOGLE, GOOGLE PLAY, ANDROID, GOOGLE CLOUD PLATFORM ARE REGISTERED TRADEMARKS OF
GOOGLE, LLC. AMAZON S3 AND AMAZON EC2 ARE REGISTERED TRADEMARKS OF AMAZON.COM,
INC. OPENSTACK SWIFT IS A REGISTERED TRADEMARK OF OPENSTACK FOUNDATION. OTHER
COMPANY AND PRODUCT NAMES MAY BE TRADEMARKS OF THEIR RESPECTIVE OWNERS.
THIS TRAINING MATERIAL IS DESIGNED TO SUPPORT AN INSTRUCTOR-LED TRAINING COURSE AND IS
INTENDED TO BE USED FOR REFERENCE PURPOSES IN CONJUNCTION WITH THAT COURSE. USE OF
THIS TRAINING MATERIAL FOR SELF-STUDY WITHOUT ATTENDING AN ACRONIS AUTHORIZED
TRAINING COURSE IS NOT RECOMMENDED.
Acronis Certified Engineer Backup Training & Certification
Introductions ............................................................................................................................ 17
Deduplication ................................................................................................................................ 82
Cataloging ...................................................................................................................................... 83
Understanding Physical Data Shipping & Large Scale Recovery .................................................. 252
9.4 Mass Deployment & Update of Agents for Windows ........................................................ 399
Prepare a list of machines where Agent for Windows should be installed .......................................... 399
Typographical Conventions
The following typographical conventions are used:
monospace bold User entry, what the user types: type acrocmd help and press Enter
Boldface Minor headings, Graphical User Interface items: The Tools menu
Borders Notes
Sections relating to both Acronis Backup and Acronis Disaster Recovery Cloud:
1 Course Introduction
What is this module about?
In this module, you will be introduced to the Acronis® Certified Engineer Backup (ACE) training and
certification course, which covers both Acronis Backup and Acronis Backup Cloud. You will learn
about the main features of Acronis Backup and Acronis Backup Cloud, available licensing options and
implementation models.
Course Introduction 15
Acronis Certified Engineer Backup Training & Certification
16 Course Introduction
Acronis Certified Engineer Backup Training & Certification
Note: In this document as well as in the slides used for this course, Acronis Backup refers to both
Acronis Backup and Acronis Backup Cloud unless otherwise specified.
Introductions
Trainer will conduct introductions:
• Trainer self-introduction
• Student self-introductions
General Administration
Class-related
• Attendance; to be recorded every day
• Class duration; dates, start and end times
• Break-time and meal time; length of break-times and meal time
• Courseware; printed manual and required electronic files
• Evaluation; to be completed online before the start of the exam
Facilities-related
• Facility house rules; rules and regulations to abide by for use of the facility
• Travel and transport; closest metro station, bus stations, taxi queues, etc. around the facility
• Rest rooms; location of rest rooms
• Smokers; smoking locations and any restrictions
• Site emergency procedures; what to do in case of fire, earthquake or other emergencies
Note: If there are any further administrative questions, please feel free to ask the instructor after this
slide.
Course Introduction 17
Acronis Certified Engineer Backup Training & Certification
Course Information
The ACE Backup course is a 2-day instructor-led training and certification course with lab practical
and demos that is designed to instruct technical professionals on Acronis Backup and Acronis Backup
Cloud planning, implementations, configurations and day-to-day operations.
Towards the end of the 2-day course, you will be required to attempt and pass an online exam in
order to gain accreditation as an Acronis Certified Engineer (ACE).
Note: Results will be shown immediately at the end of the online exam and successful entrants will
be able to download their electronic certificates from the exam server.
Course Modules
This course consists of the following modules:
1. Course Introduction
2. Understanding Acronis Backup
3. Acronis Backup Setup and Installation
4. Configuring Acronis Backup
5. Backup Operations
6. Recovery Operations
7. Acronis Backup Troubleshooting
Note: The modules to be covered will be spread out across 2 days with time allocated towards the
end of the 2nd day for attempting the exam.
18 Course Introduction
Acronis Certified Engineer Backup Training & Certification
Modern IT is rapidly evolving – 86 percent of companies use cloud technologies and almost 70
percent of the workforce is mobile. As a result, IT environments are becoming even more complex,
putting pressure on limited IT resources as businesses depend on data and IT systems more than
ever. IT disruption or loss of data leads to significant financial loss– unproductive employees,
dissatisfied clients, lost sales and additional costs. With the volume of data exploding and the IT
landscape evolving to hybrid cloud environments, protecting data on-premise, in the cloud and on all
devices is the only way to ensure business continuity.
To that end, Acronis created a Hybrid Cloud Architecture – an evolution for current and future data
protection solutions by Acronis that strives to provide Any Management, Any Protection, Any
Workload, Any Storage, Any Deployment and Any Recovery.
Any Management
Acronis solutions comes with management software that can be deployed and controlled
independently, thereby enabling control of data protection by the customer, service provider,
vendor, partner or a third party from public, partner and private cloud as well as from customer
premises.
Any Protection
Acronis solutions includes Backup, Storage, Disaster Recovery, Files Sync & Share, Notary/ASign, and
Ransomware protection capabilities for complete protection.
Any Workload
Acronis solutions covers any workload – on-premise, in private or public cloud, on mobile devices, in
applications and files as well as in physical and virtual environments.
Course Introduction 19
Acronis Certified Engineer Backup Training & Certification
Any Storage
Acronis solutions can work with a variety of storages including traditional storage like disks and
tapes, NAS and SAN as well as with partner, private, public and Acronis Cloud.
Any Deployment
Acronis solutions can be installed on-premise and in partner, private, public and Acronis Cloud.
Any Recovery
Acronis solutions supports recovery and migration of physical, virtual, mobile, applications, files and
cloud workloads.
20 Course Introduction
Acronis Certified Engineer Backup Training & Certification
Acronis Backup
Acronis Backup Standard and Advanced is the world’s easiest and fastest data protection solution for
businesses of all sizes and data on-premises, remote, in private and public cloud and on mobile
devices.
For Microsoft®
Windows Azure VMs, Windows Server and PC OS, Microsoft Exchange, SQL, SharePoint and Active
Directory, Microsoft Hyper-V VMs and hosts and Microsoft Office 365
For Amazon®
Amazon EC2 VMs
For Linux
Linux servers using popular distros such as Red Hat®, Oracle®, CentOS, Fedora, Ubuntu®, SUSE,
Debian, etc.
For Apple®
Macintosh® OS X laptops and desktops, iOS iPhones and iPads
For Android™:
Android mobile phones and tablets
For VMware®
VMware vSphere ESXi virtual machines and hosts
For Oracle®
Oracle VM Server VMs and Oracle databases
For other virtualization platforms
Red Hat Enterprise Virtualization, Linux KVM, Citrix® XenServer and Nutanix AHV
Acronis Backup is designed to be:
• Easy – Install in 3 clicks, on-premise and end-user site components can be installed in as little
as 3 clicks
Course Introduction 21
Acronis Certified Engineer Backup Training & Certification
Acronis Backup 12.5 Standard is designed for small environments of up to 10 machines or less.
• Integrates all the functionalities of our previous products, Acronis Backup 11.7 and Acronis
Backup 12 as well as providing ransomware protection with Acronis Active Protection
• Customers have a choice of cloud-based management or on-premise management and both
choices comes with centralized management, application-aware backup and recovery for
Microsoft applications and support for VMware and Hyper-V VMs and hosts
22 Course Introduction
Acronis Certified Engineer Backup Training & Certification
Acronis Backup 12.5 Advanced is designed for mid-sized environments of 100-1000 users and large
environments of more than 1000 users.
• Admin Roles for delegating groups of machines for backup to different administrators
• Acronis Instant Restore for reducing RTOs to 15 seconds in optimized setups
• Has support for more virtualization platforms such as Citrix® XenServer, Red Hat Enterprise
Virtualization, Oracle VM Server, Linux KVM and Nutanix AHV (KVM-based)
• Contains latest Acronis innovations such as Acronis Notary™ and ASign™ which leverage
blockchain technology for authenticating and e-signing backed up files
• Comes with tape support and deduplication for managing large amounts of data
Both Acronis Backup Standard and Advanced are sold as subscription or perpetual licenses to
channel and end-customers and depending on the license purchased; end-customers have a choice
of cloud-based or on-premise deployment and management depending on their business needs.
Course Introduction 23
Acronis Certified Engineer Backup Training & Certification
24 Course Introduction
Acronis Certified Engineer Backup Training & Certification
Course Introduction 25
Acronis Certified Engineer Backup Training & Certification
Acronis Backup 12.5 Subscription License Per physical machine or cloud instance
Standard 1, 2, 3 years ‒ Acronis Backup Standard Workstation
subscription ‒ Acronis Backup Standard Server
Complete protection for small
business environments of up to Includes support and ‒ Acronis Backup Standard Server Essentials
10 machines or less maintenance for term
Per virtual host
of subscription
Includes Acronis Active ‒ Acronis Backup Standard Virtual Host
On-premise or Cloud
Protection™, centralized Per 5, 25, 100 Office 365 seats
management
management and application-
‒ Acronis Backup Standard Office 365
aware backup for Microsoft
applications
Perpetual License Per physical machine or cloud instance
No Acronis Instant Restore™, Includes support and ‒ Acronis Backup 12.5 Standard Workstation
Acronis Notary™, application- maintenance for 1st ‒ Acronis Backup 12.5 Standard Server
aware backup for Oracle year, subsequent
database, clustered ‒ Acronis Backup 12.5 Standard Server
year(s) renewable
Exchange/SQL backup, tape Essentials
On-premise
support, deduplication and Per virtual host
management only
features for managing large ‒ Acronis Backup 12.5 Standard Virtual Host
numbers of machines such as
admin roles & delegation
Licensing
• Acronis Backup Standard Workstation: 1 license per one physical machine (on-premise) or
cloud instance with Windows desktop OS or Mac OS X
• Acronis Backup Standard Server: 1 license per one physical machine (on-premise) or cloud
instance with Windows Server or Linux OS
• Acronis Backup Standard Windows Server Essentials: 1 license per one physical machine (on-
premise) or cloud instance with Windows Server Essentials or Windows Small Business Server
OS
• Acronis Backup Standard Virtual Host: 1 license per one virtual (physical) host with VMware
or Hyper-V hypervisor
• Acronis Backup Standard Office 365: Per 5, 25 or 100 Office 365 seats license, mix and match
to obtain desired total number of licenses, e.g., customer can purchase 2 x 5 seats + 2 x 25
seats for total of 60 seats
26 Course Introduction
Acronis Certified Engineer Backup Training & Certification
Acronis Backup 12.5 Subscription License Per physical machine or cloud instance
Advanced 1, 2, 3 years ‒ Acronis Backup Advanced Workstation
subscription ‒ Acronis Backup Advanced Server
Complete protection for mid-
size business environment of Includes support and Per virtual host
100-1000 users maintenance for term
‒ Acronis Backup Advanced Virtual Host
of subscription
Point solution for ROBO, Per 5, 25, 100 Office 365 seats
On-premise or Cloud
departments, projects, and ‒ Acronis Backup Advanced Office 365
management
mobile workforce in an
enterprise business
environment of 1000 users or Perpetual License Per physical machine or cloud instance
more Includes support and ‒ Acronis Backup 12.5 Advanced Workstation
maintenance for 1st ‒ Acronis Backup 12.5 Advanced Server
Includes all Acronis Backup
year, subsequent
Standard features as well as Per virtual host
year(s) renewable
Acronis Instant Restore™, ‒ Acronis Backup 12.5 Advanced Virtual Host
Acronis Notary™, application- On-premise
management only
aware backup for Oracle
database, clustered
Exchange/SQL backup, tape
support, deduplication and
features for managing large
numbers of machines
Licensing
• Acronis Backup Advanced Workstation: 1 license per one physical machine (on-premise) or
cloud instance with Windows desktop OS or Mac OS X
• Acronis Backup Advanced Server: 1 license per one physical machine (on-premise) or cloud
instance with Windows Server or Linux OS
• Acronis Backup Advanced Virtual Host: 1 license per one virtual (physical) host with
VMware, Hyper-V, Citrix XenServer, Red Hat Virtualization, Linux KVM, Oracle VM Server or
Nutanix AHV hypervisor
• Acronis Backup Advanced Office 365: Per 5, 25 or 100 Office 365 seats license, mix and
match to obtain desired total number of licenses, e.g., customer can purchase 2 x 5 seats + 2
x 25 seats for total of 60 seats
Course Introduction 27
Acronis Certified Engineer Backup Training & Certification
Licensing
• Acronis Backup Standard Office 365 Pack: 1 x Acronis Backup Standard Office 365, 5 seats
subscription license + 1 x Acronis Cloud Storage, 50 GB subscription license
• Acronis Backup Advanced Office 365 Pack: 1 x Acronis Backup Advanced Office 365, 5 seats
subscription license + 1 x Acronis Cloud Storage, 50 GB subscription license
28 Course Introduction
Acronis Certified Engineer Backup Training & Certification
Licensing
• Acronis Cloud Storage 250 GB to 5 TB subscriptions: Each subscription allows the customer
to use up to the allotted amount of cloud storage for storing backups
• Additional capacity can be purchased from a reseller and registered in your Acronis web
account. Upon registration, you will have the choice of selecting the option to increase your
storage capacity. Once selected, the expiration date will be recalculated taking into account
your existing capacity and time remaining
E.g., Original: 1TB, 100 days remaining + New: 2TB, 365 days =
((1TB*100)+(2TB*365))/3TB = (100+730)/3 = 277 days (decimals are rounded up) of 3TB
capacity
• Similarly, the subscription can be extended/renewed by purchasing the same capacity from a
reseller and registering it in your Acronis web account. Upon registration, you will have the
choice of selecting the option to extend your subscription period. Once selected, the
expiration date will be recalculated taking into account your existing time remaining
E.g., Original: 1TB, 100 days remaining + New: 1TB, 365 days = (100+365) = 465 days.
Course Introduction 29
Acronis Certified Engineer Backup Training & Certification
Licensing
• To enable Acronis Disaster Recovery Add-on, Acronis Cloud Storage, Acronis Disaster
Recovery Storage and Acronis Disaster Recovery Compute Points subscriptions are required:
Acronis Cloud Storage is used to store backups that can be used for Acronis Disaster
Recovery
Acronis Disaster Recovery Storage is used to store the VMs that can be created from
backups stored in Acronis Cloud Storage or from templates
Acronis Disaster Recovery Computer Points is used for running Acronis Disaster Recovery
VMs. The amount of Acronis Disaster Recovery Compute Points consumed per hour
depends on the vCPU and RAM configuration (template-based) of the Acronis Disaster
Recovery VMs
• Customers can choose to purchase the Acronis Disaster Recovery Add-on Pack if they do not
have an existing Acronis Cloud Storage subscription to quickly get started or purchase Acronis
Disaster Recovery Storage and Acronis Disaster Recovery Compute Points separately if they
have an existing Acronis Cloud Storage subscription to start using Acronis Disaster Recovery
Add-on.
• Acronis Disaster Recovery IP Address subscriptions are optional, required only when 1 or
more Acronis Disaster Recovery VMs needs a public IP in order to be accessible from the
Internet
30 Course Introduction
Acronis Certified Engineer Backup Training & Certification
All-inclusive trial
To start a trial:
1. Register for the trial from the Acronis website, i.e., create an Acronis web account
2. Download the Acronis Backup installer
3. Install Acronis Backup and select to start a trial.
Acronis Backup trial mode:
• Fully functional for 30 days
• Includes Advanced features
• Includes 1 TB of Acronis Cloud Storage
• Includes 1 TB of Acronis Disaster Recovery Storage and 100 Acronis Disaster Recovery
Compute Points which is enough to run 3 x F3 server configuration Acronis Disaster Recovery
VM for 8 hours
Acronis Backup trial can be activated to full version without need for re-installation by registering
and adding purchased licenses.
Course Introduction 31
Acronis Certified Engineer Backup Training & Certification
Standard
Windows
Standard Standard Standard Server Standard Advanced Advanced Advanced Advanced
License Server Workstation Virtual Host Essentials Office 365 Server Workstation Virtual Host Office 365
Supported Windows Windows PC VMware Windows Microsoft Windows Windows PC VMware Microsoft
platforms Server Mac Hyper-V Server Office 365 Server Mac Hyper-V Office 365
Linux Essentials, Linux XenServer
Foundatio
n Linux KVM
Small RHEV
Business Oracle VM
Server Server
Local Disks,
NAS, SAN ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ●
storage
Acronis Cloud
● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ●
Storage
Centralized
touch-
● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ●
friendly web
console
Acronis
Active ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ●
Protection™
Acronis
Instant ● ● ● ●
Restore
Shared
Backup Plans
● ● ● ●
Acronis
● ● ● ●
Notary™
Administrator
roles and ● ● ● ●
delegations
Advanced
Reporting
● ● ● ●
Tape drives,
autoloaders,
libraries
● ● ● ●
support
Centralized
disk storage ● ● ● ●
deduplication
32 Course Introduction
Acronis Certified Engineer Backup Training & Certification
Acronis Data Cloud is a single solution for offering multiple modern data protection services such as
Backup, Disaster Recovery, Anti-Ransomware Protection, File Sync & Share, Files Notarization, E-
Signature and Storage-as-a-Service by Service Providers to their partners and end-customers.
Find new customers, increase reliability and security of data protection as well as increase customer
retention with in-demand “add-on” services. With no upfront costs, pay-as-you-go licensing model,
flexible pricing models and a wide range of supported 3rd party Professional Services Automation
(PSA) and Remote Monitoring and Management (RMM) tools, it is easy to integrate Acronis Data
Cloud into your business.
Acronis Backup Cloud is a fast, powerful, hybrid cloud backup-as-a-service solution for Service
Providers to meet the data protection needs of their customer. It can enlarge the services portfolio
of Service Providers and be used to provide customized backup services for their customers.
Course Introduction 33
Acronis Certified Engineer Backup Training & Certification
For Microsoft®
Windows Azure VMs, Windows Server and PC OS, Microsoft Exchange, SQL, SharePoint and Active
Directory, Microsoft Hyper-V VMs and hosts and Microsoft Office 365 mailboxes
For Amazon®
Amazon EC2 VMs
For Linux
Linux servers using popular distros such as Red Hat®, CentOS, Fedora, Ubuntu®, SUSE, Debian, etc.
For Apple®
Macintosh® OS X PCs, iOS iPhones and iPads
For Android™:
Android mobile devices
For VMware®
VMware vSphere ESXi virtual machines and hosts
For Oracle®
Oracle VM Server
For other virtualization platforms
Red Hat Virtualization, Linux KVM, Citrix® XenServer, Virtuozzo and Nutanix AHV
Acronis Backup Cloud is designed to be:
• Fast – Minimal setup required for rapid time to market
• Easy – Integrate easily with Odin, Windows Azure Pack, ConnectWise and other automation
platforms
• Complete – Protect 16 platforms including physical, virtual, cloud, applications and mobile
• Flexible – Service Providers can leverage on Acronis Backup Cloud to provide managed or self-
service backup services
• Reliable – 500,000 businesses, more than 500,000 business and 5M consumers use Acronis
solutions with more than 5,000 PB of data protected
34 Course Introduction
Acronis Certified Engineer Backup Training & Certification
Target Segment
• Acronis Backup Cloud is designed for Service Providers such as Managed Service Providers,
SaaS and IaaS providers, Hosters and Telcos that focus on providing IT and related services to
customers
• It integrates all the functionality of our previous product Acronis Backup Cloud 5.0 with
improvements to the multi-tiered, multi-tenancy architecture, more rebranding and
customization options and more automation integration support with new vendors added
regularly
• Sold as pay-per-use consumption to Service Providers and Service Providers in turn are free
to decide on the pricing for their customers
• Consumption can be based on per GB of backed up data stored on local and cloud storage
and/or per device
• Service Providers has a choice of 3 implementation models, Acronis Hosted, Hybrid and SP
Hosted, for deploying Acronis Backup Cloud
Course Introduction 35
Acronis Certified Engineer Backup Training & Certification
36 Course Introduction
Acronis Certified Engineer Backup Training & Certification
Note: For Acronis Backup Cloud – Hybrid model, Service Providers can choose to setup the cloud
storage for Acronis Backup Cloud on their own or engage professional services from Acronis.
For Acronis Backup Cloud – SP hosted model, engaging professional services from Acronis is
mandatory.
Course Introduction 37
Acronis Certified Engineer Backup Training & Certification
38 Course Introduction
Acronis Certified Engineer Backup Training & Certification
Acronis Backup and Acronis Backup Cloud components are based on a 3 tier architecture designed
for scalability, reliability and performance.
Data Source
The Data Source tier represents machines and devices with user and system data to be backed up
and protected. These could be physical and virtual servers, virtualization hosts, cloud services such
as Microsoft Office 365 mail, business applications such as Microsoft Exchange, SQL, SharePoint,
Active Directory and Oracle database, and endpoint devices such as PCs, Mac and mobile devices.
They can be located on-premise, at remote sites and in private or public clouds. To protect these
machines and devices, install the appropriate Agent for the target machine or device.
Management
The Management tier represents management of the Data Source tier. In order to configure,
operate and manage the Agent(s) installed on 1 or more machines and devices, the Backup Console
is required. The Backup Console is web-based and is used to connect to a Management Server
installed on-premise or in the cloud.
Data Repository
The Data Repository tier represents the storage used to store backups from managed machines.
Backups can be stored on many different types of storages such as local disks, removable disks,
network/NFS shares, SANs, NASs, SFTP servers, tapes and Acronis Cloud. For Acronis Backup Cloud,
Service Providers on Hybrid and SP Hosted implementation model can choose between Acronis
Storage Gateway and Acronis Storage 2.0 software to setup cloud storage to store backups from
their customers.
List of Components
The following is a list of components for each Tier.
