Acronis Backup Version 11.
Copyright Statement Copyright © Acronis International GmbH, 2002-2015. All rights reserved. “Acronis” and “Acronis Secure Zone” are registered trademarks of Acronis International GmbH. "Acronis Compute with Confidence", “Acronis Startup Recovery Manager”, “Acronis Active Restore”, “Acronis Instant Restore” and the Acronis logo are trademarks of Acronis International GmbH. Linux is a registered trademark of Linus Torvalds. VMware and VMware Ready are trademarks and/or registered trademarks of VMware, Inc.
Table of contents 1 Introducing Acronis Backup ..............................................................................................9 1.1 What's new in Update 6 ............................................................................................................9 1.2 What's new in Update 5 ............................................................................................................9 1.3 What's new in Update 4 .............................................................
.2.5 4.2.6 4.2.7 4.2.8 4.2.9 4.2.10 4.2.11 4.3 Simplified naming of backup files ............................................................................................55 4.3.1 4.3.2 4.3.3 4.4 Daily schedule ................................................................................................................................................ 61 Weekly schedule .................................................................................................................................
.1.4 5.1.5 5.1.6 5.2 Acronis Universal Restore ......................................................................................................114 5.2.1 5.2.2 5.3 Getting Universal Restore........................................................................................................................... 115 Using Universal Restore ..............................................................................................................................
8.2 Exporting archives and backups ............................................................................................156 8.2.1 8.2.2 8.2.3 8.2.4 8.2.5 8.3 Mounting an image................................................................................................................161 8.3.1 8.3.2 8.3.3 8.3.4 8.3.5 8.4 Archive selection .........................................................................................................................................
11 Protecting applications with disk-level backup ........................................................ 197 11.1 Backing up an application server ...........................................................................................197 11.1.1 11.1.2 11.1.3 Locating database files................................................................................................................................ 199 Truncating transaction logs ............................................................
13.1.4 13.1.5 13.1.6 13.1.7 13.1.8 13.1.9 How do I secure my data? .......................................................................................................................... 241 Supported operating systems and virtualization products ...................................................................... 241 Backup and recovery FAQ .......................................................................................................................... 242 Initial Seeding FAQ ...............
1 Introducing Acronis Backup 1.1 What's new in Update 6 Improvements added in build 43992 Support for Windows 10 – Home, Pro, Education, and Enterprise editions. Note At the time of this hotfix release, Windows 10 is not yet generally available. The tests were performed with the Windows 10 Insider Preview version. Acronis will perform additional test cycles as soon as Windows 10 is released. Acronis Backup can now back up NFS folders.
1.5 What's new in Update 2 Support for volume subscriptions to Acronis Backup & Recovery Online (p. 253). Support for WinPE 5.0. 1.6 What's new in Update 1 Improvements added in build 37975 Basic support for Windows 8.1 and Windows Server 2012 R2. Installation of Acronis Backup & Recovery 11.5 in the trial mode without a license key. Upgrade from a stand-alone product to the advanced platform without reinstalling the software. Basic support for Windows 8 and Windows Server 2012 (p.
1.8 Acronis Backup components This section contains a list of Acronis Backup components with a brief description of their functionality. Components for a managed machine (agents) These are applications that perform data backup, recovery and other operations on the machines managed with Acronis Backup. Agents require a license to perform operations on each managed machine. Console The console provides Graphical User Interface to the agents. Usage of the console is not licensed.
Disk management Agent for Windows includes Acronis Disk Director Lite - a handy disk management utility. Disk management operations, such as cloning disks; converting disks; creating, formatting and deleting volumes; changing a disk partitioning style between MBR and GPT or changing a disk label, can be performed either in the operating system or using bootable media. 1.8.2 Management Console Acronis Backup Management Console is an administrative tool for local access to Acronis Backup agent.
NTFS Ext2/Ext3/Ext4 ReiserFS4 - volume recovery without the volume resize capability; particular files cannot be recovered from disk backups located on Acronis Backup Storage Node XFS - volume recovery without the volume resize capability; particular files cannot be recovered from disk backups located on Acronis Backup Storage Node JFS - particular files cannot be recovered from disk backups located on Acronis Backup Storage Node Linux SWAP ReFS - volume recovery without the volu
2 Getting started Step 1. Installation These brief installation instructions enable you to start using the product quickly. For the complete description of installation methods and procedures, please refer to the Installation documentation. Before installation, make sure that: Your hardware meets the system requirements. You have a license key for the product of your choice. You have the setup program. You can download it from the Acronis website.
Step 5. Recovery Recover (p. 101) To recover data, you need to select the backed-up data and the destination the data will be recovered to. As a result, a recovery task will be created. Recovery of a disk or volume over a volume locked by the operating system requires a reboot. After the recovery is completed, the recovered operating system goes online automatically.
Acronis Backup Management Console - Welcome screen Key elements of the console workspace Name Description Navigation pane Contains the Navigation tree. Lets you navigate to the different views. For details, see Navigation pane (p. 16). Main area Here you configure and monitor backup, recovery and other operations. The main area displays views and action pages (p. 17) depending on the items selected in the menu or Navigation tree. Menu bar Appears across the top of the program window.
How to change the panes' borders 1. Point to the pane's border. 2. When the pointer becomes a double-headed arrow, drag the pointer to move the border. 2.1.2 Main area, views and action pages The main area is a basic place where you work with the console. Here you create, edit and manage backup plans, recovery tasks and perform other operations. The main area displays different views and action pages according the items you select in the menu, or Navigation tree. 2.1.2.
Sorting, filtering and configuring table items The following is a guideline to sort, filter and configure table items in any view. To Do the following Sort items by any column Click a column's header to sort items in ascending order. Click it once again to sort items in descending order. Filter items by predefined column value In a field below the corresponding column's header, select the required value from the drop-down list.
Using controls and specifying settings Use active controls to specify a backup plan or recovery task settings and parameters. By default, such fields as credentials, options, comments, and some others are hidden. Most settings are configured by clicking the respective Show… links. Others are selected from the drop-down list, or typed manually in the page's fields. Action page - Controls Acronis Backup remembers the changes you made on the action pages.
If the option is enabled, the credentials for various locations that you enter during a console session are saved for use during later sessions. In Windows, the credentials are stored in the Windows Credential Manager. In Linux, the credentials are stored in a special encrypted file. If the option is disabled, the credentials are stored only until the console is closed. To clear the credentials cache for the current user account, click the Clear credentials cache button. 2.1.3.
The preset is: Enabled. To make a selection, select or clear the Notify when the management console is connected to a component of a different version check box. Request description when ejecting a tape This option defines whether to display a prompt for you to describe a tape when you eject it from a tape device by using Acronis Backup. For example, you may describe the physical location where the tape will be kept (recommended).
3 Understanding Acronis Backup This section attempts to give its readers a clear understanding of the product so that they can use the product in various circumstances without step-by-step instructions. 3.1 Owners This section explains the concept of a backup plan (task) owner and an archive owner. Plan (task) owner A local backup plan owner is the user who created or last modified the plan. Tasks, belonging to a backup plan, are owned by the backup plan owner.
Backup plan's credentials Any backup plan running on a machine runs on behalf of a user. In Windows By default, the plan runs under the agent service account, if created by a user having administrative privileges on the machine. If created by a regular user, such as a member of the Users group, the plan runs under this user's account. When creating a backup plan, you are only asked for credentials in specific cases.
3.3 User privileges on a managed machine When managing a machine running Windows, the scope of a user's management rights depends on the user's privileges on the machine. Regular users A regular user, such as a member of the Users group, has the following management rights: Perform file-level backup and recovery of the files that the user has permissions to access—but without using a file-level backup snapshot (p. 90). Create backup plans and tasks and manage them.
Service name Purpose Acronis Backing up and Managed recovering data Machine Service on the machine (Main service) Account used by the service Acronis Agent User (new account) or user-specified account Privileges added to the account User rights Log on as a service Adjust memory quotas for a process Replace a process level token Group membership Permissions on registry keys Backup BackupAndRecovery Operators Encryption (for any account) Global Administrators (for new account MMS only) Modify firmwar
3.5 Full, incremental and differential backups Acronis Backup provides the capability to use popular backup schemes, such as Grandfather-Father-Son and Tower of Hanoi, as well as to create custom backup schemes. All backup schemes are based on full, incremental and differential backup methods. The term "scheme" in fact denotes the algorithm of applying these methods plus the algorithm of the archive cleanup.
Differential backup A differential backup stores changes to the data against the latest full backup. You need access to the corresponding full backup to recover the data from a differential backup. A differential backup is most useful when: you are interested in saving only the most recent data state the data changes tend to be small as compared to the total data size.
Linux A volume backup stores all files and directories of the selected volume independent of their attributes, a boot record, and the file system super block. A disk backup stores all disk volumes as well as the zero track with the master boot record. With the sector-by-sector (raw mode) option enabled, a disk backup stores all the disk sectors. The sector-by-sector backup can be used for backing up disks with unrecognized or unsupported file systems and other proprietary data formats. 3.
simple/spanned, striped, mirrored, RAID 0+1, RAID-5) will not change. The target volume size has to be enough to accommodate the backup content. Recovery to disk group unallocated space When recovering a dynamic volume to disk group unallocated space, the software preserves the volume's original type and size. If the disk group configuration does not allow for the original volume type, the volume will be recovered as a simple or spanned volume.
Acronis Backup includes a handy disk management utility which enables you to perform the above operations both under the operating system and on bare metal. To find out more about Acronis Disk Director Lite, see the Disk management (p. 181) section. 3.8 Support for Advanced Format (4K-sector) hard disks Acronis Backup can back up hard disks with a sector size of 4 KB (known as Advanced Format disks), as well as traditional hard disks that have 512-byte sectors.
Microsoft BitLocker Drive Encryption McAfee Endpoint Encryption PGP Whole Disk Encryption. To ensure reliable disk-level recovery, follow the common rules and software-specific recommendations. Common installation rule The strong recommendation is to install the encryption software before installing Acronis Backup. The way of using Acronis Secure Zone Acronis Secure Zone must not be encrypted with disk-level encryption. This is the only way to use Acronis Secure Zone: 1.
The value may be "Information", "Warning", 'Error" and "Unknown". "Unknown" is sent only in the test message. Text description of the event Object identifier (OID): 1.3.6.1.4.1.24769.100.200.2.0 Syntax: OctetString The value contains the text description of the event (it looks identical to messages published by Acronis Backup in its log). Example of varbind values: 1.3.6.1.4.1.24769.100.200.1.0:Information 1.3.6.1.4.1.24769.100.200.2.
WinPE 4.0 and WinPE 5.0 Acronis Media Builder can create bootable media based on these versions of Windows Preinstallation Environment (WinPE). These bootable media support new features of Windows 8 and Windows Server 2012 (see later in this section). They can boot on machines that use Unified Extensible Firmware Interface (UEFI). To create bootable media based on these versions of WinPE, you need Windows Assessment and Deployment Kit (ADK). For more details, see the “WinPE-based bootable media” (p.
3.12 Support for UEFI-based machines Acronis Backup can back up and recover machines that use 64-bit Unified Extensible Firmware Interface (UEFI) in the same way as it does for machines that use BIOS for booting. This applies to both physical and virtual machines, no matter if the virtual machines are backed up at a hypervisor level or from inside a guest OS. Backup and recovery of devices that use 32-bit UEFI are not supported.
4 Backup 4.1 Back up now Use the Back up now feature to configure and run a one-time backup in a few simple steps. The backup process will start immediately after you perform the required steps and click OK. For a long-time backup strategy that includes schedules and conditions, timely deleting of backups or moving them to different locations, consider creating a backup plan. Configuring immediate backup is similar to creating a backup plan (p.
