Acronis® Backup & Recovery ™ 10 Advanced Server Update 3 User's Guide
Copyright © Acronis, Inc., 2000-2010. All rights reserved. “Acronis” and “Acronis Secure Zone” are registered trademarks of Acronis, Inc. "Acronis Compute with Confidence", “Acronis Startup Recovery Manager”, “Acronis Active Restore” and the Acronis logo are trademarks of Acronis, Inc. Linux is a registered trademark of Linus Torvalds. VMware and VMware Ready are trademarks and/or registered trademarks of VMware, Inc. in the United States and/or other jurisdictions.
Table of contents 1 Introducing Acronis® Backup & Recovery™ 10 ......................................................................... 8 1.1 Acronis Backup & Recovery 10 overview .................................................................................. 8 1.2 Getting started ........................................................................................................................... 9 1.2.1 1.3 Acronis Backup & Recovery 10 components ...........................................
2.14.4 2.14.5 2.14.6 2.14.7 2.14.8 3 Options.................................................................................................................................. 89 3.1 Console options .......................................................................................................................89 3.1.1 3.1.2 3.1.3 3.1.4 3.1.5 3.2 3.3 Machine management ...............................................................................................................................
.7 Conditions ............................................................................................................................. 179 5.7.1 5.7.2 5.7.3 5.7.4 5.7.5 6 User is idle................................................................................................................................................ 180 Location's host is available ......................................................................................................................
.7.1 6.7.2 6.7.3 6.7.4 6.7.5 6.7.6 6.8 Acronis Secure Zone ............................................................................................................. 257 6.8.1 6.8.2 6.9 Task credentials ....................................................................................................................................... 253 Archive selection .....................................................................................................................................
8.1.1 8.1.2 8.1.3 8.1.4 8.1.5 8.1.6 8.1.7 8.1.8 8.1.9 8.2 Where do I start? .................................................................................................................. 390 8.3 Choosing a subscription ........................................................................................................ 390 8.4 Activating online backup subscriptions ................................................................................ 391 8.4.1 8.4.
1 Introducing Acronis® Backup & Recovery™ 10 1.1 Acronis Backup & Recovery 10 overview Based on Acronis’ patented disk imaging and bare metal restore technologies, Acronis Backup & Recovery 10 succeeds Acronis True Image Echo as the next generation disaster recovery solution.
Controlling user rights to perform operations and access backups Running services with minimal user rights Restricted remote access to a backup agent Secure communication between the product components Using third-party certificates for authentication of the components Data encryption options for both data transmission and storage Backup of remote machines to a centralized storage node behind firewalls. 1.2 Getting started Direct management 1.
4. Start the console. Create the bootable media. 5. Connect the console to the management server. The simplified way of centralized management Backup Using the Back up control, select the machine which you want to back up and then create a backup plan (p. 399) on the machine. You can create backup plans on multiple machines in turn. Recovery Using the Recover control, select the machine where the data recovery is required and create a recovery task on the machine.
Creating a backup policy rather than backup plans Set up a centralized backup policy and apply it to the All machines group. This way you will deploy backup plans on each machine with a single action. Select Actions > Create backup policy from the top menu and then refer to the context help. Grouping the machines registered on the management server Group the registered machines by appropriate parameters, create several policies and apply each policy to the appropriate group of machines.
Navigation pane Contains the Navigation tree and the Shortcuts bar and lets you navigate to the different views (see the Navigation pane (p. 12) section.) Actions and tools pane Contains bars with a set of actions that can be performed and tools (see the Actions and Tools pane (p. 13) section). Main area The main place of working, where you create, edit and manage backup plans, policies, tasks and perform other operations. Displays the different views and action pages (p.
Dashboard. Use this view to estimate at a glance whether the data is successfully protected on the machines registered on the management server. Backup policies. Use this view to manage backup policies existing on the management server. Physical machines. Use this view to manage machines registered on the management server. Virtual machines. Use this view to manage virtual machines from the registered physical machines and from the registered machines with the agent for ESX/ESXi. Vaults.
All actions can also be accessed in the respective menu items. A menu item appears on the menu bar when you select an item in any of the navigation views. Examples of "'Item name' actions" bars Actions Contains a list of common operations that can be performed on a managed machine or on a management server. Always the same for all views. Clicking the operation opens the respective action page (see the Action pages (p. 16) section.) All the actions can also be accessed in the Actions menu.
Help Contains a list of help topics. Different views and action pages of Acronis Backup & Recovery 10 provided with lists of specific help topics. 1.2.1.3 Operations with panes How to expand/minimize panes By default, the Navigation pane appears expanded and the Actions and Tools - minimized. You might need to minimize the pane in order to free some additional workspace. To do this, click the chevron ( - for the Navigation pane; - for the Actions and tools pane).