Type Components
Management
Install on-premise or use
cloud-based ‒ Web-based Backup Console
management hosted in ‒ Management Server
Acronis or partner data
center
Management Server
‒ SQLite (built-in, by default)
Database
Backups can be stored on cloud storage hosted in Acronis or partner data center or on-
premise on local disks, network (SMB and NFS) storage, SFTP, tape and storage locations
managed by Acronis Storage Node
• Acronis Storage 2.x
Proprietary software-defined-storage software provided by Acronis to Service Providers
on Hybrid or SP Hosted implementation model for setting up cloud storage for Acronis
Backup Cloud
Ancillary Components
The following is a description of each Ancillary component:
• Bootable Media
ISO file containing bootable image for booting up physical and virtual machines for Bare
Metal Restore and Universal Restore
• Bootable Media Builder
Tool for creating bootable media, only available with on-premise Acronis Backup
deployments
• Backup Monitor
Enables user to monitor backup status from the system tray or menu bar, available for
Windows and Mac OS
• Command-Line Tool
Provides command-line interface for scripting and batch processing
• Acronis SharePoint Explorer (ASPE)
Enables granular recovery of SharePoint application items such as sites, libraries and
documents from application aware backups of SharePoint SQL database servers
• Acronis Backup Appliance
Also known as All-in-One VMware Appliance (OVF), Acronis Backup Appliance is a CentOS
virtual machine pre-installed with Management Server, Agent for Linux and Agent for
VMware (Linux) to enable easy and fast deployment of the components needed for
centralized management and backup of VMware vSphere environments
• Acronis Monitoring Service
Enables widget-based Dashboard and Reporting functionality in the Management Server
• Components for Remote Installation
Saves agent installation packages to a local folder on the Management Server
• Catalog Service
Enables cataloguing of backups on Storage Nodes
• PXE Server
Enables booting machines into bootable media through the network
For Acronis Backup on-premise management, the defining characteristic is that the Management
Server is installed on-premise on a suitable physical or virtual machine, depending on the available
infrastructure. Once the Management Server is installed, the administrator can then login to the
Management Server via a web-browser to access the Backup Console and deploy the remaining
components such as install Agents on machines to be backed up and configure backup to local,
network or cloud storage.
Data Sources
Install the required Agents to perform backup, recovery and migration on local, remote, cloud
machines, applications and mobile devices.
Management
Connect using a web-browser to the on-premise Management Server to configure and manage
backups for all managed machines.
Storage
Backups can be stored on Acronis cloud storage (requires a valid Acronis Cloud Storage subscription),
local disks, network storage, tape and managed locations on Storage Nodes with deduplication
(optional).
For Acronis Backup cloud-based management, the defining characteristic is that the Management
Server is in Acronis Cloud. There is no need to install a Management Server on-premise. A customer
simply login to the Backup Console at http://cloud.acronis.com using their Acronis web account
credentials that was used to register Acronis Backup licenses. Once logged in, an administrator can
deploy the remaining components such as installing Agents on machines to be backed up and
configure backup to local, network or cloud storage.
Data Sources
Install the required Agents to perform backup, recovery and migration on local, remote, cloud
machines, applications and mobile devices.
Management
Connect using a web-browser to the cloud-based Management Server to configure and manage
backups for all managed machines.
Storage
Backups can be stored on Acronis cloud storage (requires a valid Acronis Cloud Storage subscription),
local disks, network storage, tape and managed locations on Storage Nodes with deduplication
(optional).
For Acronis Backup Cloud, depending on the implementation model, the Management Server will
reside in Acronis Cloud or Service Provider Cloud. A Service Provider on Hybrid or SP Hosted model
will have to setup the necessary cloud infrastructure for their chosen implementation model prior to
providing backup services to their customers. For Service Providers on Acronis Hosted model, no
cloud infrastructure setup is required since they will be using Acronis cloud management and storage
and they can provide backup services to their customers once they have received their Acronis
Backup Cloud account credentials. The remaining components can be deployed by the customer (for
self-service backup) or by the Service Provider (for managed backup).
Data Sources
Install the required Agents to perform backup, recovery and migration on local, remote, cloud
machines, applications and mobile devices.
Management
Connect using a web-browser to the cloud-based Management Server to configure and manage
backups for all managed machines.
Storage
Backups can be stored on Acronis and/or Service Provider cloud storage, local disks and network
storage.
• Both management and cloud storage are hosted in Acronis data centers. No cloud
infrastructure setup required. Backup configurations and cloud backups will be stored in
Acronis data centers
• After signing up for Acronis Backup Cloud from an Acronis authorized Cloud Reseller or
authorized partner, Service Providers will receive their own account to login to Acronis
Backup Cloud and they will then be able to configure the required Group(s) and Account(s)
for their customer(s)
• Management hosted in Acronis data centers, cloud storage hosted by Service Provider. Cloud
storage setup required. Backup configurations will be stored in Acronis data centers, cloud
backups will be stored in Service Provider cloud storage
• After signing up for Acronis Backup Cloud from an Acronis authorized Cloud Reseller or
authorized partner, Service Providers will receive their own account to login to Acronis
Backup Cloud. They will then have to setup cloud storage to be able to store backups from
their customers if they are providing cloud backup services. Alternatively, they can use
Acronis cloud storage (for a higher fee). Once cloud storage is setup, they can start to
configure Group(s) and Account(s) for their customers
• Both management and storage hosted by Service Provider. Cloud management and storage
setup required. Backup configurations and cloud backups will be stored in Service Provider
cloud infrastructure
• After signing up for Acronis Backup Cloud from an Acronis authorized Cloud Reseller or
authorized partner, Service Providers will have to setup both cloud management and cloud
storage to be able to offer backup services to their customers. This will require engaging
professional services from Acronis to setup and certify the Acronis Backup Cloud
infrastructure in the Service Provider’s data center. Once the cloud management and cloud
storage has been setup, they can start to configure Group(s) and Account(s) for their
customers.
Supported By
Linux- Win-PE
File System Agents based based Mac Limitations of File System
FAT16/32
‒ No limitations
JFS
‒ Files cannot be excluded
from a disk backup
ResierFS3 Agent for Linux
ResierFS4
‒ Files cannot be excluded
from a disk backup
ReFS
‒ Volumes cannot be resized
All Agents
during a recovery
XFS
The software automatically switches to the sector-by-sector mode when backing up drives with
unrecognized or unsupported file systems. A sector-by-sector backup is possible for any file system
that:
• is block-based
• spans a single disk
• has a standard MBR/GPT partitioning scheme
If the file system does not meet these requirements, the backup fails.
Version 12 One .tibx file per backup chain (a full or differential backup and all incremental backups
backup format that depend on it)
TIBX Limitations
Common limitations of new backup format:
• No conversion/export from legacy to new backup format
Tape Support
Tape Operations
The following are possible operations with Tape:
• Automatic tape device detection: Tape devices attached to a machine with agent installed will
be automatically detected
• Inventorying: Typically the 1st operation performed before tapes can be used for backups,
detects tapes loaded into a tape device by scanning for barcodes and tape contents on
individual tapes and placing them into Tape Pools
• Rescanning: Used for updating the Tape Management Database on backups stored on tapes
within a Tape Pool, used when recovering from tapes from bootable media or when moving
tapes between managed machines or ASNs
• Other operations: Moving tapes to another slot/drive, renaming, erasing, ejecting and
removing
Note: It is important to perform inventorying when adding or removing tapes from a tape device,
when moving tapes to or from a pool or if unsure of available tapes to ensure that backups will
not fail due to lack of tapes in expected slots.
Tape Pools
Tapes are organized into Tape Pools, which are logical groups of tapes:
• Free Tapes: Empty tapes or tapes explicitly moved from other pools (to be overwritten)
• Imported tapes: Tapes that were written by Acronis Backup from a different Agent or Storage
Node
• Unrecognized tapes: Tapes that were written by 3rd party applications
• Acronis: Default pool for backup, tapes have to be moved from other pools to this pool when
selecting this pool for backup
• Custom: Additional pools can be created to have separate groups of tapes for backup, e.g.,
separating backups from different departments of the company or from different machines
Only Acronis and Custom tape pools can be selected as backup locations and within a pool, tapes
can be further organized into Tape sets (via Backup options) for specific handling such as “store
Monday’s backups on Tape 1, Tue on Tape 2, etc”
Acronis Storage Node is a server used for managing backup locations for advanced functionality:
• Enables deduplication (for supported storage locations)
• Enables multiple machines to back up to locally attached tape device
• Enables encryption which applies another layer of encryption on top of backup encryption
• Cataloging can be enabled if Cataloging Service is installed
Managed locations, also known as managed vaults in Acronis Backup 11.7 Advanced, can be created
on the following types of storage:
• Local folder: On a HDD local to the Storage Node or locally attached SAN storage
• Network folder: SMB/CIFS share or NAS
• Tape: On a locally attached tape device as Tape Pools
Storage Nodes are designed to be highly scalable:
• Multple Storage Nodes (up to 50) can be setup to create multiple managed locations (up to
20 per Storage Node)
Storage Nodes must be registered to the Management Server before it can be used:
• Register the Storage Node to the Management Server during installation
• Register using Register Agent Tool at C:\Program
Files\Acronis\RegisterAgentTool> with register_agent.exe asn register
register localhost command
• Acronis Backup 11.7 Storage Nodes can be upgraded to Acronis Backup 12.5 Storage Nodes,
v11.7 agents will continue to backup to managed locations after upgrade
Acronis runs a global network of cloud data centers, providing a broad range of data protection
services and solutions. Acronis Backup Cloud Service Providers can leverage on our data centers to
start offering backup services with minimal hassles and rapid time to market.
Acronis currently has 14 data centers and it takes approximately 4 weeks to launch a new one.
The locations and coverage of our data centers are as follows:
• Americas: Boston MA, St. Louis MO, Dallas TX, Ashburn VA
• UK: London
• Europe & Africa: Strasbourg, France
• Germany: Frankfurt, Cologne
• Switzerland: Lupfig
• Russia & CIS: Moscow, Russia
• Asia: Singapore
• Japan: Tokyo, Nagano
• Australia: Sydney
Acronis Backup customers with cloud storage subscriptions will have their cloud backups directed to
the data center responsible for coverage of their region or country. Similarly, for Acronis Backup
Cloud, Service Providers will be provisioned cloud storage in the data center responsible for
coverage of their region or country.
Note: More information on Acronis Data centers can be found in the Acronis website:
https://www.acronis.com/en-us/cloud/data-centers/
Acronis Storage
Acronis Storage is a universal software-defined storage for Service Providers and enterprises:
• Universal – Ability to be configured as archive, object, block and file storage to support any
workloads
• Safe – Innovative Acronis CloudRAID™ and Acronis Notary™ technologies ensures safety and
security of data stored on Acronis Storage
• Efficient – Supports industry-standard commodity hardware to enable matching of hardware
to storage requirements
• Cost-efficient – Flexible licensing from Acronis for lower TCOs
• Proven – More than 6 years in production in Acronis data centers
• Acronis Professional Services can be engaged to assist in, design, implementation and on-
going operation of Acronis Storage
Universal
Acronis Storage is universal:
• Unites file, block and object-based storage in a single software-defined scale-out storage
solution to cover all user cases and scenarios
• Optimize to work with Acronis Data Cloud suite of products
Safe
Ensure redundancy and security of stored data:
• Manages overhead and solves data integrity with Acronis CloudRAID™
• Encrypts data at rest using AES-256 bit encryption
• Incorporates Acronis Notary™ with blockchain to ensure data authenticity
Efficient
Reduce administrative overheads and match hardware to required needs:
• Provides smart automation, rapid web-based GUI management and support for industry-
standard hardware
• Optimized to work with other Acronis products
• Highly optimized for low memory and CPU usage
Cost-efficient
Reduce TCOs and scale as you grow:
• Separates the software from the hardware for increased flexibility
• Offers flexible licensing, including a pay-as-you-go model
• Easy to manage and maintain, minimizing IT workload
Proven
Tried, tested and proven by Acronis:
• Uses Acronis’s storage technology which has been in production at 14 Acronis data centers
worldwide for more than 6 years
• Stores more than 100+ PB of data, backed up from more than 125,000 servers, PCs and
mobile devices
Types of Usage
Archiving/Backup/Cold Storage
Acronis Storage can be configured for Archiving, Backup and Cold storage as follows:
Supports storing of Acronis Backup Cloud and Acronis Backup 12.5 U2 backups
Uses industry-standard hardware and manageable redundancy options
Adds an additional layer of data protection with geo-replication to another data center
Eliminates service interruptions with ability to change or upgrade hosts or disks on live
production systems
Provides an easy-to-use interface with a single-pane-of-glass management console
Encrypts data at rest
Allows replicating of backup data to other cloud services (Azure, AWS and Google) and store
backups on NAS via NFS protocol using Acronis Backup Gateway
Easily migrate data from Acronis Storage 1.x
S3 Object Storage
Acronis Storage can be configured as high performance and hot storage as follows:
Highly efficient, fast block storage for hot data such as databases and VM images
Highly available and secure iSCSI access
Ideal for storing critical databases and Microsoft Hyper-V and VMware vSphere data
Includes SSD caching for improved performance
Includes auto-tiering and load balancing
Provides high-performance erasure encoding for fault-tolerance
Acronis Storage can be configured as general purpose and file storage as follows:
Fully manageable file shares accessible via industry standard NFS protocol
Provides optimized file storage for better performance, even for partial file updates
Stores any type of corporate data
Works via object store and scales to millions of entries
Includes an organized file archive to store older files
Scales up and scales out; start small and grow as your business grows
Provides easy-to-use, automated cluster infrastructure management
Supports all modern NFS standards including NFS v4, NFS v4.1 and pNFS
1 & 2 node cluster systems: Only protects against disk failures, lower cost of hardware
Acronis Storage clusters can scale from 1 to any number of nodes with no interruption. Simply install
Acronis Storage software on bare-metal on new servers and add the server as a node to an existing
cluster. Or if there’s a node failure, simply replace the hardware and if necessary, reinstall Acronis
Storage and add it back to the cluster. Acronis Storage supports “self-healing” of data within a
cluster.
Note: There is a performance calculator for sizing Acronis Storage on the Acronis website:
https://www.acronis.com/en-us/business/software-storage/performance-calculator/
Monthly billing based on average storage space used for the month according to usage
statistics from Acronis Storage web management console
• Subscription licensing for Enterprise customers:
Annual subscription (1-5 years, renewable) with choice of 10, 50, 100, 500 and 1000TB of
storage capacity, mix and match for desired total capacity to be licensed
• Perpetual license for Enterprise customers:
1-time purchase (includes 1st year maintenance and support, renewable) with choice of
10, 50, 100, 500 and 1000TB of storage capacity, mix and match for desired total capacity
to be licensed
All feature sets included, no need for add-on licensing.
Supported Platforms
Acronis Backup Cloud supports the following automation integrations:
Note: More information on how to enable integration for the various supported platforms can be
found in the Acronis website Support > Documentation section: http://www.acronis.com/en-
us/support/documentation/
Acronis Data Cloud uses a web-based UI for configurations and management. The Management
Portal is used for managing tenants, user accounts, services and offering. Service consoles such as
the Backup & Disaster Recovery or File Sync & Share console is used for configuring and managing
individual services. Depending on the type of account used for login, you will be offered a selector or
be directed immediately to the Management Portal or 1 of the service consoles.
In the Management Portal, administration of Acronis Data Cloud tenants a.k.a. Clients and Users can
be performed. The Management Portal is also available for Acronis Backup 12.5 cloud-based
management.
In the Backup & Disaster Recovery service console (also used for Acronis Backup cloud
management), Add new machines as well as backup and recovery operations can be configured.
For Acronis Backup on-premise Management Server, the console is similar to Acronis Backup Cloud
except that there are more Main Menu items for on-premise only features such as off-host backup
processing in Plans and admin roles in Settings.
Agent-based backup refers to performing a backup via an Agent that is installed on the target
physical or virtual machine. This enables live backup of the entire machine (can be application–
aware), 1 or more disks and volumes, 1 or more files and folders and application items from
supported applications such as Microsoft Exchange, SQL and Active Directory.
To configure backups, access to the Backup Console is required. Once the user logs in to the Backup
Console via a Web Browser, they will be connected to the Management Server and can browse for
the machine to backup. Backup is configured via Backup Plans, which specifies how a backup is to be
performed and can be applied to more than 1 machine if desired. Backups can be stored on local,
network or cloud storage. Once the Backup Plan is configured, the Agent will initiate the backup
operation based on the schedule and settings configured in the Backup Plan.
Terminology to be familiar with:
• Managed Machine: physical or virtual machine with Agent(s) installed
• Backup Plan: set of rules that specifies how the data on a machine will be backed up
• Task: a specific action that is a part of the backup plan
• Archive: a set of backup files (.TIBX or .TIB) created and maintained by a backup plan
Agentless backup, also known as hypervisor-level backup, refers to performing a backup via a single
Agent that is installed on the same or separate hypervisor. This enables live backup of 1 or more
virtual machines at once without the need for installing Agents in each and every virtual machine to
be backed up.
Backups are configured in a similar manner to Agent-based backup.
Off-Load backup refers to performing a backup via an Agent that resides on a separate machine or
host, i.e., offloading the backup to a different hardware. This enables live backup of 1 or more virtual
machines at once using the resources of the separate machine or host.
Backups are configured in a similar manner to Agent-based backup.
Online recovery refers to performing a recovery via an Agent while the target machine is online. This
enables live recovery of the entire machine, 1 or more disks and volumes, 1 or more files and folders
and application items from application-aware and database-level backups.
To configure recovery, access to the Backup Console is required. Once the user logs in to the Backup
Console via a Web Browser, they will be connected to the Management Server and can browse for
the machine or data to recover. Recovery is configured via Recovery Tasks, which specifies how a
recovery is to be performed. Once the Recovery Task is configured, the Agent will initiate the
recovery operation based on the settings configured in the Recovery Task.
Bare Metal Recovery (BMR) refers to performing a recovery via a Bootable Media on a physical or
virtual machine without first having to install any OS or software. Data is recovered directly from the
backup archive to the target machine’s disks. This enables recovery of entire physical and virtual
machines in situations when an irrecoverable software or hardware failure occurs on the original
machine as well as P2P, P2V, V2V and V2P migrations.
To perform BMR, an Acronis Bootable Media or Mac Rescue Media is required. The Acronis Bootable
Media contains boot-up routines (either Linux or WinPE-based) for booting up the machine used as
well as an Agent, Media UI and command-line. The machine used for recovery is booted up using the
bootable media and once the Agent is running, Recovery Tasks can be configured. Agent will initiate
the recovery operation immediately based on the settings configured in the Recovery Task.
Remote Bare Metal Recovery (BMR) refers to connecting to a machine booted up via Bootable Media
from the Management Server and remotely configuring the recovery. This enables an Administrator
to remotely manage the BMR as well as capture all logs generated for audit purposes as normally
logs generated during BMR are not saved and will be lost once the machine is rebooted.
Recovery is configured in a similar manner to online recovery.
Snapshot Technologies
Acronis Backup and Acronis Backup Cloud Agents performs disk-imaging backup of physical and
virtual machines by leveraging on various snapshot technologies.
Hardware and software snapshot technologies are available and the technologies used depending
the backup source:
• Windows and Hyper-V: Microsoft VSS (Microsoft Volume Shadow Copy Shadow Provider)
• Linux: Acronis Snap API (Acronis Snapshot Technology)
• VMware vSphere: VADP (VMware vStorage API for Data Protection) or SAN storage
snapshots (NetApp SANs only)
• Hardware storage devices that comes with Microsoft VSS enabled:: Hardware snapshots
Backup Process
To perform a backup, user creates Backup Plan and the Backup Plan script is deployed to the target
computer’s scheduler. Agent starts the backup process according to the schedule in the script:
1. Runs Pre commands, if any are configured
2. Initiates snapshot technology and disk volume(s) are quiesced
3. Runs Pre-data capture commands, if any are configured
4. Freeze all disk I/O and takes snapshot of all disk blocks to be backed up
5. Unfreeze all disk I/O, runs Post-data capture command if any are configured
6. Disk volume(s) are unquiesced
7. Starts copying data to the backup file with reference to snapshot
8. Completes backup and performs cataloging and validation, replication, retention if any are
configured
9. Runs Post commands, if any are configured
10. Agent ends the backup process
Note: Quiescing is the action of completing all operations and flushing all buffers to disk. This is to
ensure that all relevant data is written to disk to prepare for snapshot and backup. When disk
volume(s) are unquiesced, read/write operations will continue as per normal with the
exception that if there’s modification to disk blocks yet to be backed up to backup archive, the
modification will be cached in buffer (free space) until the disk block is backed up to backup
archive. Only then will the modification happen.
Backups created with snapshot technologies will be crash-consistent:
• Snapshot will be taken at the exact same time of data (disk blocks) to be backed up on 1 or
more disk volumes; backed up data will be at the same point-in-time and will be consistent
upon recovery
• Sufficient for systems without database application(s)
Backups created on Windows/Hyper-V will be application-consistent:
• Microsoft VSS will quiesce all VSS-aware databases on the system prior to taking a snapshot,
results in consistent databases that’s usable upon recovery
• If there’s non VSS-aware databases on the system, they have to be manually quiesced or
there’s a risk of them being inconsistent and unusable upon recovery
• Similarly for Linux/Mac, if there’s database applications on the system, they have to be
manually quiesced or there’s a risk of them being inconsistent and unusable upon recovery
To manually quiesce databases, use Backup option > Pre/Post data capture command to insert
commands for quiescing/resuming the database.
On Windows/Hyper-V, Microsoft VSS have to be functional in order for backup to be successful:
• Use vssadmin list writers to check status of writers of VSS-aware databases to
identify if there’s any issues with VSS
• Download and run Acronis VSS Doctor (free) to diagnose and resolve VSS issues
It is recommend to have 20% or more free space per volume to be backed up for storing snapshots
and other meta-data during backup. Otherwise, the system may slow down or backup may fail if free
space runs out.