Select the mode the removable device will be used in (p. 151) If the specified location is an RDX drive or USB flash drive, select the device mode: Removable media or Fixed drive. Backup file naming, access credentials, archive comments To access these settings, click Show backup file naming, access credentials, archive comments. File naming (p.
[Optional] Enter a unique name for the backup plan. A conscious name lets you identify the plan among others. Backup options [Optional] Configure parameters of the backup operation, such as pre/post backup commands, maximum network bandwidth allocated for the backup stream or the backup archive compression level. If you do nothing in this section, the default values (p. 79) will be used. After any of the settings is changed against the default value, a new line that displays the newly set value appears.
A file-level backup is not sufficient for recovery of the operating system. Choose file backup if you plan to keep safe only certain data (the current project, for example). This will reduce the archive size, thus saving storage space. In order to recover your operating system along with all the settings and applications, you have to perform a disk backup. 2. In the tree below the Data to back up section, select the items to back up by selecting check boxes next to the items.
Exclude all hidden files and folders Select this check box to skip files and folders that have the Hidden attribute (for file systems that are supported by Windows) or that start with a period (.) (for file systems in Linux such as Ext2 and Ext3). If a folder is hidden, all of its contents (including files that are not hidden) will be excluded. Exclude all system files and folders This option is effective only for file systems that are supported by Windows.
By name By mask (*) By mask (?) F.log Excludes all files named "F.log" F Excludes all folders named "F" *.log Excludes all files with the .log extension F* Excludes all files and folders with names starting with "F" (such as folders F, F1 and files F.log, F1.log) F???.log Excludes all .log files with names consisting of four symbols and starting with "F" Windows By file path C:\Finance\F.log Excludes the file named "F.
By selecting the existing archive, you are meddling in the area of another backup plan that uses the archive. This is not an issue if the other plan is discontinued. However, you should generally follow the rule: "one backup plan - one archive". Doing the opposite will not prevent the program from functioning but is not practical or efficient, except for some specific cases. Why two or more plans should not back up to the same archive 1.
Destination Details FTP, SFTP To back up data to FTP or SFTP, type the server name or address in the Path field as follows: ftp://ftp_server:port _number or sftp://sftp_server:port number To establish an active mode FTP connection, use the following notation: aftp://ftp_server:port _number If the port number is not specified, port 21 is used for FTP and port 22 is used for SFTP. After entering access credentials, the folders on the server become available. Click the appropriate folder on the server.
backup will be performed and select from these days the day of weekly/monthly backup. Then you set the retention periods for the daily (referred to as "sons"), weekly (referred to as "fathers") and monthly (referred to as "grandfathers") backups. The expired backups will be deleted automatically. Tower of Hanoi – to use the Tower of Hanoi backup scheme. This scheme allows you to schedule when and how often to back up (sessions) and select the number of backup levels (up to 16).
Custom retention periods for backups of each type Description Let us suppose that we want to set up a backup plan that will regularly produce a series of daily (D), weekly (W), and monthly (M) backups. Here is a natural way to do this: the following table shows a sample two-month period for such a plan.
Backup type Specifies the types of daily, weekly and monthly backups. Always full - all the daily, weekly and monthly backups will always be full. Full/Differential/Incremental - daily backups are incremental, weekly backups are differential, and monthly backups are full. The first backup is always full. However, this does not mean that it is a monthly backup. It will be kept as a daily, weekly or monthly backup, depending on the day of week it is created.
Back up on: Workdays Weekly/monthly: Friday Keep backups: Daily: 1 week Weekly: 10 days Monthly: 6 months With this scheme, you will have a week to recover a previous version of a damaged file from a daily backup; as well as 10-day access to weekly backups. Each monthly full backup will be available for six months since the creation date. Work schedule Suppose you are a part-time financial consultant and work in a company on Tuesdays and Thursdays.
Monthly: indefinitely Backup is thus performed only on Fridays. This makes Friday the only choice for weekly and monthly backups, leaving no other date for daily backups. The resulting “Grandfather-Father” archive will hence consist only of weekly differential and monthly full backups. Even though it is possible to use GFS to create such an archive, the Custom scheme is more flexible in this situation. 4.2.6.
Parameter Meaning Zone. This setting is not applicable to FTP and SFTP servers. This setting enables deletion of the last backup in the archive, in case your storage device cannot accommodate more than one backup. However, you might end up with no backups if the program is not able to create the new backup for some reason. Apply retention rules Specifies when to apply the retention rules (p. 75).
Monthly full, weekly differential, and daily incremental backups plus cleanup This example demonstrates the use of all options available in the Custom scheme. Suppose that we need a scheme that will produce monthly full backups, weekly differential backups, and daily incremental backups. Then the backup schedule can look as follows.
schedule: a backup task will be run every 1 day at 10 AM) as well as more complex schedules (example of a complex daily schedule: a task will be run every 3 days, starting from January 15. During the specified days the task will be repeated every 2 hours from 10 AM to 10 PM). Thus, complex schedules specify the sessions on which the scheme should run. In the discussion below, "days" can be replaced with "scheduled sessions". Number of levels Select from 2 to 16 backup levels.
Number of levels Full backup every On different days, can go back Roll-back period 2 2 days 1 to 2 days 1 day 3 4 days 2 to 5 days 2 days 4 8 days 4 to 11 days 4 days 5 16 days 8 to 23 days 8 days 6 32 days 16 to 47 days 16 days Adding a level doubles the full backup and roll-back periods. To see why the number of recovery days varies, let us return to the previous example. Here are the backups we have on day 12 (numbers in gray denote deleted backups).
4.2.6.6 Initial seeding This backup scheme is available when Acronis Cloud Storage is selected as the backup destination. A backup is only successful if you have an Initial Seeding license. The Initial Seeding service might be unavailable in your region. To find more information, click here: http://kb.acronis.com/content/15118. Initial seeding enables you to transfer the first backup, which is full and usually the largest, to the cloud storage on a hard drive instead of over the Internet.
2. Specify: User name. When entering the name of an Active Directory user account, be sure to also specify the domain name (DOMAIN\Username or Username@domain). Password. The password for the account. Confirm password. Re-enter the password. 3. Click OK. To learn more about operations available depending on the user privileges, see the Users' privileges on a managed machine (p. 24) section. 4.2.
Windows 2000 Professional win2000ProGuest Windows 2000 Server win2000ServGuest Windows 2000 Advanced Server win2000ServGuest Windows XP All Editions winXPProGuest Windows XP All Editions (64 bit) winXPPro64Guest Windows Server 2003, All Editions winNetStandardGuest Windows Server 2003, All Editions (64 bit) winNetStandard64Guest Windows 2008 winLonghornGuest Windows 2008 (64 bit) winLonghorn64Guest Windows Vista winVistaGuest Windows Vista (64 bit) winVista64Guest Windows 7 windows7Gu
5. 6. 7. 8. 9. 10. 11. Backup cataloging can be a time-consuming process. It is performed in parallel with the following steps. Post-backup command execution. Disaster Recovery Plan (DRP) creation. Conversion to a virtual machine. Backup replication. Cleanup. If the replication took place, or a backup was moved to a different location during the cleanup, all the operations configured for the subsequent locations are performed before continuing to the following steps in the primary location. Validation.
Restrictions Simplified file naming is not available if you back up to Acronis Secure Zone or Acronis Cloud Storage. When using simplified file naming, the following functionality is not available: Setting up full, incremental and differential backups within a single backup plan. You need to create separate backup plans for each type of backup. Setting up replication of backups. Setting up retention rules. Setting up regular conversion of backups to a virtual machine.
This is because the full backups created at midnight were replaced by new full backups of the same day. 4.3.2 Backup splitting and simplified file naming When a backup is split according to backup splitting (p. 84) settings, the same indexing is used to also name parts of the backup. The file name for the next backup will have the next available index. For example, suppose that the first backup of the archive MyData has been split in two parts. Then, the file names for this backup are MyData1.
4.3.3.3 Example 3. Hourly backups within a day Consider the following scenario: You want to perform hourly backups of your server's critical files every day. You want to keep older backups in the archive. You want the first backup of each day to be full and to run at midnight; and the subsequent backups of the day to be differential and to run at 01:00, 02:00, and so on. In this scenario, create a backup plan with a daily schedule.
You have two such drives. Either of them has drive letter D in the operating system when attached to the machine. You want to swap the drives each Monday so that one drive contains backups of the current week (Monday through Sunday), and the other drive those of the previous week. In this scenario, you need to create two backup plans as follows: a) When creating the first backup plan: Specify MyMachine as the archive name. Select the Name backup files using the archive name...
The full backup of January 31, 2012, will be stored as ServerFiles[2012-01-31].tib. The following day, February 1, the backups will start with the full backup ServerFiles[2012-02-01].tib. The differential backups will start with ServerFiles[2012-02-01]2.tib. The 10 differential backups of January 31, 2012, will be stored as ServerFiles[2012-01-31]2.tib, ServerFiles[2012-01-31]3.tib, and so on up to ServerFiles[2012-01-31]11.tib. See also “The [Date] variable” (p. 56). 4.
Condition: run the task only if User is idle (a screen saver is running or the machine is locked) Location's host is available The task run time is within the specified time interval All users are logged off The specified period of time has passed since the completion of the last successful backup within the same backup plan The scheduler behavior, in case the event occurs but the condition (or any of multiple conditions) is not met is defined by the Task start conditions (p. 98) backup option.
Examples "Simple" daily schedule Run the task every day at 6PM. The schedule's parameters are thus set up as follows. 1. Every: 1 day(s). 2. Once at: 06:00:00 PM. 3. Effective: From: not set. The task will be started on the current day, if it has been created before 6PM. If you have created the task after 6 PM, the task will be started for the first time on the next day at 6 PM. To: not set. The task will be performed for an indefinite number of days.
First daily schedule 1. Every: 3 day(s). 2. Every: 4 hours. From: 08:00:00 AM Until: 12:00:00 PM. 3. Effective: From: 09/20/2009. To: not set. Second daily schedule 1. Every: 3 day(s). 2. Every: 2 hour(s). From: 03:00:00 PM Until: 07:00:00 PM. 3. Effective: From: 09/20/2009. To: not set. 4.4.2 Weekly schedule Weekly schedule is effective in Windows and Linux operating systems. To specify a weekly schedule In the Schedule area, select the appropriate parameter as follows: Every: <...> week(s) on: <...
1. Every: 1 week(s) on: Fri. 2. Once at: 10:00:00 PM. 3. Effective: From: 05/13/2009. The task will be started on the nearest Friday at 10 PM. To: 11/13/2009. The task will be performed for the last time on this date, but the task itself will still be available in the Tasks view after this date. (If this date were not a Friday, the task would be last performed on the last Friday preceding this date.) This schedule is widely used when creating a custom backup scheme.
1. Every: 1 week(s) on: Mon, Fri. 2. Every: 9 hours From: 12:00:00 PM Until: 09:00:00 PM. 3. Effective: From: not set. To: not set. Second schedule 1. Every 1 week(s) on: Tue, Wed, Thu. 2. Every 3 hours From 09:00:00 AM until 09:00:00 PM. 3. Effective: From: not set. To: not set. Third schedule 1. Every: 1 week(s) on: Sat, Sun. 2. Once at: 09:00:00 PM. 3. Effective: From: not set. To: not set. 4.4.3 Monthly schedule Monthly schedule is effective in Windows and Linux operating systems.
Examples "Last day of every month" schedule Run the task once at 10 PM on the last day of every month. The schedule's parameters are set up as follows. 1. 2. 3. 4. Months: . Days: Last. The task will run on the last day of every month despite its actual date. Once at: 10:00:00 PM. Effective: From: empty. To: empty. This schedule is widely used when creating a custom backup scheme.