"Tasks" view Common way of working with views Generally, every view contains a table of items, a table toolbar with buttons, and the Information panel. Use filtering and sorting capabilities to search the table for the item in question In the table, select the desired item In the Information panel (collapsed by default), view the item's details Perform actions on the selected item.
Action page - Create backup plan Using controls and specifying settings The action pages offer two ways of representation: basic and advanced. The basic representation hides such fields as credentials, comments, etc. When the advanced representation is enabled, all the available fields are displayed. You can switch between the views by selecting the Advanced view check box at the top of the action page. Most settings are configured by clicking the respective Change… links to the right.
Navigation buttons 1.3 Acronis Backup & Recovery 10 components This section contains a full list of Acronis Backup & Recovery 10 components with a brief description of their functionality. Acronis Backup & Recovery 10 includes the following main types of components. Components for a managed machine (agents) These are applications that perform data backup, recovery and other operations on the machines managed with Acronis Backup & Recovery 10.
File backup File-level data protection is based on backing up files and folders residing on the machine where the agent is installed or on a network share. Files can be recovered to their original location or to another place. It is possible to recover all files and folders that were backed up or select which of them to recover.
recovered to their original location or to another place. It is possible to recover all files and directories that were backed up or select which of them to recover. 1.3.2.1 Deduplication This add-on enables the agent to back up data to deduplicating vaults managed by Acronis Backup & Recovery 10 Storage Node. 1.3.3 Components for centralized management This section lists the components included in the Acronis Backup & Recovery 10 editions that provide the centralized management capability.
VMware vCenter integration This feature provides the capability to view virtual machines managed by a VMware vCenter Server in the management server GUI, view the backup status of these machines in the vCenter, and automatically register virtual machines created by Acronis Backup & Recovery 10 in the vCenter. Integration is available in all Acronis Backup & Recovery 10 advanced editions; a license for Virtual Edition is not required. No software installation is required on the vCenter Server.
Deduplication A managed vault can be configured as a deduplicating vault. This means that identical data will be backed up to this vault only once to minimize the network usage during backup and storage space taken by the archives. For more information, please see the "Deduplication (p. 71)" section in the User Guide.
The media builder that installs on Windows can create bootable media based on either Windows Preinstallation Environment, or Linux kernel. The Universal Restore (p. 19) add-on enables you to create bootable media with the restore to dissimilar hardware functionality. Universal Restore handles differences in devices that are critical for Windows start-up, such as storage controllers, motherboard or chipset. The media builder that installs on Linux creates bootable media based on Linux kernel.
Windows Server 2008 - the Standard, Enterprise, Small Business Server, Foundation editions (x86, x64) Windows Server 2008 R2 - the Standard, Enterprise, Small Business Server, Datacenter, Foundation editions Windows MultiPoint Server 2010 Acronis Backup & Recovery 10 Management Console Windows XP Professional SP2+ (x86, x64) Windows 2000 – all editions except for the Datacenter edition Windows Server 2003/2003 R2 - the Standard, Enterprise, Small Business Server editions (x86, x64)
Windows Server 2008 - the Standard, Enterprise, Small Business Server, Foundation editions (x86, x64) Windows Server 2008 R2 - the Standard, Enterprise, Small Business Server, Datacenter, Foundation editions Windows MultiPoint Server 2010 Acronis Backup & Recovery 10 Agent for Linux Linux with kernel 2.4.20 or later (including 2.6.x kernels) and glibc 2.3.2 or later Various 32-bit and 64-bit Linux distributions, including: Red Hat Enterprise Linux 4.x and 5.x Ubuntu 9.
Management Console 30 MB 950 MB 450 MB Management Server 40 MB 250 MB 250 MB 400 MB for SQL Express Server 400 MB for SQL Express Server Wake-on-LAN Proxy Negligible 30 MB 5 MB Storage Node 100 MB 150 MB 150 MB When using a tape library, space required for tapes database: approx.
2 Understanding Acronis Backup & Recovery 10 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. 2.1 Basic concepts Please familiarize yourself with the basic notions used in the Acronis Backup & Recovery 10 graphical user interface and documentation. Advanced users are welcome to use this section as a step-by-step quick start guide. The details can be found in the context help.
The following diagram illustrates the notions discussed above. For more definitions please refer to the Glossary. 28 Copyright © Acronis, Inc.
Backup using bootable media You can boot the machine using the bootable media, configure the backup operation in the same way as a simple backup plan and execute the operation. This will help you extract files and logical volumes from a system that failed to boot, take an image of the offline system or back up sector-bysector an unsupported file system. Recovery under operating system When it comes to data recovery, you create a recovery task on the managed machine.