Note: For Windows, free space on each volume is used for creating ShadowStorage to store Shadows
when VSS is used. If ShadowStorage is not pre-defined for the volume, it is temporarily created
during shadow copy (backup) on the same volume. VSSADMIN and DiskShadow utility
available in Windows can be used to check, configure and even move ShadowStorage to a
different volume. Refer to the following Microsoft documentation to find out more.
VSSADMIN: https://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/cc754968(v=ws.11).aspx
DiskShadow: https://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/cc772172(v=ws.11).aspx
Requirements
• SAN storage used must be configured as NFS or iSCSI datastore
• SAN must run Data ONTAP 8.1 or later in the Clustered Data ONTAP (cDOT) mode, 7-mode is
not supported
• In NetApp OnCommand System Manager, Snapshot copies > Configure > Make Snapshot
directory (.snapshot) visible must be enabled
• For NFS datastore, access to NFS shares from Windows NFSv3 clients must be enabled on the
Storage Virtual Machine (SVM) that was specified when creating the datastore
• For iSCSI datastore, in the NetApp OnCommand System Manager, Disable Space Reservation
must be enabled for the iSCSI LUN where the datastore is located
• iSCSI Initiator or NFS client must be installed and enabled for the Windows machine where
Agent for VMware (Windows) is installed
How it works:
1. SAN storage has to be added to the Management Server via Settings > SAN Storage and
Backup option > Backup from SAN snapshot has to be enabled in the Backup Plan
2. When performing backup, Agent for VMware analyzes the VM and its virtual disks to locate
them on the SAN
3. VMware snapshot of the VM is created
4. SAN storage snapshot of the VM is created using native SAN snapshot capabilities
5. VMware snapshot is deleted
6. VM data is read directly from SAN storage using the same protocol used for connecting to the
SAN (NFS or iSCSI) for creating the backup
7. SAN storage snapshot is deleted after backup is completed
Acronis Active Protection protects a system from a specific type of malicious software known as
ransomware, which encrypts files and demands a ransom for the encryption key.
• Available for machines running Windows Vista/Windows 2008 and later
• Monitor running processes on protected machines using behavioral heuristics to compare
against machine-learning models trained in Acronis Cloud AI infrastructure to recognize
ransomware types and suspicious behavior
• When a 3rd party process tries to encrypt files, Active Protection generates an alert and
performs additional actions if configured
• In addition, prevents unauthorized changes to Acronis software processes, registry records,
executable and configuration files and MBR
Active Protection Driver and Service will be installed together with Agent for Windows.
When Active Protection Plan is applied, Driver will be enabled and Service will be started.
Driver: Analyze file content and type before and after a change, if content type is changed – suspect
in-place encryption.
Service: When consecutive suspicious changes occur – trigger alert, takes configured action in Active
Protection Plan such as generate an alert, stop the process and recover encrypted files from cache.
Deduplication
Acronis Backup 12.5 Advanced supports deduplication for managed locations (requires ASN):
• Minimizes storage used for backups by detecting duplicate data and storing it only once
• Most effective when performed on backups of multiple machines with similar data
Performed as variable block-level source and target deduplication:
• Source deduplication: Agent calculates a hash (checksum) for each block of data to be backed
up and queries Storage Node to determine if it’s a duplicate; sends hashes if duplicate, sends
data block if unique
• Target deduplication: Storage Node compiles unique hashes into deduplication database and
checks against this database when queried by Agents; stores hashes in backup archive, stores
data blocks from agents in a temporary file and subsequently indexes and stores
“consolidated“ unique data blocks in deduplication store
Storage Node will perform indexing after backup is complete:
1. Unique data blocks sent by 1 or more agents are stored temporarily in a file known as Local
Data Store (1 LDS per backup) which allows for parallel processing
2. Indexing will check all LDS and move consolidated unique data blocks to deduplication
datastore
3. Deduplication database will be updated accordingly with new hashes* (links and offsets)
4. All LDS will be deleted after indexing is complete
Deduplication can only be enabled for local and network managed location, tape is not supported
and backup archives in a deduplicating managed location contains only hashes and should not be
directly copied from the folder.
Note: For optimal performance for deduplication, refer to Deduplication best practices in the Help
file.
Cataloging
Data catalog allows an Organization Administrator to search across all managed locations (requires
Acronis Storage Node) for desired data for recovery
At least 1 Catalog Service must be installed and registered with the Management Server for Catalog
to be available
Limitations:
• Supported only for disk-level and file-level backups of physical and virtual machines to
managed locations
• Data from encrypted backups, encrypted managed locations, tape devices, cloud storage and
previous versions of Acronis Backup will not be cataloged
Acronis Notary
Notarization enables verification of a file as authentic and unchanged since it was last backed up
Available for file-level backups:
• Hash codes are calculated for backed-up files which is stored in the backup as well as sent to
the Acronis Notary service
• Acronis Notary service will then save the hashes to the Etherium blockchain database
• To verify file authenticity, agent calculates the hash of the file being verified and compares it
against the hash stored in the backup. At the same time, agent sends the hash to the Acronis
Notary service for comparison against the Etherium blockchain
• If either comparison fails, file is considered not authentic; if successful, file authenticity is
guaranteed
Note: Files with digital signatures are not notarized since it is redundant. Notarized files can also be
independently verified (without going through Acronis) against the Etherium blockchain.
Note: Instructions for downloading and setting up automation integration can be found in the
Acronis website Support > Documentation section. Some examples:
Odin Service Automation APS 2.0 Deployment Guide:
http://download.acronis.com/pdf/Odin_Service_Automation_APS_2_0_Deployment_Guide_en
-US.pdf
Windows Azure Pack Integration Manual:
http://download.acronis.com/pdf/Windows_Azure_Pack_Integration_Manual_en-US.pdf
WHMCS Integration Manual:
http://download.acronis.com/pdf/WHMCS_Integration_Manual_en-US.pdf
1. Service Provider signs SP agreement with an Acronis authorized Cloud Reseller or Service
Provider
For Hybrid or SP Hosted model, the Service Provider will have to setup cloud storage
and/or cloud management
3. Cloud Reseller or Acronis will provide an Acronis Data Cloud Administrator account to the
Service Provider
4. Login to the Management Portal using the Administrator account credentials provided
If you are providing self-service services, send the Administrator account details to the
customer
9. Monitor usage
•
2. After activation, the administrator will be directed to the Acronis Data Cloud Management
Portal where tenant management and other settings are available
3. Initial login to Acronis Data Cloud will always be from the account activation link in an
invitation email
4. Subsequent logins can be made from the URL: https://cloud.acronis.com
In Acronis Data Cloud, entities that have a relationship with the Service Provider (such as a reseller or
end-customer) are represented by the resource type known as tenants, which are managed from the
Clients tab.
Each tenant can have 1 or more user account for access to services and for service administration
and are managed from the Users tab
All tenant types with the exception of Customer, can be nested to create a hierarchy so as to match
business, organization or relationship structure
Types of Tenants
The following are the types of tenants available in Acronis Data Cloud:
Partner
Represents a reseller that resells services, can create/nest Partner, Customer and Folder tenants
Customer
Represents an end-customer company that uses services, can create/nest Unit tenants
Unit
Represents a sub-unit of an end-user company such as a department, location or group of devices,
can create/nest other Unit tenants
Folder
Special tenant type used for differentiating between different service offerings or for grouping
tenants with similar characteristics together, can create/nest Partner, Customer and Folder tenants
Types of Account
User: No access to Management Portal, access to services and role in services defined by an
Administrator
Accounts are created within a tenant:
Each Customer tenant must have at least 1 Administrator account for service configuration
and software installation purposes
Administrator(s) can create and manage tenants and accounts on or below their level in the
hierarchy
Administrators at Customer and higher levels can limit access to their groups by clearing the
Allow administrators from parent tenants to manage this tenant check box in Settings >
Security tab
The following table summarizes the operations that can be performed by Administrator and User
accounts:
Note: There is an Acronis KB that list the services available in each of the Acronis Data Centers:
https://kb.acronis.com/servicesbydc
Create administrator: Email and Login, Language, First and Last name
Provide general information section is used to specify basic information about the tenant:
Name has to be unique
Mode (Customer only) is used to select whether the tenant will be using the services in Trial
or Production mode
Trial mode usage is not counted towards a Service Provider’s billable consumption
Tenants in Trial mode will be switched to Production mode after 1 full month
Language can be changed if desired to change the default language of notifications, reports
and software that will be used for the tenant
Select Services
Select services section allows enabling/disabling 1 or more services of the offering for the tenant:
• To enable/disable a service, toggle the switch for the service
• For Backup & Disaster Recovery, there is an additional checkbox to enable/disable Disaster
Recovery
• Disabled services will be hidden from the tenant
• Service selection can be modified after initial tenant creation (except for Storage selection for
Customer tenant)
Configure Services
Configure Quotas
Create Administrator
Optionally, fill in the First and Last name of the person that is going to use the account
For more fine-grained settings when creating a user account, add accounts from + New button
instead.
Provide general information: Email, Login ID and Language, Mode (Customer only) and
Language
When creating accounts in Customer tenants, the Service that the account will have access to can be
selected as well as the role in the Service:
By default, the Company Administrator checkbox is checked which allows access the
Management Portal as well as to all Services as an Administrator
Unchecking the Company Administrator checkbox changes the account into a User account
for Backup & Disaster Recovery service and allows the role to be selectable for File Sync &
Share service
To remain as Administrator for File Sync & Share, leave on default which is Administrator +
User or select User to change the account into a User account
An activation email will be sent to the email address specified during account creation
Click on the Activate account button/link to go to the account activation page and enter a password
for the account
Thereafter, the user will be able to access the respective service console (Backup and Disaster
Recovery and/or File Sync & Share) and start to use the service
If a user forgets or losses their password, they can request to reset their password from their tenant
administrator
2. Customer to register product keys via Acronis website (requires Acronis web account)
For Cloud, select Open cloud console to login to the cloud-based Backup Console (Single
Sign-On)
Ensure all requirements are met by the target computer on which to install the
Management Server
– Configure installation options, start and wait for the installation to complete
Cloud Console
Supported Environments
The following table shows the supported environments for the various components.
Acronis Backup
Acronis
On- Backup
Component Prem Cloud Cloud Supported Environment
Agent for Mac OS X 10.9 and above, macOS 10.12 and above
Agent for Active Windows Server 2003 and above with Active
Directory Directory Domain Services
The following table shows the supported environments for various virtualization platforms
supported by Acronis Backup and Acronis Backup Cloud.
VMware vSphere 4.1 and above, VMware vSphere Hypervisor (Free ESXi),
VMware
VMware Server, VMware Workstation, VMware ACE, VMware Player
Windows Server 2008 (x64) with Hyper-V and above, Windows 8/8.1 with
Hyper-V and above except for Windows Server 2016 Nano Server, Microsoft
Windows
Virtual PC 2004 and above, Windows Virtual PC, Microsoft Virtual Server
2005
Citrix Citrix XenServer 4.1 and above (fully virtualized a.k.a HVM guests only)
The following table shows the supported networking, web-browsing and encryption environment.
Category Details
‒ 443 and 8443: Accessing cloud backup console, registering agents, downloading
files from cloud storage
‒ 5905 and 7770 – 7800: Communications between components
Network Ports ‒ 445 , 25001 and 43234 (Update 2 and above): For remote installation
(Inbound and ‒ 9850 and 9851: For command line (acrocmd) commands
Outbound) ‒ 44445 and 55556: For backup and recovery from Acronis Cloud Storage
‒ 9877: HTTP port for on-premise management server backup console
‒ 9876: Legacy port for communications between components
‒ 6109: For Active Protection
‒ Safari 8 or above
Disk
What to back up What to install Where to install Space*
Disk, volumes and files on physical On the machine that will be backed
Agent for Linux 720 MB
machines running Linux up
Hyper-V virtual machines Agent for Hyper-V On the Hyper-V host 320 MB
Mobile devices running iOS Mobile app for iOS On the iOS mobile device 88 MB
Note: Typical RAM consumption is 350 MB above the OS and running applications with peak
consumption reaching 2GB depending on the amount and type of data being processed.
This command returns lines similar to the following: Linux version 2.6.35.6 and gcc
version 4.5.1
2. Run the following command to check whether the Make tool and the GCC compiler are
installed:
make -v
gcc -v
For gcc, ensure that the version returned by the command is the same as in the gcc version in
step 1. For make, just ensure that the command runs.
3. Check whether the appropriate version of the packages for building kernel modules is
installed:
In Red Hat Enterprise Linux, CentOS, and Fedora, run the following command:
yum list installed | grep kernel-devel
In Ubuntu, run the following commands:
dpkg --get-selections | grep linux-headers
dpkg --get-selections | grep linux-image
In either case, ensure that the package versions are the same as in Linux version in step 1.
4. Run the following command to check whether the Perl interpreter is installed:
perl --version
If you see the information about the Perl version, the interpreter is installed.
The following table lists how to install the required Linux packages in various Linux distributions.
Red Hat Enterprise kernel-devel The setup program will download and install the packages
Linux gcc automatically by using your Red Hat subscription
make
CentOS kernel-devel The setup program will download and install the packages
Fedora gcc automatically
make
Logon account for the agent service: Select to change to an existing user account as the
agent service logon account
Logon account for the management server service: Select to change to an existing user
account as the management server service logon account
HTTP port to open: Select a different HTTP port for web-based backup console access to
the on-premise management server
TCP port for components: Select to use a different TCP port for components
communications with management server
9. Click Back to return to the previous screen or Install to start installation
10. Alternatively, click on Create .mst and .msi files for unattended installation to create the
files required for unattended installation
11. The following installation settings for unattended installation can be customized or left on
defaults:
What to install: Select components to install for unattended installation
Installation path: Select a different installation folder for unattended installation
12. Click Back to return to previous screen or Proceed to create the .mst and .msi files
13. Once all selections have been made, click on the Install Acronis Backup button to start
installation
14. Once the installation is complete, click CLOSE to close the installer and the default web
browser will be opened and directed to the address for the web console with the default
HTTP port 9877
E.g. http://<management_server_add>:9877
RAM 8 GB 16 GB or more
Acronis Scheduler2 Service Executes scheduled tasks on certain events Local System
Acronis Active Protection Service Provides protection against ransomware Local System
Tib Mounter Service Allows to mount and explore .tib files Local System
Acronis Scheduler2 Service Executes scheduled task on certain events Local System
Acronis Storage Node and Acronis Agent on Acronis Storage Node machine services
Services Description User Account
ASN User or
Acronis Storage Node Service Manages operations in managed locations
existing user
Acronis Catalog Browser Service Display data stored in all managed locations Local System
Elasticsearch 2.4.0
Indexes backed up data and enables search Local System
(elasticsearch-service x64)
Note: Some services can spawn 1 or more child processes in order to perform their job. Refer to
Acronis KB: https://kb.acronis.com/content/60085 for more details.
8. Click Exit and the default web browser will be opened and directed to the address for the
web-based backup console with the port 9877
E.g. http://<management_server_add>:9877
Services User
(/etc/systemd/system) Description Account
Similar to Acronis Backup, after logging in to the backup management console, click on ADD button
to start adding machines to be backed up.
Adding Machines
Installers for Agents for supported OS, virtualization platforms and applications can be downloaded
for local installation on machines to be backed up.
For Acronis Backup on-premise management with a Windows-based Management Server, Remote
Installation is also available in addition to downloading installers for local installation.
For Acronis Backup Cloud and Acronis Backup cloud-based management, once a device type is
selected, instructions for installing the Agent will be shown and download will start immediately. The
downloaded installer will usually be a 64-bit installer. To download 32-bit installers, cancel the
automatic download and click on the link for 32-bit installer that is shown as part of the instructions.
For Acronis Backup cloud deployment and Acronis Backup Cloud, ensure the following preparations
are made before starting Agent installation:
• Internet connectivity for target machines for Agent installation
• Allow inbound and outbound connections through firewalls and other network security
system such as proxy servers for TCP ports 443, 8443, 7770…7800 and 44445
• Configure HTTP proxy server settings for target machines for agent installation and
subsequent data transfer
For Acronis Backup on-premise deployment, ensure the following preparations are made before
starting Agent installation:
• On-premise Management Server (on a Windows or Linux machine) is installed
• Allow inbound and outbound connections through firewalls and other network security
systems similar to Acronis Backup cloud deployment
Installation on Linux
The following Agent is available for installation on Linux:
• Agent for Linux
Select Linux from the ADD menu to download the 64-bit installer. To download the 32-bit installer
instead, cancel the automatic download and click on the link for the 32-bit installer in the
instructions shown after clicking ADD.
Ensure necessary Linux packages are installed on the target machines prior to installing Agents.
To start installation, do the following:
1. As the root user, run the installer
./AcronisBackup_12_64-bit.x86_64 or
./AcronisBackup_12_32-bit.i686
2. Click on Next
3. [On-premise] Clear the Acronis Backup Management Server checkbox and click Next to
specify the hostname/IP address of the Management Server
4. [Cloud] Specify the credentials of the account to which the machine will be assigned to
5. Click Next to start the installation
Installation on Mac
The following Agent is available for installation on Mac:
• Agent for Mac
Select Mac from the ADD menu to download the installer.
To start installation, do the following:
1. Run the installer (.dmg) and wait for the OS to mount the installation disk image
2. Double-click Install.pkg
3. Once the installer starts, click on Continue and if prompted, provide administrator credentials
4. [Optional] Click Change Install Location to change installation path
5. [Cloud] Specify the credentials of the account to which the machine should be assigned
Installation on VMware
The following Agents are available for Acronis Backup on-premise deployments:
• Agent for VMware (Virtual Appliance), Agent for VMware (Windows)
The following Agent is available for Acronis Backup cloud deployment and Acronis Backup Cloud:
• Agent for VMware (Windows)
Agent for VMware (Virtual Appliance) can be installed by deploying as an OVF template locally or via
remote installation (preferred).
Agent for VMware (Windows) can be installed locally via the Windows installer or the ESXi web
installer.
To start Agent for VMware (Windows) installation, do the following:
1. Log on as an Administrator and run the installer
2. [On-premise] Select Install a backup agent and specify the hostname/IP address of the
Management Server. Then click on Customize installation settings and select Agent for
VMware (Windows) under What to install
3. [Cloud] Click on Install to install with default settings or Customize installation settings to
change defaults and enter the credentials of the account to which the machine will be
assigned to. Then specify the hostname/IP address and access credentials of the vCenter
Server or standalone ESXi host whose VMs will be backed up by the Agent
4. Start the installation
For Acronis Backup, a valid Acronis Cloud Storage subscription license is required for backing up data
on mobile devices
To start installation, do the following:
1. Download and install the app
2. When the app is started for the 1st time, specify the credentials of the account to which the
mobile device will be assigned to
3. Specify the hostname/IP address and Administrator credentials for the target machine
4. Click ADD to start remote installation
For Deploying Agent for VMware (Virtual Appliance) method, do the following:
1. Click ADD and click on VMware ESXi
For Registering an already installed Agent for VMware method, do the following:
1. Click ADD and click on VMware ESXi
Requirements:
• AD domain with a domain controller running Windows Server 2003 or later
• User account that is a member of the Domain Admins group
• All agents for installation in Windows installer
Steps:
Create the .mst and .msi files for unattended installation via the installer and place them in a
shared folder
1. Log on as an Administrator on any machine in the domain
2. Create a shared folder that will contain the installation packages. Ensure that domain users
can access the shared folder—for example, by leaving the default sharing settings for
Everyone
3. Copy the Windows installer program to the folder you created
4. Start the installer program
5. Click Create .mst and .msi files for unattended installation
6. If prompted, specify the credentials of the account to which the machines should be assigned
7. Review or modify the installation settings that will be added to the .mst file
8. Click Generate
As a result, the .mst transform is generated and the .msi and .cab installation packages are
extracted to the folder you created. You can now move or delete the installer program .exe
file.
Create and configure the GPO for the OU containing the domain computers which will be installed
with the Windows-based Agents
1. Log on to the domain controller as a domain administrator; if the domain has more than one
domain controller, log on to any of them as a domain administrator
2. If you are planning to deploy the agent in an organizational unit, ensure that the
organizational unit exists in the domain. Otherwise, skip this step
3. In the Start menu, go to Administrative Tools, and then click Active Directory Users and
Computers (in Windows Server 2003) or Group Policy Management (in Windows Server 2008
and Windows Server 2012)
4. In Windows Server 2003:
Right-click the name of the domain or organizational unit, and then click Properties. In
the dialog box, click the Group Policy tab, and then click New
In Windows Server 2008 and Windows Server 2012:
Right-click the name of the domain or organizational unit, and then click Create a GPO in
this domain, and Link it here
5. Name the new Group Policy object Agent for Windows
6. Open the Agent for Windows Group Policy object for editing, as follows:
In Windows Server 2003, click the Group Policy object, and then click Edit
In Windows Server 2008 and Windows Server 2012, under Group Policy Objects, right-
click the Group Policy object, and then click Edit
7. In the Group Policy object editor snap-in, expand Computer Configuration
8. In Windows Server 2003 and Windows Server 2008:
Expand Software Settings
9. In Windows Server 2012:
Expand Policies > Software Settings
10. Right-click Software installation, then New, and then click Package
11. Select the agent's .msi installation package in the shared folder that you previously created,
and then click Open
12. In the Deploy Software dialog box, click Advanced, and then click OK
13. On the Modifications tab, click Add, and then select the .mst transform that you previously
created
14. Click OK to close the Deploy Software dialog box
Updating Agents
For Acronis Backup on-premise deployments, update the Management Server and thereafter repeat
the agent installation locally or via remote installation.
For Acronis Backup cloud-deployments and Acronis Backup Cloud, Agents are updated as soon as a
new version is released unless the Agent Auto Update setting for the User Account which the
machines are assigned to is disabled.
To manually update multiple Agents for on-premise management:
1. Ensure Components for Remote Installation is installed on the Management Server
2. Click Settings > Agents, machines with outdated Agents will have an ! mark
3. Select the machines that you want to update, machines must be online
4. Click Update agent
The progress is shown in the status column for each machine.
Uninstalling
Uninstalling components such as Agents will not remove them from the Backup Console.