2. On: 3. Once at: 10:00:00 PM. 4. Effective: From: 11/01/2009. To: not set. Second schedule 1. Months: March, April, May, September, October, November. 2. On: . 3. Every: 12 hours From: 12:00:00 AM Until: 12:00:00 PM. 4. Effective: From: 11/01/2009. To: not set. Third schedule 1. 2. 3. 4. Months: June, July, August. Days: 1, 15. Once at: 10:00:00 PM. Effective: From: 11/01/2009. To: not set. 4.4.
For example, an Error event with Event source disk and Event ID 7 occurs when Windows discovers a bad block on a disk, whereas an Error event with Event source disk and Event ID 15 occurs when a disk is not ready for access yet. Examples "Bad block" emergency backup One or more bad blocks that have suddenly appeared on a hard disk usually indicate that the hard disk drive will soon fail. Suppose that you want to create a backup plan that will back up hard disk data as soon as such a situation occurs.
To view properties of an event, including the event source and event number 1. In Event Viewer, click the name of a log that you want to view—for example, Application. Note: To be able to open the security log (Security), you must be a member of the Administrators group. 2. In the list of events in the right pane, double-click the name of an event whose properties you want to view. 3.
(1) If the user becomes idle before 9PM, the backup task will start at 9PM. (2) If the user becomes idle between 9PM and 11PM, the backup task will start immediately after the user becomes idle. (3) If the user is still active at 11PM, the backup task starts anyway. 4.4.5.2 Location's host is available Applies to: Windows, Linux "Location's host is available" means that the machine hosting the destination for storing archives on a networked drive is available.
(1) if the user logs off between 04:30:00 PM and 10:00:00 PM, the backup task will start immediately following the logging off. (2) if the user logs off at any other time, the task will be skipped. What if... What if a task is scheduled to be executed at a certain time and this time is outside the specified time interval? For example: Event: Daily, Every 1 day(s); Once at 03:00:00 PM. Condition: Fits the time interval, from 06:00:00 PM until 11:59:59 PM.
Example: Run the backup task at system startup, but only if more than 12 hours have passed since the last successful backup. Event: At startup, Start the task on machine startup. Condition: Time since last backup, Time since the last backup: 12 hour(s). Task start conditions: Wait until the conditions are met.
Using Acronis Cloud Backup to protect data from a natural disaster (p. 77) Replicate the archive to the cloud storage by transferring only the data changes outside working hours. Reduced costs of storing the backed-up data Store your backups on a fast storage for as long as a need to access them is likely. Then, move them to a lower-cost storage to keep them there for a longer term. This enables you to meet legal requirements on data retention.
Restrictions Copying or moving backups to and from optical discs (CD, DVD, Blu-ray discs) is not supported. Acronis Cloud Storage can only be the final location. Further copying or moving backups from it is not possible. You cannot specify the same location more than once. For example, you cannot move a backup from one folder to another and then back to the original folder. Copying or moving backups to and from removable devices used in the Removable media mode is not supported. 4.5.
The retention rules are applied after creating a backup. They are applied sequentially in the primary, the second and all next locations. Tower of Hanoi scheme Each backup is retained based on its level (p. 49), and then deleted. You specify the number of levels in Number of levels. The retention rules are applied after creating a backup. They are applied sequentially in the primary, the second and all next locations. Custom scheme Each backup is retained until the rules you specify are met.
You will be able to specify the location where to move the backups and set up retention rules for that location after you click OK. Deleting the last backup in the archive The retention rules are effective if the archive contains more than one backup. This means that the last backup in the archive will be kept, even if a retention rule violation is detected. Please do not try to delete the only backup you have by applying the retention rules before backup. This will not work.
4.5.5 Usage examples This section provides examples of how you can replicate backups and set up retention rules for them. 4.5.5.1 Example 1. Replicating backups to a network folder Consider the following scenario: You want to perform a full backup of your machine manually. You want to store the backups in Acronis Secure Zone (p. 148) on the machine. You want to store a copy of the backups in a network folder. In this scenario, create a backup plan with the Manual start scheme.
You want to occasionally back up your machine to a local folder. You want to keep a copy of the resulting archive off-site in Acronis Cloud Storage. No matter when you start the backup, you want the replication to take place outside working hours, when demand on the Internet connection is lower. In this scenario, create a backup plan with the desired backup scheme. When creating the backup plan, specify a local folder in the Location field.
4.7 Default backup options Each Acronis agent has its own default backup options. Once an agent is installed, the default options have pre-defined values, which are referred to as presets in the documentation. When creating a backup plan, you can either use a default option, or override the default option with the custom value that will be specific for this plan only. You can also customize a default option itself by changing its value against the pre-defined one.
Agent for Windows Bootable media (Linux-based or PE-based) Disk backup File backup Disk backup File backup Compression level (p. 85) + + + + Disaster recovery plan (p. 86) + + - - E-mail notifications (p. 87) + + - - Do not show messages and dialogs while processing (silent mode) + + + + Re-attempt if an error occurs + + + + Ignore bad sectors + + + + Windows events log (p. 89) + + - - SNMP (p. 89) + + - - Fast incremental/differential backup (p.
Agent for Windows Bootable media (Linux-based or PE-based) Volume Shadow Copy Service (p. 99) 4.7.1 Disk backup File backup Disk backup File backup + + - - Additional settings Specify the additional settings for the backup operation by selecting or clearing the following check boxes. Ask for the first media while backing up to removable media This option is effective only when backing up to removable media.
For example, if the machine boots from a hard disk drive by default and you select this check box, the machine will be restarted and the operating system will start as soon as the bootable agent has finished creating the backup. 4.7.2 Archive protection This option is effective for Windows and Linux operating systems and bootable media. This option is effective for both disk-level and file-level backup.
The preset is: Full cataloging. If you select Full cataloging, the backup contents are cataloged to the highest possible level of detail. This means that the following data will be displayed in the catalog: For a disk-level backup - disks, volumes, files, and folders. For a file-level backup - files and folders. You may want to select Fast cataloging if the full cataloging tends to affect the performance of the managed machine or if your backup window is too narrow.
This option is available when an internal (fixed) hard disk of the machine being backed up is selected as the backup destination Backing up to a fixed hard disk (for example, to Acronis Secure Zone) may slow performance of the operating system and applications because of the large amounts of data that needs to be written to the disk. You can limit the hard disk usage by the backup process to the desired level. The preset is: Maximum.
When backing up to a hard disk or a network share: A single backup file will be created if the destination disk's file system allows the estimated file size. The backup will automatically be split into several files if the destination disk's file system does not allow the estimated file size. This might be the case when the backup is placed on FAT16 and FAT32 file systems that have a 4-GB file size limit.
None – the data will be copied as is, without any compression. The resulting backup size will be maximal. Normal – recommended in most cases. High – the resulting backup size will typically be less than for the Normal level. Maximum – the data will be compressed as much as possible. The backup duration will be maximal. You may want to select maximum compression when backing up to removable media to reduce the number of blank disks required. 4.7.
2. Click Browse to specify a location for the DRP files. 4.7.8 E-mail notifications This option is effective for Windows and Linux operating systems. This option is not available when operating under the bootable media. The option enables you to receive e-mail notifications about the backup task's successful completion, failure or when user interaction is required. The preset is: Disabled. To configure e-mail notification 1. Select the Send e-mail notifications check box to activate notifications. 2.
b. Use encryption – you can opt for encrypted connection to the mail server. SSL and TLS encryption types are available for selection. c. Some Internet service providers require authentication on the incoming mail server before being allowed to send something. If this is your case, select the Log on to incoming mail server check box to enable a POP server and to set up its settings: Incoming mail server (POP) – enter the name of the POP server. Port – set the port of the POP server.
4.7.10 Event tracing It is possible to duplicate log events of the backup operations, performed on the managed machine, in the Application Event Log of Windows; or send the events to the specified SNMP managers. 4.7.10.1 SNMP notifications This option is effective for both Windows and Linux operating systems. This option is not available when operating under the bootable media.
Use the setting set in the Machine options – to use the setting specified for the machine. For more information refer to Machine options. Log the following event types – to log events of the backup operations in the Application Event Log. Specify the types of events to be logged: All events – log all events (information, warnings and errors) Errors and warnings Errors only Do not log - to disable logging events of the backup operations in the Application Event Log. 4.7.
4.7.13 File-level security These options are effective only for file-level backup in Windows operating systems. In archives, store encrypted files in a decrypted state This option defines whether to decrypt files before saving them to a backup archive. The preset is: Disabled. Simply ignore this option if you do not use the encryption. Enable the option if encrypted files are included in the backup and you want them to be accessed by any user after recovery.
Acronis Bootable Agent and One-Click Restore. The One-Click Restore is the minimal addition to a disk backup stored on removable media, allowing for easy recovery from this backup. If you boot a machine from the media and click Run Acronis One-click Restore, the disk will be immediately recovered from the backup contained on the same media.
This option applies to disk-level backup. This option also applies to file-level backup when the file-level backup is performed by taking a snapshot. (The File-level backup snapshot (p. 90) option determines whether a snapshot will be taken during file-level backup). The option determines whether to take snapshots of multiple volumes at the same time or one by one. The preset is: Enable. When this option is set to Enable, snapshots of all volumes being backed up will be created simultaneously.
4.7.17.1 Pre-backup command To specify a command/batch file to be executed before the backup process starts 1. In the Command field, type a command or browse to a batch file. The program does not support interactive commands, i.e. commands that require user input (for example, "pause".) 2. In the Working directory field, specify a path to a directory where the command/batch file will be executed. 3. In the Arguments field specify the command’s execution arguments, if required. 4.
The option enables you to define the commands to be automatically executed before and after data capture (that is, taking the data snapshot). Data capture is performed by Acronis Backup at the beginning of the backup procedure. The following scheme illustrates when the pre/post data capture commands are executed. <--------------Pre-backup command Pre-data capture command Backup Data capture ---------------> Post-data capture command Post-backup command If the Volume Shadow Copy Service (p.
Preset Perform the data capture after the Perform the data command is capture only after the executed despite command is execution failure successfully executed. or success. Fail the task if the command execution fails. N/A Perform the data capture concurrently with the command and irrespective of the command execution result. * A command is considered failed if its exit code is not equal to zero. 4.7.18.2 Post-data capture command To specify a command/batch file to be executed after data capture 1.
moment. The operations that had started before the inactivity time began continue without interruption. The inactivity time affects all locations, including the primary one. The preset is: Disabled. To specify the inactivity time, select the Do not start replication/cleanup within the following time check box, and then select the days and the time period during the day. Usage example You may want to use this option to separate the backup process from replication or cleanup.
If the task fails because of a mistake in the backup plan, you can edit the plan while the task is in the Idle state. While the task is running, you have to stop it prior to editing the backup plan. 4.7.22 Task start conditions This option is effective in Windows and Linux operating systems. This option is not available when operating under bootable media.
Skip the task execution Delaying a backup might be unacceptable, for example, when you need to back up data strictly at the specified time. Then it makes sense to skip the backup rather than wait for the conditions, especially if the events occur relatively often. 4.7.23 Volume Shadow Copy Service These options are effective only for Windows operating systems.
Choose Do not use VSS if your database is incompatible with VSS. Snapshots are taken faster, but data consistency of the applications whose transactions are not completed at the time of taking a snapshot cannot be guaranteed. You may use Pre/Post data capture commands (p. 94) to ensure that the data is being backed up in a consistent state.