The following diagram illustrates data recovery under the operating system (online). No backup can proceed on the machine while the recovery operation is taking place. If required, you can connect the console to another machine and configure a recovery operation on that machine. This ability (remote parallel recovery) first appeared in Acronis Backup & Recovery 10; the previous Acronis products do not provide it.
If the machine fails to boot or you need to recover data to bare metal, you boot the machine using the bootable media and configure the recovery operation in the same way as the recovery task. The following diagram illustrates the recovery using the bootable media. 2.2 User privileges on a managed machine Windows When managing a machine running Windows, the scope of a user's management rights depends on the user's privileges on the machine.
Members of the Administrators group also can: View and manage backup plans and tasks owned by any user on the machine. Linux When managing a machine running Linux, the user has or obtains the root privileges, and so can: Back up and recover any data or the entire machine, having full control over all Acronis Backup & Recovery 10 agent operations and log files on the machine. Manage local backup plans and tasks owned by any user registered in the operating system.
You can skip the Plan's (Task) credentials step. Every time you start the task, the task will run under the credentials with which you are currently logged on. Any person that has administrative privileges on the machine can also start the task. The task will run under this person's credentials. The task will always run under the same credentials, regardless of the user who actually starts the task, if you specify the task credentials explicitly. To do so, on the plan (task) creation page: 1.
Example: An Internet cafe, school or university lab where the administrator often undoes changes made by the students or guests but rarely updates the reference backup (in fact, after installing software updates only). The backup time is not crucial in this case and the recovery time will be minimal when recovering the systems from the full backup. The administrator can have several copies of the full backup for additional reliability.
2.5 GFS backup scheme This section covers implementation of the Grandfather-Father-Son (GFS) backup scheme in Acronis Backup & Recovery 10. With this backup scheme you are not allowed to back up more often than once a day. The scheme enables you to mark out the daily, weekly and monthly cycles in your daily backup schedule and set the retention periods for the daily, monthly and weekly backups.
Select a day of the week from the days selected in the previous step. Each 1st, 2nd and 3rd backup created on this day of the week will be considered as a weekly backup. Each 4th backup created on this day of the week will be considered as a monthly backup. Backups created on the other days will be considered as daily backups. Assume you select Friday for Weekly/Monthly backup. Here is the total schedule marked out according to the selection. “D” stands for the backup that is considered Daily.
The resulting archive: ideal Assume you select to keep daily backups for 7 days, weekly backups for 2 weeks and monthly backups for 6 months. Here is how your archive would appear after the backup plan is launched if all the backups were full and so could be deleted as soon as the scheme requires. The left column shows days of the week. For each day of the week, the content of the archive after the regular backup and the subsequent cleanup is shown. “D” stands for the backup that is considered Daily.
When using the incremental and differential backup methods, you cannot delete a backup as soon as the scheme requires if later backups are based on this backup. Regular consolidation is unacceptable because it takes too much system resources. The program has to wait until the scheme requires the deletion of all the dependent backups and then deletes the entire chain. Here is how the first month of your backup plan will appear in real life. “F” stands for full backup. “Dif” stands for differential backup.
Tower of Hanoi overview The Tower of Hanoi scheme is based on a mathematical puzzle of the same name. In the puzzle a series of rings are stacked in size order, the largest on the bottom, on one of three pegs. The goal is to move the ring series to the third peg. You are only allowed to move one ring at a time, and are prohibited from placing a larger ring above a smaller ring. The solution is to shift the first ring every other move (moves 1, 3, 5, 7, 9, 11...
up to 16 backup levels full backups on the last level (E for five-level pattern) - the rarest backups in the scheme, take more time and occupy more space in storage differential backups on all intermediate levels (B, C and D for five-level pattern) an old backup on a level is kept until a new backup has been successfully created on the level.
2.7 Retention rules The backups produced by a backup plan make an archive. The two retention rules described in this section enable you to limit the archive size and set the lifetime (retention period) of the backups. 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.
There is a certain risk that all but one backup will be deleted if the maximum archive size is set improperly (too small) or a regular backup turns out to be too large. To protect the recent backups from deletion, select the Never delete backups younger than check box and specify the maximum age of backups that must be retained. The diagram below illustrates the resulting rule. Combination of rules 1 and 2 You can limit both the backups’ lifetime and the archive size.
The outdated backup will be kept until all backups that depend on it also become outdated. Then all the chain will be deleted at once during the regular cleanup. This mode helps to avoid the potentially time-consuming consolidation but requires extra space for storing backups whose deletion is postponed. The archive size and/or the backup age can exceed the values you specify. Consolidate the backup The program will consolidate the backup that is subject to deletion with the next dependent backup.