Deleting machines from the Backup Console will not uninstall the Agents from machines, they must
be manually uninstalled.
To uninstall, perform the following:
For Windows
1. Log on as an Administrator and go to Control Panel > Programs and Features to uninstall
Acronis Backup
2. As part of uninstallation, you can choose to select or clear the Remove the logs and
configuration settings check box
Keeping the setting will enable the machine to be re-associated with existing backups and
backup plans when Agents are reinstalled
Removing the setting will result in duplicates in the Backup Console upon re-installation
of Agents
For Linux
1. Log on as root and run
/usr/lib/Acronis/BackupAndRecovery/uninstall/uninstall
2. As part of uninstallation, you can choose to select or clear the Clean up all product traces
(Remove the product’s logs, tasks, vaults, and configuration settings) check box
3. Similar to Windows, keeping the setting will enable the machine to be re-associated and
removing the setting will result in duplicates upon re-installation of Agents
For Mac
In Mac, double-click the installation file (.dmg), wait for it to be mounted and double-click Uninstall.
If you do not want to reinstall the Agent again, go to the Backup Console and delete the machine.
Otherwise, leave the machine entry intact in Backup Console.
For VMware
1. Log on to vCenter Server or the standalone ESXi with vSphere Client, right-click on the virtual
appliance and select Delete from Disk
2. If the appliance is powered on, it must be powered off first
3. If locally attached storage is used as a backup destination and you wish to preserve the data,
edit the settings of the appliance and remove the disk with the storage from the appliance
prior to deleting it. The disk will remain in the datastore and can be attached to another
Agent for VMware (Virtual Appliance)
Temporarily disable/enable selected tenant (affects all child tenants) and associated user
accounts
Delete a tenant:
Removes the tenant from Acronis Data Cloud (must be disabled prior to deleting),
operation is irreversible and takes effect immediately:
All sub-tenants will be deleted
All users with this tenant and all its sub-tenants will be deleted
All services enabled within this tenant and all its sub-tenant will stop operating
All service-related data (e.g., backups, synced files) of this tenant and all its sub-
tenants will be deleted
• Convert to folder/partner:
Used for converting a Partner type tenant to a Folder type tenant and vice versa:
Previously before Folder tenant type was available, Service Providers had to use Partner
tenant type for grouping purposes, this operation allows Service Providers to change
those Partner tenants to Folder tenants for proper organization
Used purely for grouping purposes and doesn’t affect the users within the tenant and any
service-related data such as backups
• Show ID:
Show the internal ID of a tenant, used for moving tenants
• Move a tenant:
Move a child tenant to a different parent, e.g., transfer a customer to a different partner
Restrictions:
Partner/Folder type tenants can only be moved to other Partner/Folder type tenants
Customer type tenants can only be moved to other Partner/Folder type tenants
Tenants cannot be moved to its child tenant
Unit tenants cannot be moved
Tenants can only be moved if target parent tenant has the same or larger set of
service and offering as the original parent
When moving a Customer tenant, all storages assigned to the Customer tenant in the
original parent must exist in the target parent tenant as Customer-related data cannot
be moved from 1 storage to another
Perform the following to move a tenant:
1. To move a tenant, select the target tenant and click on Show ID to view the Internal ID string
2. Copy the ID string and then select the tenant to be moved and click on Move
Send a password reset email to the email address specified for the account
Delete an account:
Removes the account from the tenant (must be disabled prior to deleting), operation is
irreversible and takes effect immediately:
All backups of the machines associated with this user will be deleted
All machines associated with this user will be unregistered
All backup plans will be revoked from all machines associated with this user
All File Sync & Share data that belongs to this user (e.g., files, folders) will be deleted
Managing Tenants
Overview > Usage Tab
Provides an overview of the service usage and enables accessing the respective service console:
Backup & Disaster Recovery backup management console
File Sync & Share Administrator and User mode console
Physical Data Shipping tracking console
Depending on the offering configured by parent tenant, certain services may not be available.
Dashboard that provides a number of customizable (WYSIWYG) widgets, updated in real time, that
gives an overview of operations related to the backup service.
By default, displays data for the tenant in which you are operating, i.e., currently selected tenant
(see breadcrumb):
Displayed tenant can be changed for each widget by editing it
Aggregated information about direct child Customer tenants of the selected tenant is also
shown
Child Partners and their tenants are not shown, drill down to the child Partner to see its
Dashboard
Dashboard can be downloaded or send as email as .PDF and or .XLSX.
Client/Unit Tab
Users Tab
Level of detail can be selected, from Direct customers and partners to All customers and
partners (including account details)
Custom reports:
Ad-hoc report that is generated and sent immediately to the logged in Administrator
account
Reporting period can be selected, from Current usage to Day-by-day for period where the
time period can be customized
Level of detail can be selected, from Direct customers and partners to All customers and
partners (including account details)
Reports are sent as email with 2 attachments, a .csv and .html file.
Email body will include Date of report generation, Reporting period and Level of detail information.
Attachments will contain the following details:
Tenant name, type and mode – trial or production
Usage info such as number of devices (by type) backed up for Backup and Disaster Recovery
service or number of users for File Sync & Share service and amount of cloud storage used
Cost of usage (based on SP agreement) for each billable service
Operations report are widget-based similar to the Dashboard in Overview > Operations tab.
Audit Log
Allow Partner Administrator(s) to customize the user interface of the management portal and
service consoles to meet corporate branding preferences:
Available for Partner and Folder tenant types and child tenants will inherit the branding
Customer and Unit tenant types do not have Branding settings
Branding items includes:
Appearance: Service name, Logo and color scheme
Documentation and Support: URLs for Home, Support, KB, Management Portal
administrator’s guide and help, Support phone number
Settings > Security tab allow Partner Administrator(s) to configure the following:
Logon Control (disabled by default):
Used to limit logon to the web interface to specific IP addresses
Allowed IP addresses will typically be the external IP address of the organization, check
with ISP
Recommended to verify settings using a dummy child tenant as setting the wrong IP
address will result in all user accounts being unable to login to the web interface
Allow administrators from parent tenant to manage this tenant (enabled by default):
Used to limit access to the tenant hierarchy by parent tenant
If disabled, parent tenant Administrator(s) will not be able to drill down and view/modify
tenant hierarchy
Parent can still modify tenant properties such as offerings as well as disable/enable and
delete the tenant
Settings > Integration tab allow Partner Administrator(s) to configure integration with a variety of
3rd party Professional Services Automation (PSA) and Remote Monitoring and Management
(RMM) systems.
Depending on the 3rd party automation system selected, the user may be redirected to download
the required packages (for installation in the PSA or RMM system) or configure integration settings
from within the Integration tab.
For more information, visit the Acronis website Support section.
For Acronis Backup on-premise management, subscription and perpetual licenses have to be added
to the on-premise Management Server in order to be able to start backing up machines with Agents
installed.
Login to the Backup Console and go to SETTINGS > Licenses:
• Add keys: Add subscription and perpetual license keys to the Management Server
• Buy now: Open the Acronis web page to buy from a reseller or online
• Start trial: Start a 30 day trial of Acronis Backup
• Sync: Sync subscription licenses to Acronis web account
For Acronis Backup cloud deployment, licenses will be automatically synced with registered licenses
in Acronis web account.
After clicking on Add keys, copy and paste the license keys, one per line, into the box and click Add.
After adding the keys, a summary of the type and number of licenses will be shown on the Licenses
page.
Click on Start trial to start an Acronis Backup trial. Login with credentials of an existing Acronis web
account or create a new account. The features of an Acronis Backup trial are as follows:
• Fully functional product for 30 days, Agents can be installed on unlimited number of
machines
• Free 30-day cloud storage subscription with 1TB cloud storage
• Free technical support during the trial
• Bootable media can only perform bare metal recovery to the same machine, Universal
Restore is disabled
• Direct upgrade to licensed product without having to reinstall, simply register purchased
licenses to Acronis web account and if required, add keys to on-premise Management Server
For Acronis Backup on-premise deployment, email settings can be configured from SETTINGS >
System settings
Depending on the Email service selected, proceed to configure the email server settings accordingly.
In Acronis Backup 12.5 Advanced, multiple administrators and units can be added in the on-premise
Management Server for managing groups of machines (for backup and recovery) and plans.
Other users and groups (local and domain) can be added as either Organization or Unit
administrators.
Note: When the Management Server is installed on a machine, a user group, Acronis Centralized
Admin is created. On a domain controller, the group is named DCNAME $ Acronis Centralized
Admin where DCNAME is the NETBIOS name of the domain controller. Thereafter, all members
of the Administrators group are added to the Acronis Centralized Admin group. On a domain
controller, the Administrators group itself is added to Acronis Centralized Admins group.
Organization is the built-in top-level tenant and all other tenants a.k.a Units will be created under it.
Units can be nested and are usually created to mimic the business or IT structure of the organization
so that administration can be easily delegated.
Users and groups (Local Users and Groups and Domain Users and Groups if in AD domain) can be
added as Unit administrator of 1 or more Units and can manage anything within their own as well as
all child Units.
However, Unit administrators cannot add other administrators or Units as only Organization
administrators can view the Settings > Administrators section. Hence only Organization
administrators can add/edit/remove units and administrators.
Note: Besides Settings > Administrators, there are other menus/actions that are only visible to
Organization Administrators such as License Management, Data Catalog, Active Protection
Plan and System Settings.
After creating Units and adding Unit or Organization administrators, Organization and Units can be
populated with machines by:
• An Organization or Unit administrator logging in to the Backup Console and selecting the
appropriate Unit (including Organization) before clicking Add and performing remote
installation. If there is only a single Unit, i.e., no other Units have been created, the Unit
selector will not be visible
• When installing Agents locally, the administrator provides their credential and the machine is
added to the Unit managed by the administrator. If the administrator manages multiple
Units, the installer prompts to choose a unit to which the machine will be added
The Dashboard can be used to monitor and display the state of the backup infrastructure in real-
time.
Currently only available for Acronis Backup on-premise management and will be available for cloud-
based management in future updates.
• Acronis Backup Standard: Reports not available and limited functionality for Dashboard
• Acronis Backup Advanced: Reports available and full functionality for Dashboard
In order to show the Dashboard and Reports menus, installation of the Monitoring Service
component is required.
• Open full screen view which is useful for displaying the Dashboard on large screens
• Send as email as Excel or PDF file
• Download as Excel or PDF file
The Dashboard consists of a number of customizable widgets that are automatically refreshed every
2 minutes. Other widgets can be added and removed and there’s not limit to the number of widget
that can be added.
Widgets are WYSIWYG, i.e., they can be freely moved around and placed in any layout, and includes
1 or more filters to reflect different parts of the environment.
Widgets have clickable elements that enables investigation and troubleshooting of issues.
Reports
Reports can be used to generate on-demand and scheduled reports about the state of the backup
infrastructure. Acronis Backup Advanced license is required as well as installation of the Monitoring
Service.
Reports are widget-based similar to Dashboards and can include any set of dashboard widgets. Pre-
defined and custom reports are available and reports can be sent via email and/or downloaded on a
schedule as Excel and/or PDF file.
Alerts have been improved to indicate not only backup status but other states (conditions/situations)
that might potentially cause data loss such as Active Protection service not working which is classed
as a Critical alert.
Alerts are classified into 3 levels of severity with respective symbols:
• Critical, Error and Warning, e.g., Backup is cancelled
Status of a machine will show the highest level severity for the machine if there’s more than 1 alert.
Additionally, the severity of an alert can be changed from its pre-defined severity:
• E.g., Backup status unknown which by default is a Warning can be changed to Critical if you
are only backing up mission critical servers and they should never go offline
To change the severity of an alert, edit the alerts.config file in the following locations with a text
editor:
• Windows: <installation path>\AMS\alerts.config where by default, Management
Server installation path is %ProgramFiles%\Acronis
• Linux: /usr/lib/Acronis/AMS/alerts.config
For more information, refer to the Help file.
An Alert can be cleared manually or automatically when the next backup with the same context is
started, as well as when the underlying context has changed, e.g., machine removed from
Management Server.
An Administrator should take all remedial actions necessary to resolve the Alert.
Activities menu will show a consolidated view of all backup and recovery related activities from all
machines registered on the Management Server.
List of activities can be searched and filtered as well as sorted.
With introduction of multiple Management Server Administrators and Units, Activities will also show
the account that started the activity to enable tracking and auditing.
There is a Collect system information option at the bottom of the Activities page. It can be used to
collect local system information of the on-premise Management Server, which can be used for
troubleshooting and sending to Acronis Customer Service and Support for analysis.
1st scenario: Rebranding the UI & enabling the Scheduled Usage Report
Assume that you are an administrator for a Service Provider that has signed up for Acronis Backup
Cloud Acronis Hosted model. You are required to change the Branding options to reflect your
company’s corporate identity as well as enable the Scheduled Usage Report so that you can track the
consumption of your reseller partner and direct customer.
Tasks required:
1. Login to the Acronis Data Cloud Management Portal using the account provided by the
instructor
2. Click on the Branding tab for your tenant
3. Change the Logo, Color scheme and links to suit your preference
4. Reload the webpage to view the changes
5. Click on Reports and enable Scheduled reports and keep Level of detail setting on Direct
customers and partners.
5 Backup Operations
What is this module about?
In this module, you will learn how to plan for and configure backup and related operations for
Acronis Backup and Acronis Backup Cloud as well as understand how to setup Physical Data Shipping
and Large Scale Recovery for Acronis Backup Cloud.
Backups in Acronis Backup and Acronis Backup Cloud are created via Backup Plans. A backup plan is
a set of rules that specify how the selected data will be protected on a machine.
A backup plan can be applied to multiple machines at the time of its creation or later. When applied
to a machine, the backup plan is registered on the Management Server and the backup script is
deployed to the Agent. After the script is deployed, the Agent will execute it according to the
schedule.
One of the best practices for backup is to have multiple versions of your backup, i.e., follow the 3-2-1
rule. This will allow you to:
• Eliminate single point of failure
• Leverage on different types of storage for maximizing capacity and performance vs. price
When implementing the 3-2-1 rule, it is important that you align with backup needs (recovery or
archival), backup strategy and RTO/RPO requirements to maximize utility and ROI.
Finally, to have a holistic approach to data protection, formulate and document a disaster recovery
plan for each service and an overall business continuity plan. Test and review often to ensure that
your data protection is up to date.
Protecting Applications
For Microsoft Exchange and Microsoft SQL servers, they can be protected in 2 ways:
• Database backup: File-level backup of the database and associated metadata
• Application-aware backup: Disk-level backup that collects associated metadata
Both database and application-aware backups can be used for:
• Recover database to live application
• Recover database as files
• Granular recovery of application items
• For Microsoft Exchange 2010 SP1 and above, Mailbox backup is also possible, backed up
mailboxes and mailbox items can be used to recover to live Exchange Server
For SharePoint farms:
• Back up all of the database servers with application-aware backup
• Back up all of the unique front-end servers and application servers with disk-level backup
• Backups of all servers should be performed using the same schedule
For domain controllers, application-aware backup can be used and if a domain controller contains
more than 1 domain controller, the backed up AD databases can be manually restored (non-
authoritative restore) and USN rollback will not occur.
For Oracle Databases on Windows and Linux:
Application-aware backup: Disk-level backup of the entire server and associated application
metadata
Oracle database and OS must be installed on file systems supported by Acronis Backup
• Database backup: File-level backup (a.k.a. RMAN backup) of the Oracle database and
Archived Logs with RMAN scripts (provided and installed together with Agent for Oracle on
Windows/Linux)
RMAN scripts are provided and parameters in the scripts can be customized
In Windows: %ProgramFiles%\Acronis\Oracle
In Linux: /usr/lib/Acronis/Oracle
• Refer to http://dl2.acronis.com/u/pdf/AcronisBackup_12.5_OracleBackup_whitepaper.pdf or
Appendix for details
• Oracle database on raw partitions and Oracle Automatic Storage Management (ASM)
volumes can be backed up
Comparison of application-aware and database backup of Oracle Databases:
Pre-requisites:
For Microsoft SQL, ensure that:
• At least 1 Microsoft SQL server instance is started
• SQL Server Browser Service and TCP/IP protocol is enabled
• SQL writer for VSS is turned on
For Microsoft Exchange, ensure that:
• Microsoft Exchange Information Store is started
• Windows PowerShell is installed, for Exchange 2010 and above, PowerShell must be at least
v2.0
• Microsoft .NET framework is installed: For Exchange 2007, .NET must be at least v2.0, for
Exchange 2010 and later, .NET must be at least v3.5
• Exchange writer for VSS is turned on
On a domain controller, ensure that:
• Active Directory writer for VSS is turned on
For Oracle Database:
On Windows, Oracle VSS writer must be installed (happens by default for supported Oracle
versions) and backup option, Volume Shadow Copy Service is enabled
On Linux, Backup option, Multi-volume snapshot is enabled
Additionally, for application-aware backup, when creating a backup plan, ensure that for What to
back up, Entire machine is selected as Application backup section will only show up if Entire
machine is selected for backup.
For database backup, select the desired database or folder to be backed up from Devices >
Microsoft Exchange/SQL/Oracle.
Application-aware and database backup requires either:
• For agent-based/guest-level backup of physical machines/virtual machines:
Note: Microsoft SQL Server does not allow log truncation for databases that do not have native full
backups. Therefore, create a native SQL full backup of the database at least once in order for
Acronis Backup to be able to truncate SQL logs after application-aware or database backup.
See http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms187510.aspx for more information.
• Log files
Pre-requisites:
• SSH must be enabled in the Security Profile of the ESXi host configuration
• Password for the “root” account on the ESXi host to be backed up
For Hyper-V:
In addition to backing up Hyper-V VMs, the entire Hyper-V server (including VMs) can be backed up
with Agent for Windows via disk-level backup:
• Requires Hyper-V Integration Services to be installed and updated on the VMs
• Hyper-V VSS writers must be working (check using vssadmin list writers)
Recovery to another
No Yes
organization
Recovery to an on-premise
No No
Microsoft Exchange Server
Limitation:
• Automatic creation of users, groups or sites during recovery is not possible, e.g., to recover a
deleted SharePoint Online site, first create a new site manually and then specify it as the
target site during a recovery
When the app is opened, a summary of data changes will be shown and a backup can be started
manually. For recovery, latest data can be recovered via the app while older versions can be
recovered as files from the Backup Console. Retention is not applied to mobile device backups; older
backups have to be manually deleted if storage quota is exceeded.
Protecting Websites
A website can be backed up via SFTP or SSH protocol, no Agent installation required. The following
content can be backed up:
• Website content files:
All files accessible to the account specified for SFTP or SSH connection in the Backup Plan
• Linked databases (if any) hosted on MySQL servers:
All databases accessible to the specified MySQL account in the Backup Plan
Both website content and databases (if any) should be backed up to enable consistent recovery
Limitations:
• Websites can only be backed up to cloud storage
• Each website must have its own Backup Plan (1 Backup Plan per 1 website) as a Backup Plan
cannot be applied to multiple websites
• Backup options are not applied
‒ Entire machine
‒ 1 or more disks and volumes
‒ 1 or more files and folders
Entire machine
‒ 1 or more database to live Exchange/SQL server
‒ 1 or more Exchange/SQL databases as files
‒ Granular recovery to live Exchange/SQL server
What To Back Up
Entire machine
Agent for respective Administrator or root
Disks/volumes DEVICES > All devices
platform credentials
Files/folders
Member in Exchange
Exchange databases DEVICES > Microsoft Agent for Windows + Administrators role group or
Exchange mailboxes Exchange Agent for Exchange Member in Organization
Management group
Credentials of an account
belonging to Backup Operators
DEVICES > Microsoft Agent for Windows + or Administrators group and
SQL databases
SQL Agent for SQL member of sysadmin role for
each SQL instance to be backed
up
Credentials of Global
Office 365 mailboxes DEVICES > Office 365 Agent for Office 365
Administrator for Office 365
For Disks/volumes and Files/folders, data to be backed up can be selected either Directly or by
Using policy rules:
• Directly: Tick items to be backed up, suitable for selecting multiple disparate items for
backup
• Using policy rules: Rules are available to select items to be backed, suitable for selecting
similar items across multiple machines for backup
For ESXi configuration, Exchange databases, SQL databases and Office 365 mailboxes, data to be
backed up can only be selected directly:
• Directly: Go to relevant DEVICE category, e.g., DEVICE > VMware > Hosts and clusters, and
tick items to be backed up
Where To Back Up
Cloud Storage
• Backups will be stored in Acronis or partner data center
Local folders
• Backups will be stored locally on the machine being backed up such as internal/external HDD
or removable media
Network folder and NFS folder
• Backups will be stored on SMB or NFS shares accessible from the machine being backed up
Storage Node
• Backups will be stored on managed locations
Secure Zone
• Backups will be stored in a secure partition on the local disk of the machine being backed up
SFTP
• Backups will be stored on a SFTP server
Tape
• Backups will be stored on tapes in a tape pool
Secure Zone
Secure Zone is a secure partition that can be created on a local disk of the machine being backed up:
• Offers a cost-effective and handy method for protecting data from software malfunction,
virus attack and human error
• Eliminates the need for a separate media or network connection to backup/recover data
• Can be used as a “staging” storage prior to replication of backups
Limitations:
• Cannot be created on a Mac
• Does not protect against physical failure of the local disk
• Does not support single-file backup format
To create a Secure Zone, perform the following steps:
• Go to Details > Create Secure Zone and click Select to select a local disk on which to create
the secure zone
• Enter the Secure Zone size or drag the slider
• [Optional] Enable Password protection switch and specify a password
• Click Create
Creating a Secure Zone will change the layout of the volumes on the disk and will require a reboot if
space is taken from existing volumes:
• Secure Zone will always be created at the end of the disk and unallocated space will be used if
any to create the new volume
• If there isn’t any unallocated space or if it’s insufficient, free space from existing volumes will
be taken instead to create the new volume resulting in existing volumes being resized
Managed Locations
To create a managed location, a Storage Node is required. Managed locations allows for the
following:
• Deduplication
• Encryption
• Cataloging (requires Catalog Service)
• Multiple machines to back up to a Tape device connected to a Storage Node
Schedule
Backup schemes:
• Always incremental (single-file): First backup full, subsequent backups incremental, uses new
single-file format
• Always full: All backups are full
• Weekly full, daily incremental: Monday full (can be changed in Backup options), other days
incremental
• Monthly full, Weekly differential, Daily incremental (GFS): Mondays to Fridays incremental,
Saturdays differential, 1st day of the month full
• Custom: Specify schedules for full, incremental and differential backup
• For Acronis Backup 12.5 on-premise management, depending on backup location and
whether the location contains backup files from previous versions of Acronis Backup, backups
may be stored as Version 12 (.tibx) or Version 11 (.tib) backup format
Schedule by time:
• Monthly: Run on a monthly recurring basis with choice of selecting days of month or days of
week to perform backup
• Weekly: Run on a weekly recurring basis with choice of selecting days of week to perform
backup
• Daily: Run on a daily recurring basis with choice of selecting every day or Monday to Friday to
perform backup
• Hourly: Run on an hourly basis with choice of every x hours, range of time and days of week
to perform backup
• A date range can be specified for all of the above types of schedule
Schedule by events:
• Upon time since last backup: Specify time since completion of last successful backup within
the same backup plan
• When user logs on/logs off the system: By default, logging on/off of any user will initiate the
backup, can be changed to specific user account
• On system startup, on system shutdown: Backup will be initiated upon system
startup/shutdown
• On Windows Event Log event: Backup will be initiated upon specific Windows Event, Event
Log, Source, Type and ID can be configured
Start conditions:
• User is idle: When screen saver is active or when machine is locked
• Users logged off: Enables putting backup on hold until all users have logged off from the
machine
• Fits the time interval: Restricts backup to a specific interval
• Save battery power: Prevents a backup if the device is not connected to a power source
• Do not start when on metered connection: Prevents a backup if the device is connected to
the Internet using a connection that is set as metered in Windows
• Do not start when connected to the following Wi-Fi networks: Prevents a backup if the
device is connected to any of the specified wireless networks
• Check device IP address: Prevents a backup if any of the device IP addresses are within or
outside of the specified IP address range
• Backup options > Backup start conditions can be configured to further define behavior of
Start conditions such as, Wait until conditions from schedules are met, Start backup anyway
after x hours or Skip the scheduled backup
• If more than 1 condition is selected, all selected conditions must be met simultaneous before
backup will start
Types of Backup
Full Backup
Stores all data selected for the backup and forms the base for subsequent incremental and
differential backups.