5 Recovery When it comes to data recovery, first consider the most functional method: connect the console to the managed machine running the operating system and create the recovery task. If the machine's operating system fails to start or you need to recover data to bare metal, boot the machine from the bootable media (p. 262) or using Acronis Startup Recovery Manager (p. 179) and configure recovery.
Volumes (p. 109) Files (p. 112) Acronis Active Restore (p. 121) Applies to: system disk or volume recovery. [Optional] Enable Acronis Active Restore if you need to bring a system online immediately after the recovery is started. Access credentials (p. 106) [Optional] Provide credentials for the destination if the task credentials do not enable recovery of the selected data. To access this setting, click Show access credentials. When to recover Recover (p. 114) Select when to start recovery.
2. Selecting data The backed-up data can be selected using the Data view tab, or the Archive view tab. The Data view tab displays all the backed-up data by versions (the date and time of backup creation) within the selected archive location. The Archive view tab displays the backed-up data by the archives. Selecting data using the Data view Since the Data view tab shares the same functionality with the data catalog, selecting data on the Data view tab is performed in the same way as in the catalog.
Location Details Machine name Local machine Local folders If the archive is stored in a local folder on the machine, expand the group and select the required folder. CD, DVD, BD If the archive is stored on optical media such as CD, DVD, or Blu-ray Discs (BD), expand the group, then select the required drive. First insert the last disc. Then insert the discs in order starting from the first one when the program prompts.
4. Do any of the following: Select the data to recover in the catalog tree, or in the table to the right of the catalog tree. In the search string, type the information that helps to identify the required data items (this can be a machine name, a file or folder name, or a disk label) and then click Search. You can use the asterisks (*) and question marks (?) wildcards.
To specify credentials 1. Select one of the following: Use the task credentials The software will access the location using the credentials of the task account specified in the Task parameters section. Use the following credentials The software will access the location using the credentials you specify. Use this option if the task account does not have access permissions to the location. You might need to provide special credentials for a network share or a storage node vault.
The selected disks will be recovered to the physical disks of the machine the console is connected to. On selecting this, you proceed to the regular disk mapping procedure described below. New virtual machine If Acronis Backup Agent for Windows or Agent for Linux is installed.
2. Click OK. All the data stored on the target disk will be replaced by the backed-up data, so be careful and watch out for non-backed-up data that you might need. NT signature The NT signature is a record that is kept in the MBR. It uniquely identifies the disk for the operating system. When recovering a disk containing a system volume, you can choose what to do with the NT signature of the target disk.
1. If the disk or volume is recovered to its original location, the mapping process reproduces the original disk/volume layout. The original location for a disk or volume means exactly the same disk or volume that has been backed up. A volume will not be considered original if its size, location or other physical parameters have been changed after backup. Changing the volume letter or label does not prevent the software from recognizing the volume. 2.
Existing virtual machine Available when the Acronis Backup Agent for Hyper-V or Agent for VMware is installed. On selecting this, you specify the virtualization server and the target virtual machine. Then you proceed to the regular volume mapping procedure described below. Please be aware that the target machine will be powered off automatically before recovery. If you prefer to power it off manually, modify the VM power management option.
Be careful! To be on the safe side, it is advisable to assign unique names to the volumes. The Linux-style bootable media shows local disks and volumes as unmounted (sda1, sda2...). Changing volume properties Size and location When recovering a volume to a basic MBR disk, you can resize and relocate the volume by dragging it or its borders with a mouse or by entering corresponding values in the appropriate fields. Using this feature, you can redistribute the disk space between the volumes being recovered.
Volume (partition) alignment Acronis Backup automatically eliminates volume misalignment – a situation, when volume clusters are not aligned with disk sectors. The misalignment occurs when recovering volumes created with the Cylinder/Head/Sector (CHS) addressing scheme to a hard disk drive (HDD) or solid-state drive (SSD) drive that has a 4-KB sector size. The CHS addressing scheme is used, for example, in all Windows operating systems earlier than Windows Vista.
Files and folders will be recovered to the same path(s) as they are in the backup. For example, if you have backed up all files and folders in C:\Documents\Finance\Reports\, the files will be recovered to the same path. If the folder does not exist, it will be created automatically. New location Files will be recovered to the location that you specify in the tree. The files and folders will be recovered without recreating a full path, unless you clear the Recover without full path check box.
By mask (*) By mask (?) 5.1.5 *.log Excludes all files with the .log extension F* Excludes all files and folders with names starting with "F" (such as folders F, F1 and files F.log, F1.log) F???.log Excludes all .log files with names consisting of four symbols and starting with "F" When to recover Select when to start the recovery task: Now - the recovery task will be started immediately after you click OK on the Recover data page.
3. Physical-to-physical, physical-to-virtual and virtual-to-physical machine migration. 5.2.1 Getting Universal Restore Universal Restore is included in all Acronis products that enable disk-level or single-pass backup. 5.2.2 Using Universal Restore During recovery Universal Restore is available when configuring a disk or volume recovery, if a Windows or Linux operating system is present in your selection of disks or volumes.
Check access to the drivers in bootable environment Make sure you have access to the device with drivers when working under bootable media. Even if you configure system disk recovery in a Windows environment, the machine will reboot and recovery will proceed in the Linux-based environment. Use WinPE-based media if the device is available in Windows but Linux-based media does not detect it. What if you do not have drivers Windows 7 includes more drivers than the older Windows operating systems.
Add the driver to any of the previously specified locations and click Retry. If you do not remember the location, continue the recovery. If the result is not satisfactory, start Universal Restore without recovery by clicking Apply Universal Restore in the media welcome screen. When configuring the operation, specify the necessary driver. Once Windows boots, it will initialize the standard procedure for installing new hardware.
Limitations Transferring a Linux system between UEFI and BIOS is not supported. Transferring a Windows system between UEFI and BIOS is not supported if a backup is stored in any of these locations: Acronis Cloud Storage Optical discs (CDs, DVDs, or Blu-ray discs) When transferring a system between UEFI and BIOS is not supported, Acronis Backup initializes the target disk with the same partitioning scheme as the original disk. No adjustment of the operating system is performed.
system BIOS BIOS UEFI UEFI Disk: MBR Disk: GPT Disk: MBR Disk: GPT BIOS The target machine must support BIOS. OS: convertible Additional steps Solution Recover the operating system to an MBR disk or to an uninitialized disk. BIOS OS: nonconvertible 1. Before recovery, turn off the UEFI mode in BIOS 2. Perform the recovery under the bootable media. The convertible OS will be automatically converted to support UEFI booting.
Green background means that the system will be bootable. No user action is required. Yellow background means that you need to perform additional steps to make the system bootable. These steps are not possible on some machines. Original system Target hardware BIOS UEFI BIOS The target disk will be initialized as GPT. OS: convertible The OS will be automatically converted to support UEFI booting. If you want to recover the source disk “as is”: 1. Turn off the UEFI mode in BIOS. 2.
5.4 Acronis Active Restore Active Restore is the Acronis proprietary technology that brings a system online immediately after its recovery is started. Limitations Active Restore is meant for instant data recovery on the same machine. It is not available when recovering to dissimilar hardware. The only supported archive location is a local drive, or more precisely, any device available through the machine’s BIOS.
If your operating system and its loader reside on different volumes, always include both volumes in the backup. The volumes must also be recovered together; otherwise, there is a high risk that the operating system will not start. 2. Create bootable media. 3. If a system failure occurs, boot the machine using the bootable media. Start the console and connect to the bootable agent. 4. Create a recovery task (p. 101). In What to recover, make sure that the system disk or volume is selected for recovery.
Windows was recovered to a dynamic volume that cannot be bootable Solution: Recover Windows to a basic, simple or mirrored volume. A system volume was recovered to a disk that does not have an MBR When you configure recovery of a system volume to a disk that does not have an MBR, the program prompts whether you want to recover the MBR along with the system volume. Opt for not recovering, only if you do not want the system to be bootable.
The following is an example of how to reactivate GRUB in case the system disk (volume) is recovered to identical hardware. 1. Start Linux or boot from the bootable media, and then press CTRL+ALT+F2. 2. Mount the system you are recovering: mkdir /mnt/system/ mount -t ext3 /dev/sda2 /mnt/system/ # root partition mount -t ext3 /dev/sda1 /mnt/system/boot/ # boot partition 3.
quit 12. Unmount the mounted file systems and then reboot: umount umount umount umount reboot /mnt/system/dev/ /mnt/system/proc/ /mnt/system/boot/ /mnt/system/ 13. Reconfigure the bootloader by using tools and documentation from the Linux distribution that you use. For example, in Debian and Ubuntu, you may need to edit some commented lines in the /boot/grub/menu.lst file and then run the update-grub script; otherwise, the changes might not take effect. 5.5.
To start the operation, boot the machine into the factory bootable media and click Revert to factory settings in the appeared screen. Once you confirm the operation, Acronis Backup will create Acronis Secure Zone and copy the factory image to it. Then, it will re-deploy the factory image as described above. For additional information, refer to "Acronis Secure Zone" (p. 148) and "Acronis Startup Recovery Manager" (p. 179). 5.
Agent for Windows Bootable media (Linux-based or PE-based) Disk recovery File recovery Disk recovery File recovery Set current date and time for recovered files - + - + E-mail notifications (p. 128) + + - - Do not show messages and dialogs while processing (silent mode) + + + + Re-attempt if an error occurs + + + + Windows events log (p. 130) + + - - SNMP (p. 130) + + - - Recover files with their security settings - + - + Mount points (p.
Check file system after recovery This option is effective only when recovering disks or volumes. The preset is Disabled. This option defines whether to check the integrity of the file system after a disk or volume recovery. The check takes place either immediately after recovery or after the machine boots into the recovered operating system. Restart the machine automatically if it is required for recovery This option is effective when recovery takes place on a machine running an operating system.
For a machine running Windows, the %description% variable will be replaced by the text that is given in the Computer description field of the machine. To specify this text, either go to Control panel > System or run the following command as an administrator: net config server /srvcomment: For a machine running Linux, the %description% variable will be replaced by an empty string (""). 5. 6. 7. 8.
When a recoverable error occurs, the program re-attempts to perform the unsuccessful operation. You can set the time interval and the number of attempts. The attempts will be stopped as soon as the operation succeeds OR the specified number of attempts are performed, depending on which comes first. For example, if the network location becomes unavailable or not reachable, the program will attempt to reach the location every 30 seconds, but no more than 5 times.
This option defines whether the agent(s) operating on the managed machine have to log events of the recovery operations in the Application Event Log of Windows (to see this log, run eventvwr.exe or select Control Panel > Administrative tools > Event Viewer). You can filter the events to be logged. The preset is: Use the setting set in the Machine options.
The option enables you to define the commands to be automatically executed before and after the data recovery. Example of how you can use the pre/post commands: Launch the Checkdisk command in order to find and fix logical file system errors, physical errors or bad sectors to be started before the recovery starts or after the recovery ends. The program does not support interactive commands, i.e. commands that require user input (for example, "pause".
5.7.7.2 Post-recovery command To specify a command/executable file to be executed after the recovery is completed 1. In the Command field, type a command or browse to a batch file. 2. In the Working directory field, specify a path to a directory where the command/batch file will be executed. 3. In the Arguments field, specify the command execution arguments, if required. 4. Select the Fail the task if the command execution fails check box if successful execution of the command is critical for you.
6 Conversion to a virtual machine Acronis Backup offers a number of ways of converting a disk backup into a virtual machine. This section helps you choose the method that best fits your needs and provides step-by-step instructions for conversion. 6.1 Conversion methods Depending on your needs, you can choose among the following conversion methods: a) Make the conversion a part of a backup plan When to use. If you want the backup and the conversion to be executed on a schedule.