Incremental Backup
Stores the changes to the data since the most recent backup.
Creates a “chain” of backups, requires the corresponding full + all subsequent incremental backups
to restore data.
Differential Backup
Stores changes to the data since the most recent full backup.
Creates “links” to the full backup, requires corresponding full + differential to restore data.
By Backup Age
For cleanup by backup age, by default, backups are grouped into monthly, weekly, daily and hourly
sets:
• Monthly set: 1st backup created after a month starts
• Weekly set: 1st backup created on the day specified in Backup option > Weekly backup which
by default is Monday
• Daily set: 1st backup created after a day starts
• Hourly set: 1st backup created after an hour starts
• E.g., Keep 6 months, 4 weeks, 7 days = keep 1st backup created every month for last 6
months including current month, keep Monday backup created every week for last 4 weeks
including current week, keep the 1st backup created every day for last 7 days including
current day
• If switched to single rule for all backup sets, backups will be retained based on Monthly, e.g.,
Keep 7 months = keep all backups created for last 7 months including current month
Depending on the backup format used, cleanup behavior will be different:
• For Version 11 backup format which stores backups as individual files – 1 .tib file for 1
backup, cleanup will delete outdated backups immediately unless there’s dependent
backups:
Backup (typically a full backup) and subsequent dependent backups (incremental or
differential) will be marked for deletion as they become outdated and will be deleted at
once when there’s no more dependencies
For single-file backups, backups are not deleted, instead the space taken up by outdated
backup data will be marked as free and will be overwritten by subsequent backups
• For Version 12 backup format which stores 1 chain of backup (full + all dependent
incremental or differential) as a single file – 1 .tibx for 1 chain, cleanup will mark space taken
up by outdated backup data as free (similar to single-file backups) if they reside in a single file
and delete the single file when all backups in the single file becomes outdated
The most recent backup will always be kept regardless of cleanup rules.
Backups stored on tapes that are marked for deletion are not deleted until the tape is overwritten,
after which the backup will become irretrievable.
Extra space for storage may have to be allocated as depending on cleanup behavior, outdated
backups may not be deleted immediately.
Encryption
Encryption can be enabled to encrypt backups created by a Backup Plan with AES encryption. Once
enabled, Encryption setting cannot be modified and a new Backup Plan has to be created to use
different encryption settings.
To enable, toggle the Encryption switch and specify a password and the AES algorithm to be used.
Notarization
Disk-level backups can be converted into a virtual machine as part of a Backup Plan and conversion
can be configured after backup or after replication.
Requires Agent for VMware or Hyper-V and corresponding host:
• Agent for VMware/Hyper-V must be able to access the backup file, i.e., convert from backups
stored on network locations such as network folders and managed locations or on storage
local to the Agent
To enable, toggle the Conversion switch and choose to convert to VMware ESXi or Hyper-V VM and
specify the Host and other related settings such as Datastore path, Disk provisioning mode, etc.
Replication
Up to 4 locations for replication is available in a Backup Plan. If replication is enabled, backups will be
copied to the replication location after it appears in the previous location.
Backups can be replicated from:
• Local folder, network folder, Secure Zone, SFTP, managed locations
Backups can be replicated to:
• Local folder, network folder, cloud storage, SFTP, managed locations
Replication from cloud storage and from tape is not supported.
Each replication location have its own Cleanup and Convert to VM setting and data can be recovered
from any location as backups stored in each location is independent of other locations.
ITEMS TO
BACK UP
Selection HOW LONG TO
WHAT TO BACK UP methods WHERE TO BACK UP SCHEDULE KEEP
Cloud
Local folder
Network folder
Direct selection
Disks/volumes SFTP server* Always
Policy rules incremental
(physical machines) NFS*
File filters (single-file)*
Secure Zone*
Always full
Managed location*
Weekly full, daily
Tape device*
incremental
Monthly full,
Cloud
Weekly
Local folder
differential, Daily
Network folder incremental (GFS)
Disks/volumes Policy rules
SFTP server* Custom (F-D-I) By backup age
(virtual machines) File filters
NFS* By number of
Managed location* backups
Tape device* By total size of
backups*
Cloud Keep indefinitely
Local folder
Network folder
Files Direct selection Always full
SFTP server*
(physical machines Policy rules Weekly full, daily
NFS*
only) File filters incremental
Secure Zone*
Monthly full,
Managed location*
Weekly
Tape device* differential, Daily
incremental (GFS)
Local folder
Custom (F-D-I)
Network folder
ESXi configuration Direct selection
SFTP server
NFS*
* Certain limitations applies, refer to the Help file for more information
10. After the Backup Plan is created, you can see when is the next backup as well as manually
start the backup by clicking on RUN NOW and optionally select to run Full, Incremental,
Differential backup (if configured in the backup plan)
When selecting a device without any applied Backup Plan or when creating a new Backup Plan,
existing Backup Plans (for other devices if any) will be shown
These plans can be selected and applied to the device easily and rapidly with minimal modifications
Device Groups
Device groups are designed for convenient management of large numbers of machines registered on
the Management Server.
Management Server comes with the following built-in groups:
• Once a machine is added/registered to the Management Server, it will appear in the built-in
group(s) that correspond to its type, e.g., Exchange server will appear in the Devices >
Microsoft Exchange built-in group
Besides built-in groups, administrators can create custom groups:
• Groups that are manually created within a built-in group and can be nested
• Used for grouping similar machines of the same type for backup
• A machine can be a member of more than 1 custom group
1. Click Devices and then select the built-in group which contains the machines for which to
create a group
2. Click on the gear icon next to the group and select New group or click on + New Group
1. Click Devices and then select the built-in group which contains the machines for which to
create a group
2. Search for machines using the Search field, multiple search criteria and operators can be
used. Refer to the Help file for more information
3. Click Save as next to the search field
4. Specify the group name and optionally enter a description
5. Click OK
6. Backup plan(s) can be applied to the group by clicking on Group Backup when the group is
selected
Browsing Backups
Backups can be browsed from the Backups menu. All locations currently in use by all backup plans
will be shown.
New locations can be added by selecting Add location. When adding a location, machine to browse
from can be specified in order to ensure that a specific machine (with appropriate agents installed) is
used to access the location, e.g., using a machine with Agent for SQL to browse backups of SQL
datbases
Operations possible:
• Show backups > Recover… and Run as VM: Recovery tasks can be created from selected
backups
• Delete: Backups can be selected and deleted from the backup location
Backup options are settings that can modify the behavior of the Backup Plan.
Availability of Backup options depends on:
• The environment the Agent operates in (Windows, Linux, OSX)
• The type of data being backed up (disk, files, VMs, application data)
• The backup destination (cloud, local or network storage)
The following pages will describe the Backup options available.
Backup Consolidation
Effective for Always full; Weekly full, Daily incremental and Custom backup schemes
Preset: Disabled
Consolidation is the process of combining 2 or more subsequent backups into a single backup.
When disabled, backups are retained until all dependent backups becomes subject to deletion.
If enabled, a backup that should be deleted during cleanup is consolidated with the next dependent
backup (incremental or differential).
Backup Validation
Validation is an operation that checks the possibility of data recovery from a backup.
Preset: Disabled
If enabled, each backup created by the backup plan is validated immediately after creation:
• Validation calculates a checksum for every data block that can be recovered from the backup.
The only exception is file-level backups that are stored in cloud storage. These backups are
validated by checking the consistency of the metadata saved in the backup
• Validation is a time-consuming process and should only be enabled for compliance purposes
Effective for disk-level backups of VMs and physical machines running Windows.
Preset: Enabled
Determines whether to use Change Block Tracking (CBT) when performing an incremental or
differential backup.
CBT technology accelerates the backup process:
• Changes to the disk content are continuously tracked at the block level
• When a backup is started, the changes can be immediately saved to the backup
Compression Level
Defines the level of compression applied to the data being backed up.
Available levels: None, Normal, High, Maximum
Preset: Normal
Higher compression level means the backup process takes longer but resulting backup occupies less
space.
Optimal data compression level depends on the type of data being backed up, e.g., increasing
compression level has little effect on backups of compressed file types such as .jpg, .pdf or .mp3.
Email Notification
Enables setting up email notifications about Errors, Warnings and Successful backups.
Only available in on-premise deployments, for cloud deployment, email settings are configured per
account when an account is created.
Preset: Use the default settings
Either use default settings or override with custom values that will be specific for the current Backup
Plan only.
Error Handling
Enables specifying how to handle errors that might occur during backup.
Re-attempt, if an error occurs:
• Preset: Enabled, Number of attempts: 30 (300 for backup to cloud storage), Interval
between attempts: 30 seconds
• When recoverable error occurs, agent re-attempts to perform the unsuccessful operation,
attempts will be stopped as soon as the operation succeeds or if the number of specified
attempts are performed, which ever happens first
Do not show messages and dialogs while processing (silent mode):
• Preset: Enabled
• When enabled, agent will automatically handle situations requiring user interaction, if an
operation cannot continue without user interaction, it will fail
Ignore bad sector:
• Preset: Disabled
• When disabled, each time the agent comes across a bad sector, backup activity will be
assigned the interaction required status
File Filters
File filters defines which files and folders to skip during the backup process.
Available for both disk-level and file-level backup.
Enter criteria for Back up only files matching the following criteria or Do not back up files matching
the following criteria.
Criteria:
• Full path: Specify the full path to the file or folder, e.g., C:\Temp\File.tmp /home/user
• Name: Specify the name of the file or folder, e.g., Document.txt
• Wildcards can be used: (*) substitutes for any number of characters and (?) substitutes for 1
character, e.g., *.log or F???.log
2 other options are available:
• Exclude hidden files and folders: Files and folders which have the Hidden attribute will be
excluded
• Exclude system files and folders: Only effective for Windows-based machines, files and
folders which have the System attribute will be excluded
LVM Snapshotting
Effective only for physical machines for disk-level backup of volumes managed by Linux Logical
Volume Manager (LVM).
Preset: By the backup software
Defines how a snapshot of a logical volume is taken.
With default setting, snapshot data is kept mostly in RAM, backup is faster and unallocated space on
the volume group is not required.
Changed to By LVM, if experiencing problems with backing up logical volumes. Snapshot will be
stored on unallocated space of the volume group. However, if unallocated space is missing, snapshot
will be taken by backup software.
Multi-Volume Snapshot
Performance
Process priority:
• Defines the priority of the backup process in the OS
• Available settings: Low, Normal, High
• Preset: Low (in Windows, corresponds to Below Normal)
• Priority of a process determines the amount of CPU and system resources allocated to that
process, increasing priority might speed up the backup process but is dependent on overall
CPU usage and other factors like disk in/out speed and/or network traffic
Output speed during backup:
• Preset: Disabled
• Enable to limit the HDD write speed (when backing up to local folder) or speed of network
transfer when backing up to network or cloud
Pre/Post Commands
Enables defining commands to be automatically executed before and after the backup procedure.
Preset: No
Can be used for: deleting temporary files from the disk before backup, configure 3rd-party anti-virus
to be started before backup, selectively copy backups to another location, etc.
Enable to configure the desired command or batch file to run before/after the backup, interactive
commands are not supported.
Enable Fail the backup if the command execution fails if the command execution is critical to
operations.
Enables defining commands to be automatically executed before and after data capture (snapshot).
Preset: No
Used for suspending and resuming non VSS-aware databases or applications so that data to be
backed up can be captured correctly by the snapshot.
Enable to configure the desired command or batch file to run before/after the snapshot, interactive
commands are not supported.
Enable Fail the backup if the command execution fails if the command execution is critical to
operations.
Scheduling
Defines whether backups start as scheduled or with a delay (for multiple machines) and how many
VMs are backed up simultaneously.
Preset: Distribute backup start times within a time windows, Maximum delay: 30 minutes:
• Backup of physical machines will start with a random delay from the scheduled time up to the
maximum delay specified.
Preset: Limit the number of simultaneously running backups by:
• Option only available when backup is applied to multiple VMs, default is 2, maximum value is
10
Sector-by-Sector Backup
Splitting
Effective for Always full, Weekly full, Daily incremental and Custom backup schemes.
Preset: Automatic
Enables selecting of how a backup can be split into multiple smaller files.
With default setting, backup file will be split if it exceeds the maximum file size supported by the file
system.
For smaller file sizes, select Fixed size and enter the desired file size.
Weekly Backup
1. Select the machines for which you want to enable Active Protection
2. Click Active Protection
Most actions that are part of a Backup Plan are performed by the Agent that performs the backup
which might put additional workload on the machine.
Certain operations such as backup replication, validation, cleanup and conversion to VM can be
separated from a Backup Plan. This provides flexibility to:
• Choose another Agent for performing these operations
• Schedule these operations for off-peak hours to minimize network bandwidth consumption
• Shift these operations outside of business hours if setting up a dedicated agent is not feasible
Physical Data Shipping (PDS) is available as a new service in Acronis Data Cloud 7.8.
Note: Check Acronis KB https://kb.acronis.com/servicesbydc for Acronis Data Center availability for
Physical Data Shipping service.
Physical Data Shipping is used for Initial Seeding (IS):
• Help customers transfer large amounts of data (initial full backup) to the cloud data center
using a hard drive which is shipped to the Acronis Data Center
• After the IS backup have been uploaded by data center personnel to cloud storage,
customers can continue with incremental backups
In addition, a shipping order for tracking the hard drive to be shipped can be created with the Order
Creation Tool which can be downloaded from the Acronis Data Cloud service console.
To obtain a copy of backups in cloud storage (which can be quite large) for local recovery, Large
Scale Recovery (LSR) can be used. For LSR, Service Providers can install the IS/LSR tool:
• Download the backups to hard drive and send it to the customer
• Customer can recover locally directly from the hard drive or copy it to local/network folder
Physical Data Shipping service is currently only available for Acronis-hosted Cloud Storage. For
partner-hosted cloud storage, Service Providers can provide IS/LSR service (install the IS/LSR tool)
separately. And currently, IS/LSR is supported for backups of Windows and Linux systems, Mac is not
supported.
Upload data to 1 1
Using IS/LSR tool Use PDS Service Using IS/LSR tool
Cloud
Download data 1 1 1
from Cloud Using IS/LSR tool Using IS/LSR tool Using IS/LSR tool
Shipping Order
Not supported Yes Not supported
Tracking
Available for
Not supported Yes N.A.
sale/resell
NAS Yes No No
6. Status updated in service console and backup can continue with incremental backups
7. If return option is enabled, hard drive will be sent back to originator
Typical Initial Seeding service workflow (for Service Providers) is as follows:
1. Customer purchases the service and receives the shipping address
2. Customer creates an Physical Data Shipping backup on a local hard drive by enabling the
Physical Data Shipping Backup option after selecting cloud storage for Where to back up in
the Backup Plan
3. Customer packs the hard drive and ships the package to the partner data center
4. Service Provider uploads the Physical Data Shipping backup to the cloud storage by using the
IS/LSR tool and notifies the user that the upload is complete
5. Service Provider sends the hard drive back to the end user or securely destroys the hard drive
Typical Large Scale Recovery workflow is as follows:
1. Customer purchases the service and provides LSR token to the partner
2. Partner downloads the Customer’s backup archives to HDD
3. Partner ships HDD to Customer
4. Customer recovers data locally from backup archives by connecting the HDD to the machine
to be recovered or by copying the backup archives to a network folder
IS/LSR tool supports uploading/downloading to/from Acronis-hosted cloud storage or partner-
hosted cloud storage based on Acronis Storage.
To create a Physical Data Shipping Order:
1. Choose the shipping company to use to ship the hard drive(s)
2. Attach the drive(s) with the initial backup to a machine that has an Internet connection
3. Download and run the order creation tool on this machine
5. Select the drive(s) to add to the order and then click Next to view the shipping address
6. Go to the shipping company’s website to input this address to create a shipping label and
obtain a tracking number. If the drive(s) are to be returned, create a pre-paid shipment label
as well
7. If you have a return shipment label, select the I enclosed pre-paid return shipment label for
returning my drives checkbox
8. Create order
1. Decide on licensing and pricing. Note that there 1. How is the service licensed (per machine, per
is no record of IS/LSR orders in Acronis Backup account, per backup plan, per HDD…)?
Cloud if PDS service is not used 2. Where do I purchase the service?
2. Think of the shipping procedure. We 3. Where do I register the license key?
recommend Fedex, UPS or DHL as shipping
4. What are the requirements for the Physical Data
providers. Note that Customers may want their
Shipping HDD (interface, partitioning, file
hard drives back, so you would either need a
system)?
return shipping label from them or include
5. Can I send backups taken from a number of
return shipping costs in the price of the IS/LSR
machines on a single hard drive?
service
6. What shipping company do you recommend?
3. Decide on a notification service for the
Customers. Acronis Backup Cloud does not send 7. How do I create an Physical Data Shipping
notifications upon Physical Data Shipping backup?
backup creation or upload/download 8. How do I package the HDD for shipping?
completion 9. How do I track the IS process?
4. Allocate a machine for installing the IS/LSR tool. 10. Can I suspend the backup plan execution until
You need a Windows/Linux x64 machine with at the Physical Data Shipping backup is uploaded
least 2 GB of RAM and fast Internet connection (because the incremental backups produce
to Acronis-hosted cloud storage and/or your warnings)?
partner-hosted cloud storage
11. What if I make a mistake - can I cancel the IS
5. Decide on supported hard drive types. Most process?
Customers send the Physical Data Shipping
12. How do I request Large Scale Recovery?
backup on USB hard drives. If you want to
support more hard drive types, for example 13. Can I receive backups of several machines on a
SATA/eSATA, make sure the machine is properly single hard drive?
equipped for easy hard drive connection 14. Anything else I must be aware of? For example,
6. Install IS/LSR tool on the chosen machine if the machine is moved to a different backup
account, will I have to perform IS again?
7. Test the IS/LSR process: create an Physical Data
Shipping backup and upload it to the storage,
after creating a couple of incremental backups,
download the backup archive using the IS/LSR
tool
8. Prepare a step-by-step instruction for
Customers about using the service
3. Open the command prompt as Administrator and run the following commands:
In Linux
1. 64-bit RPM-based Linux required, e.g., openSUSE or Fedora, make sure python3.5, python3-
colorama, python3-pyOpenSSL packages are installed:
Open Terminal and run pip list, to check for installed components, the following
output should be shown:
...
colorama (x.x.x)
colorlog (x.x.x)
...
fes (x.x.x)
...
pip (x.x.x)
...
pyOpenSSL (x.x.x)
...
2. If packages are not installed, install python3.5 manually, install colorama and pyOpenSSL via
pip3
3. Download, unpack and install the IS/LSR tool from:
https://kb.acronis.com/system/files/content/2016/08/ajax/IS_LSR_Tool_Build32_Linux.zi
p
4. On CentOS 7, do the following:
Copy the following text to /etc/yum.repos.d/acronis-ius.repo (create the
acronis-ius.repo file if necessary):
[acronis-ius]
name=IUS repository mirror
baseurl=https://eu-repo.acronis.com/public/ius/
gpgcheck=0
enabled=1
Then execute the following commands:
yum install libffi-devel gcc openssl-devel python35u-devel
pip3 install --upgrade -i https://pypi.corp.acronis.com/simple fes
pip3 install pyOpenSSL colorama colorlog
rpm --install --nodeps InitialSeedingTool64.rpm
is_info <path_to_the_backup>
4. Run the following command to upload the backup:
is_me
5. If there are several IS backups, point to a specific backup to avoid getting an error
6. Notify the Customer once the upload is complete
3. When prompted, specify the password for the admin account used and the download will
start. Take note that all archives will be downloaded
4. Pack the HDD and send to Customer once downloads are complete
6 Recovery Operations
What is this module about?
In this module, you will learn how to recover data and entire machines from a backup and
understand the options and settings available
Recovery in Acronis Backup and Acronis Backup Cloud are performed via recovery tasks. A recovery
task is a set of rules that specify what and how data will be restored on a given computer.
When created from the Backup Console, a recovery task is registered on the Management Server
and the recovery script is deployed to the Agent. After the script is deployed, Agent will execute it
immediately.
When created from bootable media, the recovery task is executed immediately by the bootable
version of the Agent.
‒ Entire machine
‒ 1 or more disks and volumes
‒ 1 or more files and folders
Entire machine
‒ 1 or more database to live application server
‒ 1 or more databases as files
‒ Granular recovery to live application server
Recovering Applications
For Microsoft Exchange
Exchange databases can recovered from database or application-aware backup.
Mailbox and mailbox items can be recovered from database, application-aware and mailbox backups
for Microsoft Exchange 2010 SP1 and above.
Recovery can be performed to original or new Exchange sever of the same version and requires
Agent for Exchange or Agent for VMware (for VMware ESXi VMs)
Target Exchange Server and machine running the Agent must belong to the same AD forest and the
following items can be recovered:
• Database and database as file
• Mailbox and mailbox contents such as Emails, Email folders, Calendar events, etc
• When recovering an entire mailbox to existing mailbox, existing items with matching IDs are
overwritten and when recovering individual items, they will appear in the Recovered items
folder
• Mailbox being recovered from backup must have an associated user account in Active
Directory and the user account must be enabled
• Shared, room and equipment mailboxes can only be recovered if their associated user
accounts are disabled
• Mailboxes that do not meet the conditions above are skipped during recovery and Warning
status will be shown after recovery
• Exchange databases that have been recovered as files will be in a Dirty Shutdown state and
additional steps have to be taken to bring it to a Clean Shutdown state before it can be
mounted to an Exchange server
Pre-requisites:
At least 1 Agent for VMware or Agent for Hyper-V must be registered on the Management Server
Run as VM can work with backups stored on:
• Local storage: For backups of VMware and Hyper-V VMs
• Network folders and cloud storage: For backups of any physical or virtual machine, backups
must be accessible by Agent for VMware or Agent for Hyper-V, performance of Run as VM
from cloud storage will not be optimal due to lots of random-access reading
• Backups must contain entire machine or all volumes required for OS to start
• Backups of physical and virtual machines except for Virtuozzo containers can be used
Using VM Replication
VM Replication is only available for VMware ESXi VMs. It creates an exact copy or replica of a VM to
the same or another ESXi host which can be maintained in sync with the original VM.
Replication can be started manually or on schedule with the 1st replication being a full copy (similar
to full backup) and subsequent replications being incremental (performed with CBT unless disabled,
for fast replication).
Migration
Machines can be migrated by recovering its backup to another machine. Such recoveries can be
performed via Backup Console or Bootable Media. The following table shows the available recovery
(migration) destinations for different types of backed up machines.
Physical machine
Hyper-V VMs
Virtuozzo VMs
Virtuozzo
containers
Recovery Methods
Using Backup Console
• Used for live recovery of entire machines, disk/volumes, files/folders and application data
when the original machine’s OS and Agent is functional.
• Requires special bootable media with bootable version of Acronis Agent to boot up the target
machine in order to run the Agent
• Bootable Media ISO can be downloaded from Recovery menu or created via Bootable Media
Builder
• Browse to folder location where backups are stored and double-click on .TIBX or .TIB file
• Download files from cloud storage can be accessed from Recovery > More ways to recover
Recovery Point
Recovery Point is the date and time to which the backed up data can be restored. Every recovery
point represents a backup. The data and time of the recovery point refers to the exact moment of
snapshot creation, i.e., when the backup task was started.
A lock symbol next to the recovery point means that the particular backup is encrypted with a
password.
What to Recover
What can be recovered depends on what was backed up:
• Disk-level backups allows recovery at lower levels such as individual volumes, 1 or more files
and folders
• If application-aware backup was performed, application items can be recovered from the
backup
• Certain types of backups contains only specific data such as ESXi configuration backup and
can only be used for specific recovery
What to recover can be specified after selecting a recovery point and clicking on RECOVER…
Alternatively, select RUN AS VM to perform Acronis Instant Restore on disk-level backups (requires
Agent for VMware or Agent for Hyper-V and respective virtualization host).
Where to Recover
Where to recover depends on the data being recovered:
• For disk-level backups (Entire machine, Disks/volumes), recovery can be to the same or
different machine as Physical machine or to new machine as Virtual machine, i.e., convert to
VM
• For file-level backups (files/folder, Exchange/SQL databases, Office 365 mailboxes) recovery
can be to Original location or Custom location
1. Select a Windows or Linux machine from DEVICES > All devices and click on Recovery > More
ways to recover…
3. Choose the Bootable media type: Default (Linux-based media), Windows PE or Windows PE
(64-bit). Windows PE requires relevant Windows Deployment Kit to be installed
4. Select the Acronis Backup Agent to place on the bootable media
5. [Optional] Specify the settings for Remote logon, Network and Proxy Sever
6. Select the media output: Acronis PXE Server, CD/DVD, USB flash drive, ISO, RIS Server, ZIP
file
7. Create the bootable media
In Acronis Backup 12.5 Advanced, Management Server can be used to connect to and register a
machine booted up from a bootable media.
Bootable media can also be automated with scripts to perform automatic backup and recovery from
cloud storage, bootable media and network share.
Physical machine
(Win/Linux)
Virtual machine
(VMware/Hyper-V)
ESXi configuration
Files/folders
SQL databases
Exchange databases
Exchange mailboxes
Office 365 mailboxes
2. Click Manage this machine locally or Rescue Bootable Media twice, depending on media
type
3. On the Welcome screen, click RECOVER
4. Click Select data and then click Browse
5. Specify the backup location and backup to recover from
6. Select the backup to recover from to view the contents (backed up disks and volumes) of the
backup
7. Select the disk(s) and/or volume(s) to be recovered
8. After selecting the disk(s) and/or volume(s) to be recovered, it will show up under What to
recover and will be automatically mapped to available disks on the target machine:
[Optional] Click on Clear to change the disk mapping
[Optional] Click on Properties to change the size of the volume after it has been
recovered
9. Start the recovery
10. [Optional]: After recovery is complete, perform Apply Universal Restore if recovering to
dissimilar hardware to enable bootability for the recovered OS
Universal Restore
Acronis Universal Restore is Acronis proprietary technology that allows:
• Bare metal recovery of Windows or Linux-based systems to dissimilar hardware
• P2P, P2V, P2C, V2V, V2P, V2C, C2C, C2P, C2V migrations
• Hardware independent deployment of supported OS
Included in bootable Agent as Apply Universal Restore which will perform Universal Restore
separately on recovered OS. It is also available as a tool which can be placed on a bootable media
separately. Universal Restore can be performed multiple times without having to perform recovery
repeatedly.
• Universal Restore may modify the configuration of the GRUB loader to ensure system
bootability but will never modify the Linux kernel
1. Click Apply Universal Restore under Actions section of the Bootable Media
2. If recovered disk has several OS, click Select… and choose the OS to apply Universal Restore
to
3. [Optional] Click Add folder to add network folders to search for suitable drivers
4. [Optional] If specific mass storage drivers such as RAID is required, click Add driver and
browse to location where the drivers are located
Recovering Files
ESXi configuration can be recovered using Linux-based Bootable Media to bare metal. If original ESXi
host is still connected to vCenter Server, disconnect and remove original host before recovery to
avoid unexpected behaviors during recovery.
To keep the original host, add it back to vCenter after recovery
1. Select the desired machine, click Recovery and select a recovery point or Select a recovery
point from BACKUPS
2. Click RUN AS VM
3. [Optional] Click Target machine to change VM type (ESXi or Hyper-V), the host and VM name
4. [Optional] Click Datastore or Path and select the desired storage for the VM, click VM
SETTINGS to change memory and network settings, click POWER STATE to select VM power
state upon run
5. Click RUN NOW
VM should appear in Backup Console, however, such VMs cannot be selected for backup. If
connection to backup location is lost, VM will become inaccessible or even corrupted.
When done, the following actions can be taken:
• Delete the VM: Select the VM from DEVICES menu and click Delete. VM will be removed
from Backup Console as well as from vSphere or Hyper-V inventory, all changes made to data
will be lost
• Finalize the VM: Only available for ESXi VM, select the VM from DEVICES and click Finalize,
optionally, specify a new name and disk provisioning mode (default is thin)
Finalize will recover all backup contents together with changes made to the datastore used for Run
as VM, i.e., convert to a regular VM.
VM Replication
1. Select the VM to replicate and click Replication to display the replication plan template
2. [Optional] To modify the replication plan name, click default name
Select whether to create a new replica and select the ESXi host and specify the new
replica name or use an existing replica of the original machine. Click OK
[Optional] Click Schedule to change the replication schedule or disable the schedule to
run manually
[Optional] Click the gear icon to modify replication option
4. Click Apply
• Testing a replica: Click Test replica and Start testing to power on the replica
A replica can be selected for testing (powered on and connected to a network) to check if
its working properly
When finished, click Stop Testing to power down the replica and resume replication
• Failover to a replica: Click Replica actions and Failover. Select whether to connect to network
and click Start
• A failover can be initiated with a replica if the original machine suffers an outage
• While the replica is in failover state, the following actions are available:
Stop failover: Used when original machine is fixed, replica will be powered off and
replication will resume
Perform permanent failover to replica: Removes the “replica” flag from the VM,
replication will no longer be possible
Failback: Used when original machine is fixed and changes made to replica is to be
recovered to original VM. Once failback is complete, replica will be powered off and
replication will resume
Recovery options are settings that can modify the behavior of the Recovery Task.
Availability of Recovery options depends on:
• The environment the Agent performs the recovery in (Windows, Linux, OSX or bootable
media)
• The type of data being recovered (disk, files, VMs, application data)
Backup Validation
Validation is an operation that checks the possibility of data recovery from a backup.
Preset: Disabled
If enabled, backup to be used is validated prior to recovery:
• Validation calculates a checksum for every data block that can be recovered from the backup.
The only exception is file-level backups that are stored in cloud storage. These backups are
validated by checking the consistency of the metadata saved in the backup
• Validation is a time-consuming process and should only be enabled for compliance purposes
Error Handling
Enables specifying how to handle errors that might occur during recovery.
Re-attempt, if an error occurs:
• Preset: Enabled, Number of attempts: 30 (300 for backup to cloud storage), Interval
between attempts: 30 seconds
• When recoverable error occurs, agent re-attempts to perform the unsuccessful operation,
attempts will be stopped as soon as the operation succeeds or if the number of specified
attempts are performed, which ever happens first
Do not show messages and dialogs while processing (silent mode):
• Preset: Enabled
• When enabled, agent will automatically handle situations requiring user interaction, if an
operation cannot continue without user interaction, it will fail
File Exclusions
File-Level Security
Flashback
Effective when recovery to VM is performed by Agent for VMware, Agent for Hyper-V or Agent for
Virtuozzo.
Preset: Enabled
Flashback technology accelerates recovery of VMs by recovering only the differences between the
backup and the target. Data is compared at the block level.
Mount Points
Performance
Pre/Post Commands
Enables defining commands to be automatically executed before and after the recovery procedure.
Preset: No
Can be used for: Checkdisk command, configure 3rd party anti-virus to be started after recovery,
selectively copy files to another location, etc.
Enable to configure the desired command or batch file to run before/after the recovery, interactive
commands are not supported.
Post command will not be executed if recovery proceeds with a reboot.
SID Changing
Note: Microsoft does not officially support changing SIDs on deployed or recovered systems (Use at
own risk).
VM Power Management
Effective when recovery to VM is performed by Agent for VMware, Agent for Hyper-V or Agent for
Virtuozzo
Power off target virtual machine when starting recovery: Yes
• Recovery to existing VM is not possible if the VM is online, so machine is powered off
automatically as soon as the recovery starts. Users will be disconnected from the VM and any
unsaved data will be lost
Power on the target virtual machine when recovery is complete: No
• After a VM is recovered from a backup to another machine, there’s a chance the existing
machine’s replica will appear on the network. To be safe, power on the recovered VM
manually after taking necessary precautions
Acronis Disaster Recovery Cloud is a turnkey, self-service solution, built on top of Acronis Backup
Cloud that lets Service Providers protect their customers’ critical workloads by instantly recovering
their critical IT systems, applications, and data by utilizing the Acronis cloud infrastructure.
The following are benefits of using Acronis Disaster Recovery Cloud:
1. Fastest way to revenue: Zero CAPEX and minimum training required so that Service Providers
can immediately start offering customized backup and disaster recovery services to their
customers
2. Disaster recovery in seconds: A few clicks to add and configure a cloud-based recovery server
saves time and effort when failures occur
3. Disaster recovery for any workload: Support for Windows, Linux, major hypervisors,
applications and virtual appliances
4. Complete business protection: All-in-one backup, disaster recovery and advanced
ransomware protection in a single platform for complete business protection
Acronis Disaster Recovery Add-on leverage Acronis Disaster Recovery Cloud to enable cloud disaster
recovery when Acronis Backup cloud-based management is used. Customers can back up their
critical workloads to the cloud for quick failover as a cloud server when disaster strikes as well as
spin up cloud servers for production workloads, i.e., as part of a cluster.
The following are benefits of using Acronis Disaster Recovery Add-on:
1. Easy: Quick to deploy and easy to use with almost no training required to enable cloud
disaster recovery for any workload
2. Efficient: Affordable solution with no additional infrastructure investment required as all
compute and storage resources are provided for by Acronis
3. Secure: Certified Acronis Data Centers and secure storage ensures the safety and security of
all data stored in Acronis Cloud
Supported Platforms
Acronis Disaster Recovery Cloud supports the following platforms and use cases:
Target Segment
• Similar to Acronis Backup Cloud, Acronis Disaster Recovery Cloud is designed for Service
Providers such as Managed Service Providers, SaaS and IaaS providers, Hosters and Telcos
that focus on providing IT and related services
• Being a part of Acronis Data Cloud, Service Providers can onboard Acronis Disaster Recovery
Cloud easily and enjoy the features that are an integral part of Acronis Data Cloud such as
multi-tiered, multi-tenant architecture, ability to rebrand and customize the service offering
and integration with a wide range of Remote Management and Monitoring (RMM)and
Professional Services Automation (PSA) tools
• Acronis Disaster Recovery Cloud is currently available as Acronis Hosted implementation
model with Hybrid and Service Provider-Hosted models to be made available in future
releases
• Sold as pay-per-use consumption to Service Providers and Service Providers in turn are free
to decide on the pricing for their customers
• Consumption is based on per GB of disaster recovery storage used for storing cloud server
a.k.a. VMs on demand as well as per compute points which represents the compute resources
used when cloud servers are spun up and running in Acronis Cloud
Compute Points
‒ Running cloud servers are
(Billing Item)
‒ Powered off cloud servers can powered off
A unit of measurement to simplify
be started ‒ No possible to start any cloud
pricing and reporting for compute
servers
resources utilization
Public IP address
(Billing Item) ‒ Newly created cloud servers
‒ De-provision all allocated
Public IP addresses that can be can be accessible from
public IP addresses
added to cloud servers that Internet
require external access
Internet Access
‒ Restore state of individual
Optional Internet access for cloud ‒ Disable Internet access for
“Internet access” setting for
servers through datacentre up- cloud servers
each cloud server
link
Acronis Disaster Recovery Cloud main feature is to provide standby or always-on VMs that are
Acronis Disaster Recovery Cloud’s main feature is to provide standby or always-on VMs on-demand,
which are hosted in a private Cloud Recovery Site in Acronis Data centers.
• Recovery Server: A standby VM that is created from an existing backup (recovery point)
stored on cloud storage that can be turned on when needed
• Primary Servers: An always-on VM that can be created from a template and kept constantly
running for production workloads, e.g., SQL Server AlwaysOn for replication and failover
Customers can back up their on-premise machines such as physical and virtual servers and
applications to the cloud and when failures or outages occur, failover to Recovery Servers to
minimize downtime and disruptions as well as have part of their production workload running in the
cloud for redundancy and failover purposes.
For provisioning and configurations, an Administrator role in the Customer tenant is required and
the administrator will have to provide instructions on how to access the Recovery or Primary servers
separately to users.
To connect to Recovery or Primary Servers from local network (production network), a VPN
connection is required. This ensures privacy and security as well as extends the local network
(production network) to the VMs in the Cloud Recovery Site and enables the VMs in the cloud
recovery site to be accessible via the Backup Console, RDP or SSH.
• Point-to-Site: Requires prior setup of Site-to-Site VPN connection in order for the VPN Server
to obtain local network subnet info and thereafter, configuration of VPN Server login
credentials and installation of OpenVPN client(s) on desired computer(s) for 1 or more Point-
to-Site VPN connections
If Recovery and Primary Servers need to be accessible from the Internet, Public IP addresses can be
configured for each Recovery and Primary Server.
There are some limitations for Acronis Disaster Recovery Cloud:
• Disaster Recovery (Recovery Servers) are not supported for the following:
Virtuozzo virtual machines and containers
Apple Mac machines
Linux machines with logical volumes (LVM) or volumes formatted with XFS file system
Windows machines with dynamic disks
• Cloud servers are note encrypted
• A Recovery Server has only 1 network interface and if the original machine has multiple
network interfaces, only 1 is emulated
The typical workflow for using Acronis Disaster Recovery Cloud is as follows:
Download and install VPN appliance on-premise for site-to-site VPN connection
Alternatively tenant can download and install OpenVPN client on specific machines for
point-to-site VPN connection
After the VPN appliance is installed, register the VPN appliance to Acronis Disaster
Recovery Cloud
4. Create a Primary Server to have a VM that’s always running in the cloud recovery site:
Windows and Linux templates are available for creating Primary Server(s)
After the Primary Server has been configured, power on the Primary Server and install
desired applications and configurations
5. Create a Recovery Server to have a VM on standby for rapid recovery in case of a failure or
outage:
Before a Recovery Server can be created, a cloud backup of the machine to be protected
has to be created
After a cloud backup has been created, a Recovery Server can be configured based on the
machine that was backed up
6. After the Recovery Server is created, it can be tested to ensure that it will work properly
when needed by performing a Test Failover:
Once started, the Recovery Server can connected to via Backup Console, RDP or SSH and
tested to check if it is functioning as desired
7. In case of failure or outage, perform a Failover for the Recovery Server to “take-over” from
the original machine:
8. When the Recovery Server is no longer needed, perform a Failback to create a backup that
can be used for recovery to a physical or virtual machine:
Once the backup is created, it can be used for bare metal recovery or online recovery to
the desired machine
Once the recovery is successful, perform a Commit Failback to resume backup of the
recovered machine by Acronis Backup Cloud Agents
Supported Environments
Category Details
VPN Connection
Before creating Recovery or Primary Servers, a Site-to-Site VPN connection to the Cloud Recovery
Site is required which uses the following components:
• VPN appliance: VMware ESXi or Hyper-V virtual appliance (choose 1) that can be downloaded
from the Cloud Recovery Site tab and installed on-premise
• VPN Server: VM in cloud recovery site which is automatically deployed when VPN connection
setup is first started
After a Site-to-Site VPN connection has been setup, if subsequently, the VPN Appliance or local
network is down, a Point-to-Site VPN connection to the Cloud Recovery Site can be used:
• Configure login credentials for the VPM and download OpenVPN configurations
• Install and configure OpenVPN client(s) on the machine(s) to be used to connect to the Cloud
Recovery Site
8. Register the appliance to Acronis Disaster Recovery Cloud using the credentials of an
Administrator user account belonging to the Customer tenant
After the VPN appliance has been registered to Acronis Disaster Recovery Cloud, you can check the
status of the VPN connection:
Go to Devices > Cloud recovery site and click on the VPN Settings link at the top of the page
Ensure that both the VPN appliance and VPN server have the OK status
Optionally, click on Test Connection to test the connectivity to the VPN server
The following operations are also available (click on the gear icon):
VPN appliance will check for updates once a day and will automatically apply updates without
rebooting or stopping the VPN service.
To enable point-to-site connection in situations when the local network or VPN appliance is down,
the OpenVPN client can be used:
Go to Devices > Cloud recovery site > VPN settings, click on the gear icon for the VPN server
and select Change credentials to enter a username and password for the VPN server to be
used with OpenVPN client
Download and install the OpenVPN client (v2.4 and later supported) on the machine you
want to connect to the cloud recovery site
Click on the gear icon for the VPN server and select Download configuration for OpenVPN
Initiate the VPN connection and enter the username and password previously configured for
the VPN server
In order to restrict access to cloud recovery site for some users, e.g., former employees
As soon as a new configuration file is generated, VPN connection via the previous
configuration file become impossible, therefore be sure to distribute the new file to users
who are allowed to use the point-to-site connection
Backup the Entire Machine or only the disks/volumes required for booting up and
providing the necessary applications/services
Cloud storage must be selected as a destination
Backups cannot be encrypted
Recommended to run the Backup Plan at least once to ensure that cloud backups are
successfully created
• VPN connection to the cloud recovery site must be setup
Operations available:
• Failover
• Test Failover
• Failback
• Cancel Failback
• Commit Failback
3. Select the number of virtual cores and the size of RAM for the Recovery Server:
Take note of the compute points shown when selecting the number of vCores and RAM
size, the number of compute points reflects the cost of running the Recovery Server per
hour
4. Specify the IP address the Recovery Server will have in the production network, defaults to
original machine IP address
5. [Optional] Select the Test IP address checkbox and specify the IP address:
Select one of the proposed IP addresses or type in a different one
Configuring a Test IP address allows connecting to the Recovery Server via RDP or SSH
during a Test Failover. If no Test IP address is configured, only Console connection will be
available during Test Failover
6. [Optional] Select the Internet access checkbox to enable the Recovery Server to be able to
access the Internet during a Failover or Test Failover
7. [Optional] Select the Public IP address checkbox:
Public IP address will be shown after configuration is complete and the following ports are
open for inbound connections: TCP 80, 443, 8088, 8443 and UDP 1194. Contact the
support team to open other ports
Having a public IP address makes the Recovery Server accessible from the Internet during
Failover or Test Failover. If no Public IP Address is configured, Recovery Server is only
accessible from production network (local network)
9. [Optional] Change the name of the Recovery Server
10. [Optional] Add a description for the Recovery Server
11. Click Done
Test Failover is the process of starting and testing the Recovery Server to check if it can be used in
the event of a real Failover:
• When initiated, the Recovery Server starts and is connected to an isolated test VLAN and
multiple servers can be tested at the same time to check their interaction
• Recovery Servers can communicate with each other using their production IP address but
cannot initiate TCP or UDP connections to machines on local network
Failover and Test Failover uses functionality similar to Acronis Instant Restore:
• For Failover, a VM is created based on Recovery Server configurations, linked to the selected
backup of the original machine and Finalized as soon as possible to achieve best possible
performance, i.e., similar to Run as VM + Finalize immediately after temporary VM is created
• For Test Failover, the VM is not finalized to minimize space consumption on Disaster
Recovery storage which may result in slower performance, i.e., Run as VM only
• Backup Agent(s) in the Recovery Server will be stopped to avoid undesired activity such as
starting a backup or reporting outdated statues to Acronis Backup Cloud
Network Connection and IP Address Translation during Failover and Test Failover
Failover mode: Recovery Server is connected to production network and assigned the production IP
address.