During conversion which is part of a backup plan (p. 136), the software creates the virtual machine in addition to creating the backup. The virtual machine has the same configuration as the original machine. During recovery to the "New virtual machine" destination (p. 139), the software creates the virtual machine from a backup you already have. You can change the configuration of the virtual machine.
Conversion of logical volumes to basic ones may also prevent the system from booting up. For these reasons, if the machine uses a custom boot loader, you might need to configure the loader to point to the new devices and reactivate it. Configuring GRUB is normally not needed because Acronis Backup does this automatically. Should the need arise, use the procedure described in "How to reactivate GRUB and change its configuration" (p. 123).
Storage Choose the storage on the virtualization server or the folder to place the virtual machine files in. Resultant VMs Specify the name of the virtual machine. The default name is Backup_of_[Machine Name]. You can add more variables to the name.
Agent for Windows or Agent for Linux is installed on the machine You can choose the virtual machine type: VMware Workstation, Microsoft Virtual PC, Red Hat Kernel-based Virtual Machine (KVM) or Red Hat Enterprise Virtualization (RHEV). In the Storage step, you can select the virtual machine path. What is the machine's processing power? Conversion will take the selected machine's CPU resource. Multiple conversion tasks will be queued on that machine and it may take considerable time to complete them all.
and the old machine is given its previous name. This way, the conversion always ends up with a single machine. However, extra storage space is required during conversion to store the old machine. If you choose to create the virtual machine on a virtualization server The first conversion creates a new virtual machine. Any subsequent conversion works as follows: If there has been a full backup since the last conversion, the virtual machine is re-created from scratch, as described earlier in this section.
*Microsoft Virtual PC does not support disks that are larger than 127 GB. Acronis enables you to create a Virtual PC machine with larger disks so that you can attach the disks to a Microsoft Hyper-V virtual machine. With Acronis Backup Agent for Hyper-V or Agent for VMware, you can create a new virtual machine directly on the respective virtualization server. 6.2.3.1 Steps to perform To perform a recovery to a new virtual machine 1.
2. In the left part of the window, select the virtualization server. Use the right part of the window to review details on the selected server. [Only if the console is connected to the management server] If multiple agents manage the selected ESX(i) host, you can choose the agent that will perform recovery. For better performance, choose an Agent for VMware (Virtual Appliance) located on that ESX(i).
Name Initial setting: if not contained in the backup, New virtual machine. Enter the name for the new virtual machine. If the backup was created by Agent for VMware or Agent for Hyper-V, the software takes the name from the virtual machine configuration contained in the backup. Processors Initial setting: if not contained in the backup or if the backed-up setting is not supported by the virtualization server, it is the default server's setting. This is the number of processors of the new virtual machine.
the old name. Configuring GRUB is normally not needed because Acronis Backup does this automatically. 6.3.2 Steps to perform To perform a recovery to a manually created virtual machine 1. [When recovering Windows] Prepare Windows drivers (p. 115) that correspond to the target virtualization platform. For machines running Linux, the necessary drivers are normally already present in the operating system. 2. Create a bootable media (p.
7 Storing the backed up data 7.1 Vaults A vault is a location for storing backup archives. For ease of use and administration, a vault is associated with the archives' metadata. Referring to this metadata makes for fast and convenient operations with archives and backups stored in the vault. A vault can be organized on a local or networked drive or detachable media. There are no settings for limiting a vault size or number of backups in a vault.
7.1.1 Working with vaults This section briefly describes the main GUI elements of the selected vault, and suggests ways to work with them. Examining information on a vault Information about the selected vault is located at the top pane of the selected vault. Using the stacked bar, you can estimate the vault's load. The vault's load is the proportion of the vault's free space and occupied space. Free space is a space on the storage device where the vault is located.
personal vault available to all users that can log on the system. Personal vaults are created automatically when backing up any of the above locations. Personal vaults can be used by local backup plans or local tasks. Sharing a personal vault Multiple machines can refer to the same physical location; for example, to the same shared folder. However, each of the machines has its own shortcut in the Vaults tree.
To Do vault. Delete a vault Click Delete. The deleting operation actually removes only a shortcut to the folder from the Vaults view. The folder itself remains untouched. You have the option to keep or delete archives contained in the folder. Refresh vault table information Click Refresh. While you are reviewing the vault content, archives can be added to the vault, deleted or modified. Click Refresh to update the vault information with the most recent changes.
7.2 Acronis Secure Zone Acronis Secure Zone is a secure partition that enables keeping backup archives on a managed machine disk space and therefore recovery of a disk to the same disk where the backup resides. Should the disk experience a physical failure, the zone and the archives located there will be lost. That's why Acronis Secure Zone should not be the only location where a backup is stored.
The Acronis Secure Zone cannot be organized on a dynamic disk. To allocate space for Acronis Secure Zone 1. Choose a hard disk (if several) on which to create the zone. The unallocated space and free space from all volumes of the first enumerated disk are selected by default. The program displays the total space available for the Acronis Secure Zone. 2. If you need to allocate more space for the zone, you can select volumes from which free space can be taken.
Acronis Secure Zone is always created at the end of the hard disk. When calculating the final layout of the volumes, the program will first use unallocated space at the end. If there is no or not enough unallocated space at the end of the disk, but there is unallocated space between volumes, the volumes will be moved to add more unallocated space to the end.
7.2.2.2 Decreasing Acronis Secure Zone To decrease Acronis Secure Zone 1. On the Manage Acronis Secure Zone page, click Decrease. 2. Select volumes that will receive the free space after the zone is decreased. If you select several volumes, the space will be distributed to each partition equally. If you do not select any volumes, the freed space becomes unallocated. 3. Specify the new size of the zone by: dragging the slider and selecting any size between the current and minimum values.
When you back up using the Back up now feature or under bootable media, the removable device is always used in the Removable media mode. The difference between the two modes is mostly related to retention and replication of backups. Functionality Fixed drive Removable media If there is insufficient space to continue backing up, the software will prompt you to... ...manually free up disk space. ...insert new media. You can set retention rules (p. 74) for backups stored on the device.
8 Operations with archives and backups 8.1 Validating archives and backups Validation is an operation that checks the possibility of data recovery from a backup. Validation of a file backup imitates recovery of all files from the backup to a dummy destination. Validation of a disk or volume backup calculates a checksum for every data block saved in the backup. Both procedures are resource-intensive. Validation of an archive will validate all the archive's backups.
Credentials (p. 155) [Optional] Provide credentials for accessing the source if the task account does not have enough privileges to access it. When to validate Start validation (p. 155) Specify when and how often to perform validation. Task parameters Task name [Optional] Enter a unique name for the validation task. A conscious name lets you quickly identify the task among the others. Task's credentials (p. 156) [Optional] The validation task will run on behalf of the user who is creating the task.
To select a network share, expand the Network folders group, select the required networked machine and then click the shared folder. If the network share requires access credentials, the program will ask for them. To select a folder stored on NFS share, expand the NFS folders group and click the folder. To select FTP or SFTP server, expand the corresponding group and click the appropriate folder on the server.
Specify the appropriate parameters as follows: Date and time - the date and time when to start the task. The task will be started manually (do not schedule the task) - select this check box, if you wish to start the task manually later. On schedule - to schedule the task. To learn more about how to configure the scheduling parameters, please see the Scheduling (p. 60) section. 8.1.6 Task credentials Provide credentials for the account under which the task will run. To specify credentials 1.
Example. When backing up data to a remote location through an unstable or low-bandwidth network connection (such as backing up through WAN using VPN access), you may want to save the initial full backup to a detachable media. Then, send the media to the remote location. There, the backup will be exported from the media to the target storage. Subsequent incremental backups, which are usually much smaller, can be transferred over the network.
To access the Export page first select a validation object: an archive or a backup. 1. Select a vault. For this click the Vaults icon in the Navigation pane and select the vault expanding the vaults tree in the Vaults view or directly in the Navigation pane. 2. To select an archive, select a vault, and then in the Vault view select the Archive view tab and click the archive name. 3.
2. In the table to the right of the tree, select the archive. The table displays the names of the archives contained in each location you select. While you are reviewing the location content, archives can be added, deleted or modified by another user or by the program itself according to scheduled operations. Use the Refresh button to refresh the list of archives. 3. Click OK. 8.2.2 Backup selection To specify a backup(s) to export 1. At the top of the window, select the respective check box(es).
To export data to a network share, expand the Network folders group, select the required networked machine and then click the shared folder. If the network share requires access credentials, the program will ask for them. Note for Linux users: To specify a Common Internet File System (CIFS) network share which is mounted on a mount point such as /mnt/share, select this mount point instead of the network share itself.
The software will access the destination using the credentials you specify. Use this option if the task account does not have access permissions to the destination. Specify: User name. When entering the name of an Active Directory user account, be sure to also specify the domain name (DOMAIN\Username or Username@domain). Password. The password for the account. 2. Click OK.
Select volumes to mount and configure the mount settings for every volume: assign a letter or enter the mount point, choose the read/write or read only access mode. When you complete all the required steps, click OK to mount the volumes. 8.3.1 Archive selection To select an archive 1.
2. Click OK. According to the original FTP specification, credentials required for access to FTP servers are transferred through a network as plaintext. This means that the user name and password can be intercepted by an eavesdropper using a packet sniffer. 8.3.4 Volume selection Select the volumes to mount and configure the mounting parameters for each of the selected volumes as follows: 1. Select the check box for each volume you need to mount. 2.
To perform operations with archives and backups 1. In the Navigation pane, select the vault whose archives you need to manage. 2. In the vault view, select the Archive view tab. This tab displays all archives stored in the selected vault. 3. Proceed as described in: 8.4.1 Operations with archives (p. 164) Operations with backups (p. 164) Operations with archives To perform any operation with an archive 1. In the Navigation pane, select the vault that contains archives. 2.
2. On the Archive view tab of the vault, select the archive. Then, expand the archive and click the backup to select it. If the archive is protected with a password, you will be asked to provide it. 3. Perform operations by clicking the corresponding buttons on the toolbar. These operations can also be accessed from the '[Backup name]' actions item of the main menu. The following is a guideline for you to perform operations with backups.
8.4.3 Converting a backup to full When the chain of incremental backups in an archive becomes long, conversion of an incremental backup to a full one increases the reliability of your archive. You may also want to convert a differential backup if there are incremental backups that depend on it. During the conversion, the selected incremental or differential backup is replaced with a full backup for the same point in time. The previous backups in the chain are not changed.
Please be aware that consolidation is just a method of deletion but not an alternative to deletion. The resulting backup will not contain data that was present in the deleted backup and was absent from the retained incremental or differential backup. There should be enough space in the vault for temporary files created during consolidation. Backups resulting from consolidation always have maximum compression.
9 Bootable media Bootable media Bootable media is physical media (CD, DVD, USB flash drive or other removable media supported by a machine BIOS as a boot device) that boots on any PC-compatible machine and enables you to run Acronis Backup Agent either in a Linux-based environment or Windows Preinstallation Environment (WinPE), without the help of an operating system.
Bootable media based on WinPE versions earlier than 4.0 cannot boot on machines that use Unified Extensible Firmware Interface (UEFI). When a machine is booted with a PE-based bootable media, you cannot select optical media such as CD, DVD, or Blu-ray Discs (BD) as a backup destination. 9.1 How to create bootable media Acronis offers a dedicated tool for creating bootable media, Acronis Bootable Media Builder. Bootable Media Builder does not require a license if installed together with an agent.
c. [Optional] The timeout interval for the boot menu plus the component that will automatically start on timeout. If not configured, the Acronis loader waits for someone to select whether to boot the operating system (if present) or the Acronis component. If you set, say, 10 sec. for the bootable agent, the agent will launch 10 seconds after the menu is displayed. This enables unattended onsite operation when booting from a PXE server or WDS/RIS. d.
vga=mode_number Specifies the video mode to be used by the bootable media's graphical user interface. The mode number is given by mode_number in the hexadecimal format—for example: vga=0x318 Screen resolution and the number of colors corresponding to a mode number may be different on different machines. We recommend using the vga=ask parameter first to choose a value for mode_number.
These calls might not work properly on some machines. But this may be the only way to get the interrupt routing table. 9.1.1.2 Network settings While creating Acronis bootable media, you have an option to pre-configure network connections that will be used by the bootable agent. The following parameters can be pre-configured: IP address Subnet mask Gateway DNS server WINS server.
the default port the currently used port the new port (enter the port number). If the port has not been pre-configured, the agent uses the default port number (9876.) This port is also used as default by the Acronis Backup Management Console. 9.1.1.4 Drivers for Universal Restore While creating bootable media, you have an option to add Windows drivers to the media.
Windows Vista (PE 2.0) Windows Vista SP1 and Windows Server 2008 (PE 2.1) Windows 7 (PE 3.0) with or without the supplement for Windows 7 SP1 (PE 3.1) Windows 8 (PE 4.0) Windows 8.1 (PE 5.0) Bootable Media Builder supports both 32-bit and 64-bit WinPE distributions. The 32-bit WinPE distributions can also work on 64-bit hardware. However, you need a 64-bit distribution to boot a machine that uses Unified Extensible Firmware Interface (UEFI).
To prepare a machine with ADK 1. Download the setup program of Assessment and Deployment Kit. Assessment and Deployment Kit (ADK) for Windows 8 (PE 4.0): http://www.microsoft.com/en-us/download/details.aspx?id=30652. Assessment and Deployment Kit (ADK) for Windows 8.1 (PE 5.0): http://www.microsoft.com/en-US/download/details.aspx?id=39982. You can find system requirements for installation by following the above links. 2. Install Assessment and Deployment Kit on the machine. 3.
Click Add and specify the path to the necessary *.inf file for a corresponding SCSI, RAID, SATA controller, network adapter, or another device. 8. 9. 10. 11. Repeat this procedure for each driver you want to be included in the resulting WinPE boot media. Choose whether you want to create ISO or WIM image or upload the media on a server (Acronis PXE Server, WDS or RIS).
2. Select the NIC that provides access to the local area network that includes the required VLAN. 3. Specify the VLAN identifier. After you click OK, a new entry appears in the list of network adapters. If you need to remove a VLAN, click the required VLAN entry, and then click Remove VLAN. 9.3 Working under bootable media Operations on a machine booted with bootable media are very similar to backup and recovery under the operating system. The difference is as follows: 1.
9.3.2 Configuring iSCSI and NDAS devices This section describes how to configure Internet Small Computer System Interface (iSCSI) devices and Network Direct Attached Storage (NDAS) devices when working under bootable media. These devices are connected to the machine through a network interface and appear as if they were locally-attached devices. On the network, an iSCSI device is identified by its IP address, and an NDAS device is identified by its device ID.
cdrecord insmod route chmod iscsiadm scp chown kill scsi_id chroot kpartx sed cp ln sg_map26 dd ls sh df lspci sleep dmesg lvm ssh dmraid mdadm sshd e2fsck mkdir strace e2label mke2fs swapoff echo mknod swapon egrep mkswap sysinfo fdisk more tar fsck mount tune2fs fxload mtx udev gawk mv udevinfo gpm pccardctl udevstart grep ping umount growisofs pktsetup uuidgen grub poweroff vconfig gunzip ps vi halt raidautorun zcat hexdump readcd hot
You can also back up using Acronis Startup Recovery Manager, while on the move. On machines with the GRUB boot loader installed, you select the Acronis Startup Recovery Manager from the boot menu instead of pressing F11. Activate Activation enables the boot time prompt "Press F11 for Acronis Startup Recovery Manager…" (if you do not have the GRUB boot loader) or adds the "Acronis Startup Recovery Manager" item to GRUB's menu (if you have GRUB).
10 Disk management Acronis Disk Director Lite is a tool for preparing a machine disk/volume configuration for recovering the volume images saved by the Acronis Backup software. Sometimes after the volume has been backed up and its image placed into a safe storage, the machine disk configuration might change due to a HDD replacement or hardware loss.
1. Back up the disk on which volumes will be created or managed. Having your most important data backed up to another hard disk, network share or removable media will allow you to work on disk volumes being reassured that your data is safe. 2. Test your disk to make sure it is fully functional and does not contain bad sectors or file system errors. 3. Do not perform any disk/volume operations while running other software that has low-level disk access.
10.5 "Disk management" view Acronis Disk Director Lite is controlled through the Disk management view of the console. The top part of the view contains a disks and volumes table enabling data sorting and columns customization and toolbar. The table presents the numbers of the disks, as well as assigned letter, label, type, capacity, free space size, used space size, file system, and status for each volume.
10.6.1 Disk initialization If you add any new disk to your machine, Acronis Disk Director Lite will notice the configuration change and scan the added disk to include it to the disk and volume list. If the disk is still not initialized or, possibly, has a file structure unknown to the machine system, that means that no programs can be installed on it and you will not be able to store any files there. Acronis Disk Director Lite will detect that the disk is unusable by the system and needs to be initialized.
10.6.2.1 Selecting source and target disks The program displays a list of partitioned disks and asks the user to select the source disk, from which data will be transferred to another disk. The next step is selection of a disk as target for the cloning operation. The program enables the user to select a disk if its size will be sufficient to hold all the data from the source disk without any loss.
You have the following two alternatives to retain system bootability on the target disk volume: 1. Copy NT signature – to provide the target disk with the source disk NT signature matched with the Registry keys also copied on the target disk. 2. Leave NT signature – to keep the old target disk signature and update the operating system according to the signature. If you need to copy the NT signature: 1. Select the Copy NT signature check box.
Dynamic disk conversion: MBR to GPT Acronis Disk Director Lite does not support direct MBR to GPT conversion for dynamic disks. However you can perform the following conversions to reach the goal using the program: 1. MBR disk conversion: dynamic to basic (p. 188) using the Convert to basic operation. 2. Basic disk conversion: MBR to GPT using the Convert to GPT operation. 3. GPT disk conversion: basic to dynamic (p. 187) using the Convert to dynamic operation. 10.6.
System disk conversion Acronis Disk Director Lite does not require an operating system reboot after basic to dynamic conversion of the disk, if: 1. There is a single Windows 2008/Vista operating system installed on the disk. 2. The machine runs this operating system.
safe conversion of a dynamic disk to basic when it contains volumes with data for simple and mirrored volumes in multiboot systems, bootability of a system that was offline during the operation 10.6.7 Changing disk status Changing disk status is effective for Windows Vista SP1, Windows Server 2008, Windows 7 operating systems and applies to the current disk layout (p. 182).
Store backups (images) of other volumes/disks on a special volume; Install a new operating system (or swap file) on a new volume; Add new hardware to a machine. In Acronis Disk Director Lite the tool for creating volumes is the Create volume Wizard. 10.7.1.1 Types of dynamic volumes Simple Volume A volume created from free space on a single physical disk. It can consist of one region on the disk or several regions, virtually united by the Logical Disk Manager (LDM).
and is able to overcome the physical disk size limitations with a higher than mirrored disk-to-volume size ratio. 10.7.1.2 Create volume wizard The Create volume wizard lets you create any type of volume (including system and active), select a file system, label, assign a letter, and also provides other disk management functions.
To create a RAID-5 volume: Select three destination disks to create the volume on. After you choose the disks, the wizard will calculate the maximum size of the resulting volume, depending on the size of the unallocated space on the disks you chose and the requirements of the volume type you have previously decided upon.
If you are creating a basic volume, which can be made into a system volume, this page will be different, giving you the opportunity to select the volume Type — Primary (Active Primary) or Logical. Typically Primary is selected to install an operating system to a volume. Select the Active (default) value if you want to install an operating system on this volume to boot at machine startup. If the Primary button is not selected, the Active option will be inactive.
10.7.3 Set active volume If you have several primary volumes, you must specify one to be the boot volume. For this, you can set a volume to become active. A disk can have only one active volume, so if you set a volume as active, the volume, which was active before, will be automatically unset. If you need to set a volume active: 1. Select a primary volume on a basic MBR disk to set as active. 2. Right-click on the selected volume, and then click Mark as active in the context menu.
an application volume, DATA — a data volume, etc., but it does not imply that only the type of data stated with the label could be stored on such a volume. In Windows, volume labels are shown in the Explorer disk and folder tree: LABEL1(C:), LABEL2(D:), LABEL3(E:), etc. LABEL1, LABEL2 and LABEL3 are volume labels. A volume label is shown in all application dialog boxes for opening and saving files. If you need to change a volume label: 1. Right-click on the selected volume, and then click Change label. 2.
10.8 Pending operations All operations, which were prepared by the user in manual mode or with the aid of a wizard, are considered pending until the user issues the specific command for the changes to be made permanent. Until then, Acronis Disk Director Lite will only demonstrate the new volume structure that will result from the operations that have been planned to be performed on disks and volumes.
11 Protecting applications with disk-level backup This section describes how to use a disk-level backup to protect applications running on Windows servers. This information is valid for both physical and virtual machines, no matter if the virtual machines are backed up at a hypervisor level or from inside a guest OS.
If the application databases are located on a number of machines, back up all of the machines on the same schedule. For example, include all of the SQL servers belonging to a SharePoint farm in a centralized backup plan running on a fixed schedule. Use Volume Shadow Copy (VSS) Microsoft Volume Shadow Copy Service (VSS) should be used to ensure consistency of the database files in the backup.
Other available solutions include: 1. Truncating the logs manually or by using a script. For more information, see "Truncating transaction logs" (p. 202) 2. For Microsoft Exchange Server, using the dedicated Agent for Exchange. 3. For Microsoft SQL Server, using Agent for SQL. Application-specific recommendations See "Best practices when backing up application servers" (p. 205). 11.1.1 Locating database files This section describes how to find application database files.
Determining locations of database files by using SQL Server Management Studio Default locations SQL Server database files are in their default locations unless you have customized the paths manually. To find out the default locations of database files: 1. Run Microsoft SQL Server Management Studio and connect to the necessary instance. 2. Right-click the instance name and select Properties. 3. Open the Database Settings page and view the paths specified in the Database default locations section.
Exchange 2003 1. Start Exchange System Manager. 2. Click Administrative Groups. Note: If Administrative Groups does not appear, it may not be turned on. To turn on Administrative Groups, right-click Exchange Organization, and then click Properties. Click to select the Display Administrative Groups check box. 3. To find out transaction log location, do the following: a. Right-click the storage group, and then click Properties. b. On the General tab you will see transaction log location. 4.
5. Repeat step 4 for other databases of the web application. 6. Repeat steps 3-5 for other web applications. 7. Use Microsoft SQL Server Management Studio to identify the database files. For detailed instructions, refer to "SQL Server database files" (p. 199). To find the configuration or service database files in SharePoint 2007 1. Open Central Administration site. 2. Select Application Management > Create or configure this farm's shared services. 3.
3. Switch the database back to the Full or Bulk-logged recovery model in the same manner as in step 1. Automating log truncation and shrinking You can automate the above truncation procedure by using a script and (optionally) add log file shrinking. If you add the script to the Post-backup command (p. 94), the logs will be truncated and shrunk immediately after a backup. This method assumes that you have Transact-SQL scripting skills and are familiar the sqlcmd utility.