Test Failover mode: Recovery Server is connected to the isolated test network and assigned the
production IP address. However to access the Recovery Server, use the test IP address. VPN Sever
will replace the test IP address with the production IP address.
If the Recovery Server has a public IP address, it is translated to the production IP address in both
Failover and Test Failover modes
Test Failover
To perform a Test Failover, do the following:
1. In the Backup Console, select the original machine or select the Recovery Server you want to
test and click Test Failover
2. Select the recovery point and click Test Failover:
When Recovery Server starts, its state changes to Testing Failover
3. Test the Recovery Server by using any of the following methods:
In Backup Console, click Devices > Cloud recovery site, select the Recovery Server and
click Console
Connect to the Recovery Server using RDP or SSH via the Test IP address from both inside
and outside (requires a point-to-site connection from machine with OpenVPN client
installed) the production network
Run a script within the Recovery Server. The script may check the logon screen, whether
applications are started, the Internet connection and ability of other machines to connect
to the Recovery Server
Use Teamviewer if the Recovery Server has access to the Internet and a public IP
4. When the testing is completing, click Stop testing in the Backup Console:
5. The Recovery Server will be stopped and all changes made will be lost
Failover
To perform Failover, do the following:
1. Ensure that the original machine is not available on the network
2. In the Backup Console, select the original machine or select the Recovery Server and click
Failover
3. Select the recovery point and click Failover:
Failback
Failback is the process of moving a workload from cloud back to on-premise:
• When initiated, the server being moved is unavailable
• The length of time required is approximately equal to the duration of a backup and
subsequent recovery of the server
To perform a Failover, do the following:
1. In the Backup Console, select the Recovery Server that is in Failover state and click Prepare
failback
The Recovery Server will be stopped and backed up to cloud storage, wait for the backup
to complete
After backup is complete, 2 actions becomes available, Cancel failback and Commit
failback
Clicking Cancel failback will start the Recovery Server and failover will continue
2. Recover the server from the backup that was created:
Perform bare-metal-recovery or online recovery via Backup Console if the target machine
is live
For recovery via Backup Console, target machine must be registered for the same
account as the Recovery Server
Ensure that the recovery is complete and that the recovered machine works properly
3. Return to the Recovery Server in the Backup Console and click Commit failback:
The Recovery Server and recovery points becomes ready for the next failover
To create new recovery points, apply a Backup Plan to the newly recovered server
Primary Server
Pre-requisites:
• VPN connection to the cloud recovery site must be setup
Operations with Primary Servers:
• Start or Stop the server
• Edit Primary Server settings
• Backup Primary Server using the pre-defined Backup Plan where only the Scheduling and
Retention rules can be changed, other sections/options are locked/not available
5. [Optional] Select the Internet access checkbox to enable the Primary Server to be able to
access the Internet
6. [Optional] Select the Public IP address checkbox:
Public IP address will be shown after configuration is complete and the following ports are
open for inbound connections: TCP 80, 443, 8088, 8443 and UDP 1194. Contact the
support team to open other ports
Having a public IP address makes the Primary Server accessible from the Internet. If no
Public IP Address is configured, the Primary Server is only accessible from production
network (local network)
7. [Optional] Change the virtual disk size, and if more than 1 hard disk is required, click Add disk
and specify the new disk size
8. Enter the name of the Primary Server
9. [Optional] Add a description for the Primary Server
10. Click Done
Runbooks
A Runbook is a set of instructions for spinning up multiple cloud servers in a certain order:
• Automate failover of 1 or more Recovery Servers
• Automatically check the failover result by pinging the server IP and checking the connection
to the port you specify
• Set the sequence of operations for Primary Servers running distributed applications
• Include manual operations in the workflow
• Verify the integrity of your disaster recovery solution by executing runbook in Test mode
Multiple Runbooks can be created and Runbooks can be nested, i.e., using a Runbook to run other
Runbooks. To create a Runbook, select Disaster Recovery > Runbook.
Creating a Runbook
A Runbook can have 1 or more Steps that are executed consecutively and each Step can have 1 or
more Actions that are executed simultaneously.
Actions available:
• Failover server | Failback server
Operations that can be performed with Recovery Servers
• Start server | Stop server
Operations that can be performed with Recovery or Primary Servers
• Manual operation
Add a text description for manual actions to be taken before proceeding with the next
step
• Execute runbook
Allows other Runbooks to be nested, each Runbook can only be nested once
Once a Runbook has been created, the following operations are available:
• Execute | Edit | Clone | Delete
When executing a Runbook, Execution Parameters will be prompted for:
• Failover and failback mode:
Choose whether to run a Test or Production failover
Applies to all Failover and Failback actions in the Runbook
• Failover recovery point:
Choose Most recent recovery point (default) or Closest before a specified data and time
(select a point in time in the past)
If Closest before a specified data and time is selected, the Recovery Point closest before
the specified date and time will be selected for each cloud server in the Runbook
Stopping a Runbook execution:
• A Runbook can be stopped during its execution and all started Actions will be completed
except for those that require user interaction
A Runbook‘s execution history can be viewed to see if it is successful or not together with its start
and end date and time.
The following describes the steps for performing 1st level troubleshooting when encountering issues:
1. Find out exact software behavior or error message: Record/list exact behavior of the software
before, during and after the issue occurs and/or error messages shown in logs or dialog boxes
Review User Guide and Knowledge Base to understand expected behavior: Review the
User Guide and relevant KB articles to understand what is the correct configuration and
expected behavior
2. Search the KB or Forum for known issues: Search through the Acronis KB and Forums for
known issues using the error codes or software behavior
Review training materials for troubleshooting guidelines: Review the troubleshooting
guideline in this training material to prepare for troubleshooting
3. Troubleshoot using suggested tools: Use the appropriate tools to perform troubleshooting
Try available solutions and workarounds: Try available solutions and suggestions and
workarounds if any
Collect required logs and outputs from troubleshooting tools: Collect required logs and
outputs from troubleshooting tools for analysis and escalation to Acronis Customer
Service & Support
4. Reach out to Customer Service & Support: Go to the Acronis website and login to access
Customer Service & Support to log a support case and provide the necessary information
accordingly
The User Guide is the primary source of information for correct configurations and operations of the
software. In Acronis Backup Cloud, it can be found in Backup Console > About. In Acronis Backup, it
can be accessed from the Help button.
It is also available on Acronis website’s Support > Documentation page as both an online Web Help
and downloadable PDF. Other technical documentation such as 3rd party automation integration
references are also available on the same page.
Review the user guide to ensure that you have configured the software correctly for the task you
want to perform and understand what is the expected behavior.
Additionally, review the Product Update release notes in the Acronis website > Support tab to check
if there are newer builds of the software that may have enhancements and bug fixes which may
resolve the issue that you are facing.
Searching in Acronis KB
You can search the KB using keywords that describes the issue that you are facing which will return
all articles that contains the keyword used. However, since Acronis KB is a combined KB for all
Acronis products, the results returned might be cluttered with articles that are not directly relevant.
You can enhance your search by following a few simple rules:
Acronis Support Forums is an open community where you can get in touch with:
• Acronis Customer Service & Support Team
• Acronis Development Team
• Acronis Forum MVPs and other Service Providers.
You will need an Acronis web account in order to post in the discussion boards.
For Acronis Backup-related discussions: https://forum.acronis.com/forum/acronis-business-
products-discussions/acronis-backup-125
For Acronis Backup Cloud-related discussions: https://forum.acronis.com/forum/solutions-service-
providers/acronis-backup-cloud-forum
• From Activities > Collect system information on a machine with an Agent or Management
Server installed
• From Help > Collect system information from Acronis Bootable Media
Collecting Logs
There are 4 main logs in Acronis Backup 12.5:
• AMS logs: C:\ProgramData\Acronis\AMS\logs\ManagementServer.N.log
where N is the index number of the log with N=0 being the current log and older logs kept as
N>1 and as .gz file
E.g.: Current log file: ManagementServer.1.log, older log file:
ManagementServer.1.log.gz
• MMS logs: C:\ProgramData\Acronis\BackupAndRecovery\MMS\mms.N.log
E.g.: Current log file: mms.0.log, older log file: mms.1.log.gz
• ASN logs: C:\ProgramData\Acronis\BackupAndRecovery\ASN\logs\asn-
date&time.log
E.g.: asn-2017-06-02-07-19-07-3232.log
• HAR logs: collected separately (https://kb.acronis.com/content/58514)
Analyzing Logs
To analyze AMS, MMS and ASN logs:
• Reproduce the issue and collect Acronis System Information, make sure to collect Acronis
System Information from all machines involved in the activity
• Open log files using an advanced text editor such as Notepad++
• Analyze logs:
Trace level “Info”: Messages are informative only, can be ignored even if the word “error”
is present in the message
Trace level “Warning”: Messages are useful for troubleshooting and localizing the issue
Trace level “Error”: Possible core issue, pay close attention to the last message
Trace level “Debug”: Debug messages
Example
schedule (Linux)
Executes scheduled tasks on
schedul2.exe schedwrapper Agent
certain events
(Mac)
System
systeminfo.exe systeminfo Collects system information
Report
The following table summarizes the troubleshooting tools that can used and the Acronis KB link with
more information on how to use the tools effectively.
Size of
Tool When to collect How to collect Link log
‒ File access
~20MB
Process issues
https://kb.acronis.com/content/2295 to
Monitor ‒ Performance ‒ From UI 500MB
issues
‒ *.zip after
creating
~10MB
Wireshark/ Connectivity
https://kb.acronis.com/content/1763 to
tcpdump issues
500MB
~50MB
Procdump https://kb.acronis.com/content/27931 to
‒ From
500MB
‒ Crash CMD/Terminal
‒ Lockup ‒ *.zip after
~50MB
creating
Strace https://kb.acronis.com/content/37659 to
500MB
Connection Verification Tool is a Windows-based port checker by Acronis that verifies network
connectivity to Acronis cloud management and storage.
Used for:
• Connectivity issues (cloud-based Backup Console not accessible)
• Backup/restore to/from cloud failures (cloud storage not accessible)
• Backup/restore to/from cloud and network folder interruptions
Use the following instructions to collect Connection Verification Tool output:
1. Download Connection Verification Tool at https://kb.acronis.com/content/47678
2. Open Windows command-line and run these commands:
cd <path_to_folder>
msp_port_checker_en-US_x86.exe -u=<login> -p=<password>
where <login> is your Backup Account and <password> is the password for that Backup
Account
3. Check the output of the tool and see whether all hosts were successfully accessed. If any
problems are identified, the Connection Verification Tool will tell you which port to open
4. If you need to provide Connection Verification Tool output to Acronis Customer Service &
Support, create a screenshot of the screen
Scheduler Manager
Scheduler Manager is a command-line utility that allows you to manage scheduled tasks on
Windows and Linux.
It is included when Agent for Windows/Linux is installed or download from
https://kb.acronis.com/content/1859.
Used for:
• Monitoring scheduled tasks
• Detect unremoved deleted backup tasks
• Detect individual tasks that are not running
• Collect Scheduler log in case of an issue
Use the following instructions to collect Scheduler Manager log:
2. Open a command prompt in the Scheduler Manager location and run the following command
to enable logging:
set logflags support
3. Reproduce the issue and run the following command to stop logging:
set logflags 0
4. Run AcronisInfo utility/Collect system information to obtain the output
To manage scheduled tasks, use the following commands:
4. To delete a single task: task [task_number], task delete, e.g., task 1-12, task
delete
Acronis VSS Doctor is a free tool for diagnosing and repairing Microsoft VSS issues
Used for:
• VSS writer failures
• Shadow Storage out of space
• VSS provider issues
• Snapshot issues (snapshot read error, snapshot creation error)
Use the following instructions to run Acronis VSS Doctor:
VSSADMIN
VSSADMIN is a Windows command-line utility that can be used to view and work with Microsoft VSS
components on the machine such as providers, writers and shadowstorage and can help in snapshot
troubleshooting and analysis.
Used for:
• VSS writer failures
• Shadow Storage out of space
• VSS provider issues
• Snapshot issues (snapshot read error, snapshot creation error)
Use the following instructions to collect VSSADMIN output:
1. Download VSSADMIN batch file at https://kb.acronis.com/vsslog
2. Unzip the batch file, right-click on it and choose “Run as administrator”
3. When the tool finishes the job, locate the following text files:
C:\C:\vl_providers.txt
C:\vl_shadows.txt
C:\vl_shadowstorage.txt
C:\vl_volumes.txt
C:\vl_writers.txt
4. Put the resulting text files in .zip archive if you need to provide the output to Acronis
Customer Service & Support
DiskShadow Tool
like to troubleshoot. To view current list of registered providers/writers, run either list
providers or list writers command
create
2. Check the output of the tool and see whether all writers are working properly. If any errors
are identified, you have to troubleshoot that particular writer
3. If you need to provide DiskShadow output to Acronis Customer Service & Support, create a
screenshot of the screen. Try to submit an example of any provider/writer that works
properly along with the failing one
Process Monitor is a Windows-based utility provided by Microsoft that shows real-time file system,
registry and process activities and can be used to track what processes are running and accessing
files and registry at moment of failure.
Used for:
• Process interruption
• System overload
• Issues with installation/uninstallation
• Locked file(s) and access denied errors
Use the following instructions to collect Process Monitor log:
1. Download Process Monitor from https://technet.microsoft.com/en-
us/sysinternals/processmonitor.aspx
4. Click File > Save and select Events to save > All events
5. Change the Path if desired and click OK
6. Place the resulting .pml file in a zip archive
Wireshark/tcpdump
Wireshark is a Windows and Mac-based network packet capture and analyzer tool that can capture
network traffic between network adapters and can help in network troubleshooting and analysis.
tcpdump is a similar tool that is Linux-based.
Used for:
• Connectivity issues (e.g., client is shown as offline while machine is live)
2. Install and run the tool. Click on the Interface to capture to start capturing
3. Reproduce the issue without closing the tool. As the log file might be very large, it is
recommended to start the tool right before reproducing the issue and to stop it immediately
after you are done
4. Click on the Stop button to stop the capture and click on File > Save to save the capture file
Use filters to narrow your search, e.g.,:
• ip.addr/ip.dst/ip.src/tcp.port/udp.port: define IP and ports
• ==: equals, !=: not equal, &&: and, ||: or
Use the following instructions to collect tcpdump output on Linux:
1. Download the tcpdump utility from http://www.tcpdump.org/#latest-release and unpack to
a directory
2. Open a Terminal to the directory where tcpdump is unpacked and run the following
commands:
#chmod +x /tcpdump
#/tcpdump # /tcpdump -i eth0 -s 65536 -w /product.pcap &
Parameter –s should be set according to the desired packet size. If error “invalid snaplen”
appears, reduce the packet size, e.g., to 65000 and try again. Note that if packet size is too
small, (less than 1024), packets will be cut and log might not contain useful information
3. Reproduce the issue. Thereafter, stop tcpdump logging:
Find the process [pid]: # ps | grep “tcpdump”
Kill the process: # kill -9 [PID]
4. Place the collected .pcap file into a zip archive
ProcDump
ProcDump is a Windows-based command-line utility provided by Microsoft that can be used for
monitoring hung processes and unhandled exceptions and process crash dump creation.
Used for:
• Process interruption or hanging
• Process crashing
• System overload
Use the following instructions to collect ProcDump output:
1. Download ProcDump from https://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/sysinternals/dd996900
2. Create a folder where the dumps will be stored and extract ProcDump to the folder
3. Open a Windows command prompt and run the following commands:
cd <path_to_folder>
procdump –e –w –ma <process_name or PID> in situations when the process is
crashing, this will create a full memory dump as soon as the process encounters unhandled
exception and crashes
or
procdump –ma <process_name or PID> in situations when the process is hanging, this
will create a full memory dump of the running process without killing it
4. Reproduce the issue
5. Place the resulting dump into a zip archive
Strace
Strace is a Linux-based monitoring tool that can be used for monitoring interactions between
processes and the Linux kernel.
Used for:
• Process interruption or hanging
• Process crashing
• System overload
Install Strace as follows:
1. Debian-based OS: apt-get install strace
2. SLES: yast –I strace
3. RHEL/CentOS: yum install strace
Depending on the environement, (Agent for Linux or bootable media) and the process (mms or
service_process), following the instructions in https://kb.acronis.com/content/37659 to collect
strace output
OS X Dump File
OS X collects most of the crash dumps, hang dumps, etc. automatically. These dumps reside in
• /Library/Logs/DiagnosticReports/
• ~/Library/Logs/DiagnosticReports/
Used for:
• Process interruption or hanging
• Process crashing
• System overload
Connectivity Issues
Possible Issues Troubleshooting Steps To Take Information To Escalate
Computer does not appear Re-register the machine manually as per KB:
in Backup Console https://kb.acronis.com/content/55244
Computer is duplicated in Remove all entries with the same name and 1. AcronisInfo/Collect
Backup Console re-register the machine manually system information
2. Computer name
Machine is offline in Check that MMS service is running 3. User Account login
Backup Console or Check connection to cloud and follow
Incorrect machine status in instructions in KB:
Backup Console https://kb.acronis.com/content/57601
1. AcronisInfo/Collect
File is skipped during Check if any software is locking the file system information
backup Enable file-level backup snapshot 2. Process Monitor log
3. User Account login
VM Backup Issues
Possible Issues Troubleshooting Steps To Take Information To Escalate
Recovery Issues
Possible Issues Troubleshooting Steps To Take Information To Escalate
Agent gives error “failed to layout or boot with bootable media to modify
automatically map disks” disk layout during recovery
1. AcronisInfo/Collect
Disks not detected by Reboot machine after installing Agent system information
Agent Repair Agent installation 2. Process Monitor log
3. User Account login
1. AcronisInfo/Collect
system information on
bootable media
2. AcronisInfo/Collect
Disk/RAID arrays not system information on
detected or improperly Reach out to Acronis Support to add necessary machine where it is
detected by bootable drivers detected improperly
media 3. Screenshot or photo of
how it is detected
4. Name, model and
version of disk/RAID
array
Other Issues
Possible Issues Troubleshooting Steps To Take Information To Escalate
FAQs
Acronis KB contains a number of FAQs which canbe used to answer customer queries:
• Acronis Backup 12.5: https://kb.acronis.com/content/59470
• Acronis Backup 12.5 Licensing and Upgrade: https://kb.acronis.com/content/59467
• Acronis Backup Cloud: https://kb.acronis.com/content/49028
• Acronis Web Account: https://kb.acronis.com/content/49269
Acronis Backup Customers and registered Acronis partners can contact Acronis Customer Service &
Support to submit support tickets:
• 24 x 7 email/phone/chat in English
• Requires a valid maintenance contract or purchase PPI (Pay Per Incident)
• Login to Acronis account https://account.acronis.com to contact support and track support
tickets
Acronis Backup Cloud customers of Service Providers should contact their Service Providers for any
assistance. Service Providers can get support from Acronis according to the following guidelines:
• http://www.acronis.com/en-us/support/serviceproviderguidelines/
Supply necessary ‒ Attach logs from Agents and/or Management Server where applicable
logs and ‒ Attach system information from all computers involved
troubleshooting ‒ Attach any other logs and outputs according to the issue type and
tools output troubleshooting guidelines provided
‒ A – Critical
‒ B – High
‒ C – Normal
Define severity
‒ D – Low
‒ Acronis Support can change the severity of the incident if it was not set
reasonably
9 Appendix
9.1 Protecting Oracle Database
Introduction
More and more often, Oracle databases are used to run and support the most critical applications.
An enterprise database may be complex and difficult to administrate and protect, while having little
tolerance for downtime.
To address backup requirements for these databases, Oracle offers an integrated command-line
backup solution named Recovery Manager (or RMAN). RMAN contains all backup and recovery
functionality that is necessary for an Oracle environment of any complexity.
At the same time, RMAN lacks a GUI, has a steep learning curve, and requires an experienced
database administrator to configure and use correctly. It may be a challenge for smaller companies
that just have started using Oracle Database. RMAN is also limited in terms of storage that is
supported out of the box (a local folder or SMB share only), does not support complex storage
policies, and does not provide a simple disaster recovery scenario for the case when an entire Oracle
server fails.
Acronis Backup offers a solution for protecting Oracle Database data. This solution combines the full
power of Acronis Backup and RMAN in a package that is simple to use even for those who are not
versed in Oracle Database intricacies.
Server backup
Back up an entire Oracle server, using application-aware backup to ensure the application-consistent
state of the Oracle database.
Benefits:
Reduced RTO in case of the entire server failure
Backup is fully configured in the graphical user interface. Oracle Recovery Manager (RMAN)
knowledge is not necessary
Having a backup of the entire server, you can easily create a virtual machine that needs only
seconds to spin up and replace the original server
Limitations:
The database must be stored on a regular file system supported by the backup software. Raw
partitions and Oracle Automatic Storage Management (ASM) volumes are not supported
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Database backup
Back up an Oracle database by using Oracle Recovery Manager (RMAN) to a local folder, and then
back up the resulting files to a different location, keeping only the latest RMAN backups in the local
folder. The solution provides RMAN scripts that can be automatically run before the file backup.
Thus, the entire procedure can be set up and executed within a single workflow without prior
knowledge of RMAN scripting.
Benefits:
Support for databases stored on raw partitions or Oracle Automatic Storage Management
(ASM) volumes
Limitations:
Longer RTO in case of entire server failure
Comparison
Server Backup Database Backup
Common limitations
Oracle Real Application Clusters (RAC) are not supported
Only single-instance database configurations are supported
It is not possible to back up individual pluggable databases (PDB). They are backed up as part
of the container database (CDB)
The database must be in the ARCHIVELOG mode (the NOARCHIVELOG flag is disabled)
A database in the NOARCHIVELOG mode can be backed up only in the closed state, while the
backup solution is aimed at backing up databases without a downtime. Trying to create a
disk-level backup will return a VSS error if an online database is in this mode, and RMAN
cannot be used either
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To avoid this error, stop and close the database with a pre-data capture command and
restart the database with a post-data capture command. You will be able to recover the
entire server but recovering via Oracle Explorer will not be available
Recovery methods
Server recovery
Recover the entire server to the point in time of backup creation. If you recover the server to bare
metal, Oracle Database will be recovered among other data and will be in a consistent state.
Benefits:
The quickest and easiest disaster recovery method
Allows physical-to-virtual migration (P2V) and other methods of replication or migrating your
Oracle server
Oracle Recovery Manager (RMAN) knowledge is not necessary
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Database backup
Windows
Windows XP Professional SP3 (x86, x64)
Windows Server 2003 SP1/2003 R2 and later – Standard and Enterprise editions (x86, x64)
Windows Small Business Server 2003/2003 R2
Windows Vista – all editions
Windows Server 2008 – Standard, Enterprise, Data center, and Web editions (x86, x64)
Windows Small Business Server 2008
Windows 7 – all editions
Windows Server 2008 R2 – Standard, Enterprise, Data center, Foundation, and Web editions
Windows MultiPoint Server 2010/2011/2012
Windows Small Business Server 2011 – all editions
Windows 8/8.1 – all editions (x86, x64), except for the Windows RT editions
Windows Server 2012/2012 R2 – all editions
Windows Storage Server 2003/2008/2008 R2/2012/2012 R2/2016
Windows 10 – Home, Pro, Education, Enterprise, and IoT Enterprise editions
Windows Server 2016 – all installation options, except for Nano Server
Linux
Linux with kernel from 2.6.9 to 4.15 and glibc 2.3.4 or later
Various x86 and x86_64 Linux distributions, including:
Red Hat Enterprise Linux 4.x, 5.x, 6.x, 7.0, 7.1, 7.2, 7.3, 7.4, 7.5
Ubuntu 9.10, 10.04, 10.10, 11.04, 11.10, 12.04, 12.10, 13.04, 13.10, 14.04, 14.10,
15.04, 15.10, 16.04, 16.10, 17.04, 17.10, 18.04
Fedora 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16, 17, 18, 19, 20, 21, 22, 23, 24
SUSE Linux Enterprise Server 10 and 11
SUSE Linux Enterprise Server 12 – supported on file systems, except for Btrfs
Debian 4, 5, 6, 7.0, 7.2, 7.4, 7.5, 7.6, 7.7, 8.0, 8.1, 8.2, 8.3, 8.4, 8.5, 8.6, 8.7, 8.8, 9.0,
9.1, 9.2, 9.3, 9.4
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Prerequisites
Common prerequisites
An Advanced license must be assigned to the physical machine running Oracle Database. If
the machine is virtual and is backed up by Agent for VMware, an Advanced license must be
assigned to the ESXi host.
Installation
Backup software components
To protect Oracle data, you need the following components:
Management Server lets you centrally manage multiple machines: create backup plans,
monitor their execution, deploy agents, and more. It can be installed on a Windows or Linux
machine that has network access to all of the managed machines
To install the management server, proceed as described in the "Installing the management
server" section of the user documentation
Agents are required to back up servers and databases
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Agent for Windows or Agent for Linux (depending on the server operating system) and
Agent for Oracle must be installed on the physical machine running Oracle Database.
To protect a virtual server, you need Agent for VMware either installed on a machine
running Windows or deployed to your VMware ESX host
To install agents, proceed as described in the "Installing agents locally" section of the user
documentation
Oracle Explorer is designed for granular recovery of Oracle data. This component is part of
Agent for Oracle.
For Windows
Script name or Linux Description
main.py Windows, Linux The main script that performs all operations related to Oracle
backup and recovery. Not for independent use
main.cfg Windows, Linux The configuration file contains the database access parameters
and other parameters that are common for other scripts. This
is the only file that you may need to edit.
This file is located in the following folder:
In Windows: %ProgramData%\Acronis\Oracle\Config
In Linux: /var/lib/Acronis/Oracle/Config.
backup_full_pre.bat Windows Calls the main script to perform a full database backup by
RMAN
backup_full_pre.sh Linux
backup_incr_pre.bat Windows Calls the main script to perform an archived log backup by
RMAN
backup_incr_pre.sh Linux
restore_disaster.bat Windows Calls the main script to recover the entire database to the
latest available state
restore_disaster.sh Linux
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For Windows
Script name or Linux Description
restore_datafiles.bat Windows Calls the main script to recover datafiles to the latest available
state (complete recovery)
restore_datafiles.sh Linux
restore_controlfile.bat Windows Calls the main script to recover the control file to the latest
available state
restore_controlfile.sh Linux
restore_to-point-in- Windows Calls the main script to recover the database to a point in time
time.bat in the past (incomplete recovery). Such point in time is
specified by a date and time in the following format: yyyy-mm-
restore_to-point-in- Linux dd:hh24:mi:ss
time.sh
restore_to-scn.bat Windows Calls the main script to recover the database to a point in time
in the past (incomplete recovery). Such point in time is
restore_to-scn.sh Linux specified by a System Change Number
last_log.bat Windows Calls the main script to show its latest log
last_log.sh Linux
*.rman Windows, Linux RMAN scripts for various operations. Not for independent use
*.sql Windows, Linux SQL*Plus scripts for various operations. Not for independent
use
Configuration parameters
This section lists parameters that you can modify in the file main.cfg.
BACKUP_DIR: the local folder where RMAN backups will be stored
The disk where you want to store RMAN backups must have free space enough for two
copies of the database
The default path is C:\local_rman_backups\ in Windows and
/tmp/local_rman_backups in Linux.
Note: In Windows, use double backslash characters instead of single ones. For example, the default
path is specified as C:\\local_rman_backups\\
TARGET: connection string for the database
The default value is /. With this value, the script will log on to Oracle by using the operating
system authentication. In Windows, the script will use the account under which the agent
service runs. In Linux, the script will use the ORACLE_USER variable value (see later in this
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section). Both in Windows and in Linux, the account that you specify must have the SYSDBA
system privilege in Oracle
If you want to use database authentication, specify the connection string in the following
format: <username>/<password>[@<connection identifier>]
where,
<username>/<password> are the credentials that the script will use to log on to
Oracle. This account must have the SYSDBA system privilege in Oracle
<connection identifier> is an Oracle Net connect identifier. It can be a net service
name, a database service name, or a net service alias. The connect identifier is required in
Oracle Database Engine 12 to ensure that the connection string points to a container
database (CDB) rather than a pluggable database (PDB)
Example. If you want the script to connect with username HR to the database that has the
Oracle Net alias FLEETDB, type HR/password@FLEETDB as the TARGET parameter value
In Linux, you may need to additionally modify the following Oracle environment variables to reflect
the actual Oracle Database settings:
ORACLE_BASE: the home directory for the Oracle software. The default value is
/u01/app/oracle. To learn the actual value, run the env | grep ORACLE_BASE
command under an account that has the SYSDBA system privilege in the Oracle Database
instance that you want to protect
ORACLE_HOME: the subdirectory of the home directory where the database files are located.
The default value is /u01/app/oracle/product/12.1.0.2/db_1/. To learn the actual
value, run the env | grep ORACLE_HOME command under an account that has the SYSDBA
system privilege in Oracle
ORACLE_SID: the system identifier of the database. The default value is orcl. To learn the
actual value, run the env | grep ORACLE_SID command under an account that has the
SYSDBA system privilege in Oracle
ORACLE_USER: the account that RMAN and SQL*Plus use to log on to Oracle when the
TARGET parameter value is / (see the TARGET parameter above). The default value is
oracle. The account that you specify here must have the SYSDBA system privilege in Oracle
The default value is $ORACLE_HOME/bin. To learn the actual value, run the which rman
command under an account that has the SYSDBA system privilege in Oracle. For example, if
the command output is /u01/app/oracle/product/12.1.0.2/db_1/lib/rman, set
the RMAN_PATH value to $ORACLE_HOME/lib
Backup
Backing up an entire server
To back up a server where Oracle Database is installed, create an application-aware backup. Follow
the below guidelines:
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Select the entire machine. Otherwise, you will not be able to create application-aware
backup
Click Application backup and enable the Oracle Database switch
In the backup options, do the following:
Ensure that the Multi-volume snapshot option is enabled
[Only for Windows] When backing up a physical server, ensure that the Volume Shadow
Copy Service option is enabled. Unless you have a reason to do otherwise, we
recommend that you keep the default value Automatically select snapshot provider
[Only for Windows] When backing up a virtual server, ensure that the Volume Shadow
Copy Service (VSS) for virtual machines option is enabled
These settings will guarantee that the database is correctly frozen and flushed during the
snapshot creation. As a result, the backed-up application will be fully consistent.
For more information about how to back up, refer to the "Backup" section of the user
documentation.
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Recovery
Recovering an entire server
To recover a physical server that cannot boot, you need bootable media. Also, you can use bootable
media to recover a physical server to bare metal. If the operating system is up and running, you can
configure and start the recovery directly from the backup console.
To recover a server
1. Do one of the following:
To recover a physical server from the backup console, proceed as described in the
"Recovering a machine" > "Physical machine" section of the user documentation
To recover a virtual server, proceed as described in the "Recovering a machine" > "Virtual
machine" section of the user documentation
To recover under the bootable media, proceed as described in the "Recovering a
machine" > "Recovering disks by using bootable media" section of the user
documentation
2. If archived logs are available for the period after the backup from which you have recovered
(for example, these logs can be stored on a separate undamaged volume or backed up
separately), recover them to the latest state by using RMAN, after recovering the server
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File scn.in is stored in the folder where RMAN backups are located. Normally, the SCN in
this file reflects the point in time of the latest backup
To learn the latest SCN value from archived logs:
At the command prompt (in Windows) or in the terminal (in Linux), type sqlplus / as
sysdba to log in to Oracle
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If you recover from the latest RMAN backup and it is intact, skip this step
2. [In Windows] At the command prompt, type cd <scripts location folder>
[In Linux] In the terminal, type cd /<scripts location folder>
3. Do any of the following:
To recover to a certain point in time, run restore_to-point-in-time.bat <point
in time> (in Windows) or restore_to-point-in-time.sh <point in time> (in
Linux)
Where <point in time> should be specified in the following format: yyyy-mm-
dd:hh24:mi:ss
If the date and time (the SCN) is not specified, the recovery will be performed to the
moment of time determined by the SCN specified in the file scn.in
4. Run a full backup
Incomplete recovery resets logs, therefore the next backup must be full
Step-by-step instructions
To migrate from Veeam Backup & Replication:
1. Install Acronis Backup Management Server on a machine running Windows or Linux.
2. Download and install the tool on a machine running Windows.
We recommend that you install the tool on the machine where the Veeam Backup &
Replication database is located, to simplify connection to the database.
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If the database is on a different machine, ensure that SQL Server Browser Service and the
TCP/IP protocol are enabled on that machine. For instructions on how to start SQL Server
Browser Service, refer to http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms189093.aspx. You can
enable the TCP/IP protocol by using a similar procedure.
3. Run the tool and provide a user name and password for connection to the Veeam Backup &
Replication database. You can choose between Windows authentication and SQL Server
authentication.
If the database is on a different machine, also provide the machine name or IP, the name of
the Microsoft SQL Server instance, and the name of the database.
The tool connects to the database and reads the Veeam Backup & Replication configuration
from it.
4. [Optional] If you want to use this configuration later, click Save hosts and jobs to file. Next
time when you start the tool, click Import hosts and jobs from file instead of connecting to
the database.
5. Provide a user name and a password for connection to the Acronis Backup Management
Server.
If the database is on a different machine, also provide the machine name or IP address.
The tool connects to the management server.
6. Enter the credentials for all entities used by Veeam Backup & Replication:
vCenter Servers
ESXi hosts
Hyper-V hosts
Network shares
During the migration, Agent for Hyper-V will be installed on each of the Hyper-V hosts. For
vCenter Servers and ESXi hosts, you can choose between installing Agent for VMware
(Windows) and using Agent for VMware that is already registered on the management
server.
When you click OK, the tool checks the connection to the machine or network share.
Once all of the credentials are verified, click Next. After you click Next, the tool starts
emulating the migration.
7. Wait for the emulation to complete, and then click Get detailed report. You will see problems
and workarounds, if any. If you are satisfied with the result, click Next.
8. The real migration begins. Wait for the migration to complete, and then click Get detailed
report. Check the migration results in both the report and the Acronis Backup console. Make
the settings omitted by the Migration Tool, or correct the settings, if necessary.
Limitations
The following options cannot be migrated:
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How it works
A tape set is a subset of tapes in the tape pool.
A tape media that belong to a tape set can be taken for a backup only if this tape set is specified in
backup options of the executed backup plan. As a result, backups are not mixed on the same tape
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media if backups executed with different tape set options. Even if these backups are produced by
the same backup plan.
In general, a tape set is just a certain text string. You can create tape sets in one of these ways.
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When a tape set has been specified in backup options, the software seeks the tape media of this
tape set. If it is not found in the backup location (pool), first an empty or a ready to be re-written
tape media that does not cvzxcvbelong to any other tape set is taken from the current tape pool, and
then a tape media regardless of tape set from the Free pool. The tape set from backup plan options
is assigned to this media automatically.
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[Backup Type] Enables a distinct tape set for backup /full/, /inc/, /diff/
or type.
[Backup Type = %backup If backup type is not specified
type%] explicitly: [Backup Type],
a separate tape set will be created for
each backup type
[Resource Type] Enables a tape set for specified resource /Server/, /Workstation/,
or type. /ServerEssenials/,
If resource type is not specified /VM/, /VirtualHost/,
[Resource Type = %resource
explicitly: [Resource Type], /O365_mailbox/, /SQL/,
type%]
/Exchange/, /AD/, /SP/
a separate tape set will be created for
each resource type.
[Weekday] Enables a distinct tape set for a day of /Sunday/, /Monday/, /Tuesday/,
or week. /Wednesday/, /Thursday/,
If a day of week is not specified /Friday/, /Saturday/
[Weekday = %weekday%]
explicitly: [Weekday],
a separate tape set will be created for
each day of week.
[Month] Enables a distinct tape set for specified /January/, /February/, March/,
or month. /April/, /May/, June/, /July/,
If a month is not specified explicitly: /August/, /September/,
[Month = %month%]
[Month], /October/, /November/,
/December
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Year [Year]
Date [Year].[Month].[Day]
Note: Different backup plans adjusted to the same tape location (pool) can work with the same tape
set (if it is specified in backup settings). In order to use the same tape set template for two
backup plans and prevent mixing backups on tape media, you need to specify different
locations in these backup plans.
Examples
Prerequisites:
Tape device is connected to the machine, which Agent or Storage Node installed
Tape device is recognized by the software and inventoried
Necessary tape locations are created
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Use case 1
You want to use distinct tapes for each day of week (separate tape(s) for Monday, Tuesday etc…).
Workflow:
1. Create a backup plan, choose tape location for backup
Make sure that the pool contains a number of tapes or it is allowed to take tapes from the
Free tapes pool
2. Go to Backup options, and then to Tapes
3. Mark the Use tape sets within a tape pool chosen for the backup plan check-box
4. In the drop-down list, choose Use distinct tape set for each: Day of the week
5. Once the backup plan is executed, the tapes taken for backup are assigned to the
corresponding tape set (Monday, Tuesday and so on)
6. You can check it in the Tape Management view: go to Settings > Tapes > Tape pools >Acronis
(or any other pool specified in your backup plan)
7. If the first backup is written to a tape marked with Monday tape set, after a week, the same
tape will be taken for backup (unless otherwise specified in the settings)
8. If there is not enough free space on the tape, another empty tape is taken.
9. For standalone drive: if the tape belonging to another tape set is inserted, the software asks
to insert the tape of the correct tape set or a new empty tape
Use case 2
You want to define a specific list of tapes (using barcodes) to be taken for a backup on the certain
weekday. The list is provided to a technician who has to insert a tape on a respective weekday.
Workflow:
1. Go to the Tape Management view: Settings > Tapes > Tape pools
2. Fill the pool that will be used for backup to tapes (move them from Free tapes pool)
3. Drill down to the pool, choose the first tape(s) that will be used for Monday backups
4. Click the Info button, click the link to add tape set, type in the text field – Monday, click Done
5. Perform the same operation for all necessary tapes – specify desired tape set name
(weekdays) for them
6. Create a backup plan, choose tape location for backup
7. Go to Backup options > Tapes, choose a template for tape sets: Day of the week
8. Once the backup plan is executed, the tape belonging to the previously specified tape set
(Monday) will be taken for backup
Use case 3
You need to divide tapes with full backups from incremental and differential. Tapes with full backups
will be kept for long-term secure storage. Tapes with incremental and differential backups will be
permanently rotated and overwritten.
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Workflow:
1. Create a backup plan, choose tape location for backup
2. Go to Backup options > Tapes, choose a template for tape sets: Backup type
3. Once the backup plan is executed, the tapes taken for backup will be assigned to the
corresponding tape set (full, inc or diff)
4. You can check it in the Tape Management view
5. Note: for GFS backup scheme, the tape set parameter [Backup Type] is enabled by default
Use case 4
You have heterogeneous environment with different machine types – Servers, Workstations, Virtual
Machines, Business Critical Applications. You want to write backups of different machines to
separate tapes.
Workflow:
1. Create a backup plan for multiple machines, choose tape location for backup
2. Go to Backup options > Tapes, choose a template for tape sets: Device type
3. Once the backup plan is executed, the different tapes will be taken for backup of each
different device type. Corresponding tape set will be assigned to the tapes taken for backup
4. You can check it in the Tape Management view
Use case 5
You want to keep only full backups of a specific (the most important) machine on a separate tape
media.
Workflow:
1. Create a backup plan that includes the machine whose backups you want to keep on a
separate tape (the backup plan can also include other machines); choose tape location for
backup
2. Go to Backup options > Tapes > Specify your custom rule for a tape set, type: [Resource
name =mail.server.Win2012R2][Backup Type = full]
3. Once the backup plan is executed, the separate tape will be taken for Full backups of the
specific machine, specified in the backup options/tape set
4. Backups of other types as well as all the other machines in the backup plan will be mixed up
on another tape without any tape sets
Use case 6
You prefer to specify your own tape set name with parameter (say, separate tape set for each
month). For example, the tape set can include information about a unit of your organization etc.
Workflow:
1. Create a backup plan of multiple machines, choose tape location for backup.
2. Go to Backup options > Tapes > Specify your custom rule for a tape set, type: Finance
team workstations, [Month]
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3. During backup plan execution, tapes taken for backup will be assigned to the following tape
sets:
Finance team workstations, January
Finance team workstations, February
etc…
4. You can check and manage it in the Tape Management view
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For each of the machines, specify the credentials of an account with administrative privileges on that
machine.
If a password contains a comma or a blank space, this password should be taken into quotes (for
example, "pass w,ord").
For a machine that is a domain controller in an Active Directory domain, you must specify the name
of that domain together with the user name. For example: MyDomain\Administrator
Mass deployment
Note: Before you start deployment, make sure that target machines meet requirements for remote
installation (see the Help file for more information). Only Agent for Windows is installed on
target machines.
1. On the Windows machine where Acronis Management Server is located, open Command
Prompt and navigate to the C:\Program Files\Acronis\PyShell folder:
cd "C:\Program Files\Acronis\PyShell"
2. Issue:
python site-tools\agents.py -v -a <AMS_address> -p 9877 --username
<username> --password <password> -i --agents <list.csv>
where <AMS_address> is the hostname or the IP address of the machine with Acronis
Management Server
<username> is the name of the Acronis Management Server user and <password> is this
user's password
<list.txt> is the file containing the list of machines where Agent for Windows should be
installed
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cd "C:\Program Files\Acronis\PyShell"
More information
Help:
python site-tools\agents.py --help
You can check the installation activity in the Activities tab: in the management console navigate to
Overview -> Activities.
Requirements
This functionality is available only in Windows by using File Explorer.
• Agent for Windows must be installed on the machine that performs the mount operation
• The backed-up file system must be supported by the Windows version that the machine is
running
• The backup must be stored in a local folder, on a network share (SMB/CIFS), or in the Secure
Zone
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Note: Double-click a volume to browse its content. You can copy files and folders from the backup to
any folder on the file system.
3. Right-click a volume to mount, and then click Mount in read-only mode
If the backup is stored on a network share, provide access credentials. Otherwise, skip this
step. The software mounts the selected volume. The first unused letter is assigned to the
volume
To unmount a volume
1. Browse to Computer (This PC in Windows 8.1 and later) by using File Explorer.
2. Right-click the mounted volume.
3. Click Unmount. The software unmounts the selected volume.
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