11.1.2.2 Transaction log truncation for Exchange Server About Microsoft Exchange Server log Before committing a transaction to a database file, Exchange logs it to a transaction log file. To track which of the logged transactions have been committed to the database, Exchange uses checkpoint files. Once the transactions are committed to the database and tracked by the checkpoint files, the log files are no longer needed by the database.
committed to the database. Do not delete log files whose data has not been committed to the database, they are essential to recover the database consistency from unexpected shutdown. To delete the committed transaction logs 1. Determine which logs have been committed to the database by using the Eseutil tool: a. Execute the eseutil /mk command, where the is a path to the checkpoint file of the required database or the storage group. b.
verification can be time consuming. For information about using Eseutil /K, see: http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/bb123956(v=exchg.80). You can perform the consistency check before or after a backup. Before a backup. This ensures that you do not back up the damaged Exchange database files. a. Dismount the databases. b. Run Eseutil /K and review the verification results. c. If the databases are consistent, mount them again and run the backup. Otherwise, repair the damaged databases.
The Active Directory database and/or transaction logs were moved to a different location. An operating system on the domain controller was upgraded, or a service pack was installed. A hotfix that changes the Active Directory database was installed. The tombstone lifetime was changed administratively. The reason for this additional backup is that a successful recovery of Active Directory from the previous backups might not be possible. 11.1.3.
4. Select the required SQL Server database files and click Recover. By default, the data will be reverted to the state of the latest backup. If you need to select another point in time to revert the data to, use the Versions list. 5. On the recovery page under What to recover section: a. In Data paths, select Custom. b. In Browse, specify a folder where the files will be recovered to.
Details. When mounting an image in the "Read/write" mode, Acronis Backup creates a new incremental backup. We strongly recommend deleting this incremental backup. 11.2.3 Attaching SQL Server databases This section describes how to attach a database in SQL Server by using SQL Server Management Studio. Only one database can be attached at a time. Attaching a database requires any of the following permissions: CREATE DATABASE, CREATE ANY DATABASE, or ALTER ANY DATABASE.
To recover Exchange Server databases 1. 2. 3. 4. Connect the console to the machine on which you are going to perform the operation. Navigate to the vault containing the disk backup with the Exchange data files. Click the Data view tab. In the Show list, click Folders/files. Select the required Exchange database files and click Recover. By default, the data will be reverted to the state of the latest backup. If you need to select another point in time to revert the data to, use the Versions list. 5.
Exchange 2007: http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/aa997694(v=exchg.80) Exchange 2010: http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ee332351 Exchange 2003: http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/bb124427(v=exchg.65) 2. Recover the database files to the RDB/RSG folder structure. For information about recovering database files, see "Recovering Exchange Server database files from a disk backup" (p. 209). 3. Mount the recovery database.
All available backups are older than the tombstone lifetime. Tombstones are used during replication to ensure that an object deleted on one domain controller becomes deleted on other domain controllers. Thus, proper replication is not possible after the tombstones have been deleted. The domain controller held a Flexible Single Master Operations (FSMO) role, and you have assigned that role to a different domain controller (seized the role).
11.4.3 Restoring the Active Directory database If the Active Directory database files are corrupted but the domain controller is able to start in normal mode, you can restore the database in one of the following ways. Re-promoting the domain controller This method of restoring the database is available only if the domain has other domain controllers. It does not require having a backup.
11.4.4 Restoring accidentally deleted information If the domain has other domain controllers, you can use the Ntdsutil tool to perform an authoritative restore of certain entries only. For example, you can restore an unintentionally deleted user account or computer account. To restore accidentally deleted information 1. Perform steps 1–5 from "Restoring the Active Directory database" (p.
version on another. To prevent conflicts and loss of information, Active Directory tracks object versions on each domain controller and replaces the outdated versions with the up-to-date version. To track object versions, Active Directory uses numbers called Update Sequence Numbers (USNs). Newer versions of Active Directory objects correspond to higher USNs. Each domain controller keeps the USNs of all other domain controllers.
For more details about USNs and USN rollback, see the following Microsoft Technet article: http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/virtual_active_directory_domain_controller_virtualizatio n_hyperv.aspx. 11.5 Recovering SharePoint data Different SharePoint servers and databases are recovered in different way. To recover separate disks or volumes of a front-end Web server, you can either create a recovery task (p.
To recover a content database to the original SQL server 1. If the Windows SharePoint Services Timer service is running, stop the service and wait for a few minutes for any running stored procedures to complete. Do not restart the service until you have recovered all the databases that you need to recover. 2. If you are recovering the database to the original location on the disk, do the following: a. Bring the destination database offline. b.
2. On the server that is running the Central Administration site, run the following command: iisreset /stop 3. Recover the database files as described in "Recovering SQL Server databases from a disk backup" (p. 207). 4. Start the SharePoint services that were stopped earlier.
To use the tool, you need a working SharePoint farm. You must also purchase an Acronis Backup license that supports SharePoint backups. To access Acronis SharePoint Explorer, click Extract SharePoint Data on the Tools menu of Acronis Backup Management Console. For information about the tool, see its documentation: http://www.acronis.eu/support/documentation/ASPE/. Attaching the content database to a non-original SharePoint farm (for example, to a SharePoint recovery farm).
12 Administering a managed machine This section describes the views that are available through the navigation tree of the console connected to a managed machine and explains how to work with each view. This section also covers supplementary operations that can be performed on a managed machine, such as changing a license, adjusting Machine options, and collecting system information. 12.1 Backup plans and tasks The Backup plans and tasks view keeps you informed of data protection on a given machine.
To Do View details of a plan/task Click Details. In the respective Plan Details (p. 229) or Task Details (p. 230) window, review the plan or task details. View plan's/task's log Click Log. You will be taken to the Log (p. 230) view containing the list of the log entries grouped by the plan/task-related activities. Run a plan/task Backup plan 1. Click Run. 2. In the drop-down list, select the plan's task you need run.
To Do Edit a plan/task Click Edit. Backup plan editing is performed in the same way as creation (p. 35), except for the following limitations: It is not always possible to use all scheme options, when editing a backup plan if the created archive is not empty (i.e. contains backups). 1. It is not possible to change the scheme to Grandfather-Father-Son or Tower of Hanoi. 2. If the Tower of Hanoi scheme is used, it is not possible to change the number of levels.
State 2 Running How it is determined At least one task is running. How to handle No action is required. Otherwise, see 3. 3 Waiting At least one task is waiting. Otherwise, see 4. Waiting for condition. This situation is quite normal, but delaying a backup for too long is risky. The solution may be to set the maximum delay (p. 98) after which the task will start anyway or force the condition (tell the user to log off, enable the required network connection.
Running A task changes to the Running state when the event specified by the schedule occurs AND all the conditions set in the backup plan are met AND no other task that locks the necessary resources is running. In this case, nothing prevents the task from running. Waiting A task changes to the Waiting state when the task is about to start, but another task using the same resources is already running. In particular, more than one backup tasks cannot run simultaneously on a machine.
Export the backup plans before reinstalling the agent and import them after reinstalling. Deploying of a backup plan to multiple machines You want to use the same backup plan on multiple machines. Export this plan from one of the machines and deploy it as a file (p. 227) to the other machines.
To change the encrypted password 1. In the command line, run the acronis_encrypt utility: acronis_encrypt UserPassword#1 (here UserPassword#1 is the password you want to encrypt). 2. The utility outputs a string, for example "XXXYYYZZZ888". 3. Copy this string and paste it into the tag as follows: XXXYYYZZZ888 The acronis_encrypt utility is available on any machine where Acronis Backup Management Console or Acronis Backup command-line utility (acrocmd) is installed.
1. Add the tag with "disks" or "files" value, depending on the type of the template you need. 2. Add the tag. 3. Inside the tag, add the with the required template. The template must correspond to the directly specified item. For example, if the specified item has the "disks" value, you can use the [SYSTEM], [BOOT] and [Fixed Volumes] templates; but you cannot use the [All Files] or [All Profiles Folder] templates.
folder, the agent imports the backup plan from that file. If you change (or delete) an .xml file in the dedicated folder, the agent automatically changes (or deletes) the appropriate backup plan. Editing the export file A backup plan imported in such way cannot be edited through the graphical user interface. You can edit the export file (p. 225) with a text editor either before or after the deployment.
12.1.5 Backup plan details The Backup plan details window (also duplicated on the Information panel) aggregates all information on the selected backup plan. The respective message will appear at the top of the tabs, if execution of the plan requires user interaction. The message contains a brief description of the problem and action buttons that let you select the appropriate action or stop the plan.
Name - name of the archive. Location - name of the vault or path to the folder, where the archive is stored. Archive comments - comments on the archive (if provided). 2nd, 3rd, 4th, 5th location - names of the locations to which the archive was copied or moved (if specified in the backup plan). Settings The Settings tab displays the following information: Backup scheme - the selected backup scheme and all its settings with schedules.
To Do Select multiple log entries non-contiguous: hold down CTRL and click the log entries one by one contiguous: select a single log entry, then hold down SHIFT and click another log entry. All the log entries between the first and last selections will be selected too. View a log entry’s details 1. Select a log entry. 2. Do one of the following: Double click the selection. Click Details. The log entry's details will be displayed.
Code - It can be blank or the program error code if the event type is error. Error code is an integer number that may be used by Acronis support service to solve the problem. Module - It can be blank or the number of the program module where the event has occurred. It is an integer number that may be used by Acronis support service to solve the problem. Owner - The user name of the backup plan owner (p. 22). Message - The event text description.
12.4 Changing a license By changing the license, you switch a product from trial mode to full mode or switch to a different product. The following table summarizes the available options. Switching a license Why you may need it Trial > Full After trying the product, you decided to buy a license. Full > Full, different product You want to upgrade from Acronis Backup to Acronis Backup Advanced in order to use the centralized management capability.
12.6 Adjusting machine options The machine options define the general behavior of all Acronis Backup agents operating on the managed machine, and so the options are considered machine-specific. To access the machine options, connect the console to the managed machine and then select Options > Machine options from the top menu. 12.6.1 Additional settings Specify what to do if the machine is about to be shut down while a task is running This option is effective only for Windows operating systems.
When enabled, you can specify the keeping period for the accepted alerts. The accepted alerts older than this period will be deleted from the table automatically. Automatically move inactive alerts to "Accepted alerts" This option defines whether to accept all the alerts that become inactive and move them to the Accepted alerts table automatically. The preset is: Disabled. When enabled, you can specify the alert types to apply this option to. 12.6.3.
b. Use encryption – you can opt for encrypted connection to the mail server. SSL and TLS encryption types are available for selection. c. Some Internet service providers require authentication on the incoming mail server before being allowed to send something. If this is your case, select the Log on to incoming mail server check box to enable a POP server and to set up its settings: Incoming mail server (POP) – enter the name of the POP server. Port – set the port of the POP server.
This option is not available when operating under the bootable media. The option defines whether the agent(s) operating on the managed machine have to send the log events to the specified Simple Network Management Protocol (SNMP) managers. You can choose the types of events to be sent. You can override the settings set here, exclusively for the events that occur during backup or during recovery, in the Default backup and recovery options.
Linux To receive SNMP messages on a machine running Linux, the net-snmp (for RHEL and SUSE) or the snmpd (for Debian) package has to be installed. SNMP can be configured using the snmpconf command. The default configuration files are located in the /etc/snmp directory: /etc/snmp/snmpd.conf - configuration file for the Net-SNMP SNMP agent /etc/snmp/snmptrapd.conf - configuration file for the Net-SNMP trap daemon. 12.6.5.3 Windows event log This option is effective only in Windows operating systems.
When the option is enabled, the program compares the actual log size with the maximum size after every 100 log entries. Once the maximum log size is exceeded, the program deletes the oldest log entries. You can select the amount of log entries to retain. The default 95% setting will keep most of the log. With the minimum 1% setting, the log will be nearly cleared. This parameter can also be set by using Acronis Administrative Template. 12.6.
13 Cloud backup This section provides details about using the Acronis Cloud Backup service. This service enables you to back up your data to Acronis Cloud Storage. Acronis Cloud Backup might be unavailable in your region. To find more information, click here: http://www.acronis.eu/my/cloud-backup/corporate To configure backup to the cloud storage or recovery from the storage, follow the regular steps described in the corresponding sections: Creating a backup plan (p.
Example You might want to use the following backup strategy for a file server. Back up the critical files twice a day on a schedule. Set the retention rule "Delete backups older than" 7 days. This means that after every backup the software will check for backups older than 7 days and delete them automatically. Run backup of the server's system volume manually as required. For example, after the operating system updates. Manually delete the backups that you do not need. 13.1.
Before installing the product on a system that does not use RPM Package Manager, such as an Ubuntu system, you need to install this manager manually; for example, by running the following command (as the root user): apt-get install rpm Workstation operating systems Windows XP Professional SP2+ (x86, x64) Windows Vista – all editions except for Vista Home Basic and Vista Home Premium (x86, x64) Windows 7 – all editions except for the Starter and Home editions (x86, x64) Windows 8/8.
Retrieving files (p. 256) from file-level backups by using a web browser. To do this, you only need a machine with Internet access. 13.1.6.3 Is the cloud storage available under Acronis bootable media? Recovery from Acronis Cloud Storage is available but backup to the storage is not. 13.1.6.4 What if a network connection is lost during cloud backup or recovery? The software will try to reach the cloud storage every 30 seconds.
13.1.7.1 What is Initial Seeding? Initial Seeding is an extra service that lets you save an initial full backup locally and then send it to Acronis on a hard disk drive. Acronis uploads the backup to the cloud storage. After that, you can add incremental backups to this full backup, either manually or on a schedule. The hard disk drive is sent back to you but it is not possible to recover from it. However, recovery from a locally attached device is possible with the Large scale recovery (p. 249) option.
13.1.7.8 How do I perform initial seeding? Preparing 1. Ensure that you have activated an Acronis Cloud Backup subscription on the machine where you will do initial seeding (skip this step if you have a volume subscription). 2. If you are currently using a trial subscription, ensure that you also have a paid subscription available and assigned to this machine. Do not use the Initial Seeding service if you do not have a paid subscription. 3. Decide on the media (p. 244) that you will send. 4.
Hard drive types Acronis accepts hard disk drives of the following interface types: IDE, ATA, SATA, USB connected drives. SCSI drives are not accepted. Packaging If possible, use the original packaging. Otherwise, packaging materials can be obtained at any shipping outlet or stationary store. You should also include all necessary cables or adapters to the drive. Acronis will not be able to process your initial seeding request if there are no cables included.
Step 4 Using the website of the shipping company that you chose, prepare and print two prepaid shipping labels: 1. Shipping label for sending your hard drive. This label is placed on the top of the box. You should send your package to one of the Acronis data centers. The data center address can be obtained on the Initial seeding / Recovery tab of your account management page by clicking Datacenter address.
Step 5 Securely seal the box with a sturdy tape. Then, stick the shipping label for sending your hard drive to the top of the box, so the label does not wrap around the edge of the package. 13.1.7.10 How do I track an Initial Seeding order status? On the Acronis website, the Initial Seeding / Recovery tab shows you the status of all your orders. In addition, you will receive e-mail notifications about the most important events. Available – The license is available for using on any machine.
specified). If a prepaid shipping label was not provided with the media, the media will be discarded. [Occasional] The order is on hold – Your order was placed on hold due to technical difficulties processing the order. Acronis is working on resolving these issues. [Occasional] The order has been cancelled – The order had been cancelled before the media was shipped, so returning the media is not required. [Occasional] The order has been cancelled.
13.1.8.7 How to buy a Large Scale Recovery license? You can buy a Large Scale Recovery license from an Acronis partner or from the Acronis online store. Having purchased a license from an Acronis partner, you receive a confirmation e-mail with a registration code. Log in to your Acronis account and enter the registration code in the product registration section. The registered license appears on the Initial Seeding / Recovery tab on your account management webpage.
13.1.9.1 How do I access my account management webpage? Go to http://www.acronis.eu/my/cloud-backup/corporate and log in to your account (create one if you are not registered). To access this webpage from Acronis Backup: 1. On the Actions menu, click Back up now or Create backup plan. 2. Click Location, and then click Buy or manage your subscriptions. 3. Log in to your account (create one if you are not registered). 13.1.9.
A subscription for virtual machines (now deprecated) can be renewed to a server subscription or to a volume subscription. Volume subscriptions To renew a volume subscription, go to the account management webpage, click Renew next to the volume subscription, and then follow the on-screen instructions. The new expiration date will appear in the Expires column. If the new subscription has the same storage quota as the old one, the subscription periods will be added together.
13.1.9.8 Can I cancel my subscription? Just wait until the subscription expires. Refunds are not available for the cloud backup subscriptions. 13.2 Where do I start? Go to http://www.acronis.eu/my/cloud-backup/corporate and log in to your account (create one if you are not registered). This is your account management webpage. Here you can get a trial subscription, locate an Acronis partner or buy subscriptions online.
account (create one if you are not registered yet). A trial subscription will be automatically created and assigned to the machine. 13.4 Activating cloud backup subscriptions Activating a subscription on a machine means allowing the machine to back up to the cloud storage. A volume subscription is activated automatically as soon as you start backing up the machine to Acronis Cloud Storage.
Example The diagram below shows what happens if you reassign a subscription to a different machine. Let's assume Machine 1 has four backups in Subscription 1. Machine 2 has two backups in Subscription 2. At that point, you reassign Subscription 1 to Machine 2. Machine 2 does its third backup to Subscription 1. Depending on your settings, this backup will be either full or incremental. But its size is not likely to be less than a full backup size.
2. On the Options menu, click Machine options. 3. Click Cloud backup proxy. 4. Enter the proxy server settings. For detailed information (p. 239) about the settings please refer to the context-sensitive help. 13.6 Retrieving files from the cloud storage by using a web browser By using a web browser, you can browse Acronis Cloud Storage, view contents of file-level archives, and download the selected files and folders.
13.7 Limitations of the cloud storage Unlike other types of storage available in Acronis Backup, the cloud storage has the following limitations. Operations The following operations are not possible.
Assign a subscription to a machine Reserve a subscription for a particular machine in order to renew its current subscription. Assigned subscription A subscription that has been assigned to a machine. Available subscription A subscription that is not assigned to any machine. Extra service A service that you can use in addition to cloud backup subscriptions. Increase storage quota Replace a subscription with another one that has a greater storage quota.
Renew a subscription Assign a subscription of the same type and with the same or a larger storage quota as the current, activated subscription. This subscription will become activated as soon as the current subscription expires. Storage quota The amount of storage space that can be occupied according to the subscription. Subscription Permission for a machine or for multiple machines to use a specific amount of space in the cloud storage, for a specific period of time.
14 Glossary A Acronis Active Restore The Acronis proprietary technology that brings a system online immediately after the system recovery is started. The system boots from the backup (p. 266) and the machine becomes operational and ready to provide necessary services. The data required to serve incoming requests is recovered with the highest priority; everything else is recovered in the background.
Acronis Universal Restore The Acronis proprietary technology that helps boot up Windows or Linux on dissimilar hardware or a virtual machine. Universal Restore handles differences in devices that are critical for the operating system start-up, such as storage controllers, motherboard or chipset. Universal Restore is not available: when the image being recovered is located in Acronis Secure Zone (p. 260) or when using Acronis Active Restore (p.
Backup options Configuration parameters of a backup operation (p. 261), such as pre/post backup commands, maximum network bandwidth allotted for the backup stream or data compression level. Backup options are a part of a backup plan (p. 262). Backup plan (Plan) A set of rules that specify how the given data will be protected on a given machine. A backup plan specifies: what data to back up [optionally] additional operations to perform with the backups (replication (p. 271), validation (p.
Bootable media A physical media (CD, DVD, USB flash drive or other media supported by a machine (p. 269) as a boot device) that contains the bootable agent (p. 262) or Windows Preinstallation Environment (WinPE) (p. 273) with the Acronis Plug-in for WinPE (p. 260). A machine can also be booted into the above environments using the network boot from Acronis PXE Server or Windows Deployment Service (WDS). These servers with uploaded bootable components can also be thought of as a kind of bootable media.
creating and managing centralized vaults (p. 264) for storing archives managing storage nodes (p. 271) monitoring activities of the Acronis Backup components, creating reports, viewing the centralized log and more. Centralized task A task (p. 272) propagated to a machine from the management server (p. 270). Such task can be modified only by editing the original task or centralized backup plan (p. 263) on the management server.
the next incremental (p. 268) one. The backups will be combined into a single full backup which will be dated with the incremental backup's date. Since consolidation may take a lot of time and system resources, retention rules provide an option to not delete backups with dependencies. In our example, the full backup will be retained until the incremental one also becomes obsolete. Then both backups will be deleted.
disk management operations, such as clone a disk, create volume, convert volume. A kind of direct management is performed when using bootable media (p. 262). Disaster recovery plan (DRP) A document that contains a list of backed up data items and detailed instructions on how to recover these items from a backup. If the corresponding backup option (p.
dynamic volumes' configuration. Each dynamic disk holds the complete information about all dynamic volumes existing in the disk group which makes for better storage reliability. The database occupies the last 1MB of an MBR disk. On a GPT disk, Windows creates the dedicated LDM Metadata partition, taking space from the Microsoft Reserved Partition (MSR.
E Encrypted archive A backup archive (p. 261) encrypted according to the Advanced Encryption Standard (AES). When the encryption option and a password for the archive are set in the backup options (p. 261), each backup belonging to the archive is encrypted by the agent (p. 261) before saving the backup to its destination. Encrypted vault A managed vault (p. 269) to which anything written is encrypted and anything read is decrypted transparently by the storage node (p.
Indexing An activity (p. 261) performed by a storage node (p. 271) after a backup (p. 261) has been saved to a deduplicating vault (p. 265). During indexing, the storage node performs the following operations: Moves data blocks from the backup to a special file within the vault. This file is called the deduplication data store.
Managed vault A centralized vault (p. 264) managed by a storage node (p. 271). Archives (p. 261) in a managed vault can be accessed as follows: bsp://node_address/vault_name/archive_name/ Physically, managed vaults can reside on a network share, SAN, NAS, on a hard drive local to the storage node or on a tape library locally attached to the storage node. The storage node performs cleanup (p. 264) and validation (p. 272) for each archive stored in the managed vault.
Registered machine A machine (p. 269) managed by a management server (p. 270). A machine can be registered on only one management server at a time. A machine becomes registered as a result of the registration (p. 271) procedure. Registration A procedure that adds a managed machine (p. 269) to a management server (p. 270). Registration sets up a trust relationship between the agent (p. 261) residing on the machine and the server.
relieve managed machines (p. 269) of unnecessary CPU load by performing cleanup (p. 264), validation (p. 272) and other operations with backup archives (p. 261) which otherwise would be performed by agents (p. 261) drastically reduce backup traffic and storage space taken by the archives (p. 261) by using deduplication (p. 265) prevent access to the backup archives, even in case the storage medium is stolen or accessed by a malefactor, by using encrypted vaults (p. 268).
Virtual machine On Acronis Backup Management Server (p. 270), a machine (p. 269) is considered virtual if it can be backed up from the virtualization host without installing an agent (p. 261) on the machine. Such machine appears in the Virtual machines section. If an agent is installed into the guest system, the machine appears in the Machines with agents section.