Backing up dynamic volumes Dynamic and basic GPT volumes are backed up in the same way as basic MBR volumes. When creating a backup plan through the GUI, all types of volumes are available for selection as Items to back up. When using the command line, specify the dynamic and GPT volumes with the DYN prefix. Command line examples trueimagecmd /create /partition:DYN1,DYN2 /asz This will back up DYN1 and DYN2 volumes to the Acronis Secure Zone.
Recovered to: Dynamic volume Basic MBR volume Basic GPT volume Dynamic volume Type as of the target Dynamic volume Simple Dynamic volume Type as of the target N/A Basic MBR volume Dynamic volume Type as of the target Dynamic volume Type as of the source Basic MBR volume Basic MBR volume Basic MBR volume Basic GPT volume Basic GPT volume Basic GPT volume Basic GPT volume Unallocated space (basic MBR disk) Basic MBR volume Basic MBR volume Basic MBR volume Unallocated space (basic GPT disk)
To back up all available disks, specify all logical volumes plus basic volumes not belonging to them. This is the default choice when you open the Create backup plan page. Basic volumes included in logical volumes are shown in the list with None in the File system column. If you select such volumes, the program will back them up sector-by-sector. Normally it is not required. Recovery When recovering logical volumes, you have two options: Recovering volume contents only.
For information about assembling MD devices when performing recovery in Linux, see Assembling MD devices for recovery (Linux) (p. 241). 2.9.
Num ---Disk 1-1 1-2 1-3 Partition -------------------1 (sda): sda1 sda2 sda3 Unallocated 1-4 Acronis Secure Zone Unallocated Disk 2 (sdb): 2-1 sdb1 2-2 sdb2 Unallocated Disk 3 (sdc): Table Unallocated Disk 4 (sdd): 4-1 sdd1 4-2 sdd2 Unallocated Dynamic & GPT Volumes: DYN1 VolGroup00-LogVol00 DYN2 md0 Flags Start Size Type ----------- ---------- ---------- ----------Pri,Act Pri Pri 63 417690 24997140 27101655 32499495 33543720 208813 12289725 1052257 2698920 522112 5356 Ext2 ReiserFS Linux Swap Unalloc
2.11 Tape support Acronis Backup & Recovery 10 supports tape libraries, autoloaders, SCSI and USB tape drives as storage devices. A tape device can be locally attached to a managed machine (in this case, the Acronis Backup & Recovery 10 Agent writes and reads the tapes) or accessed through the Acronis Backup & Recovery 10 Storage Node (p. 21). Storage nodes ensure fully automatic operation of tape libraries and autoloaders (p. 138).
Backup to a locally attached tape device When creating a backup plan, you are able to select the locally attached tape device as the backup destination. An archive name is not needed when backing up to a tape. An archive can span multiple tapes but can contain only one full backup and an unlimited number of incremental backups. Every time you create a full backup, you start with a new tape and create a new archive. As soon as the tape is full, a dialog window with a request to insert a new tape will appear.
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 & Recovery 10 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.
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. In enterprise environments, Acronis Secure Zone can be thought of as an intermediate location used for backup when an ordinary location is temporarily unavailable or connected through a slow or busy channel.
to start the bootable rescue utility. This feature has the trade name "Acronis Startup Recovery Manager". Acronis Startup Recovery Manager is especially useful for mobile users. If a failure occurs, the user reboots the machine, hits F11 on prompt "Press F11 for Acronis Startup Recovery Manager…" and performs data recovery in the same way as with ordinary bootable media. The user can also back up using Acronis Startup Recovery Manager, while on the move.
The Universal Restore technology provides an efficient solution for hardware-independent system recovery by replacing the crucial Hardware Abstraction Layer (HAL) and mass storage device drivers. Universal Restore is applicable for: 1. Instant recovery of a failed system on different hardware. 2. Hardware-independent cloning and deployment of operating systems. 3. Physical-to-physical, physical-to-virtual and virtual-to-physical machine migration. The Universal Restore principles 1.
Getting Universal Restore Universal Restore comes free with Acronis Backup & Recovery 10 Advanced Server SBS Edition and Acronis Backup & Recovery 10 Advanced Server Virtual Edition. Universal Restore for the other product editions is purchased separately, has its own license, and is installed as a separate feature from the setup file. You need to re-create bootable media to make the newly installed add-on operational in the bootable environment. 2.13.
multimedia files. Some of these storage volumes can be extremely large as compared to the system and so practically all the recovery time will be dedicated to recovering the files, which might be used much later on, if in any near future at all. If you opt for Acronis Active Restore, the system will be operational in a short time.
2.14.1 Basic concepts Applying backup policies and tracking their execution To protect data on a single machine, you install on the machine an agent (p. 398) or multiple agents for various data types you want to protect. You connect the console to the machine and create a backup plan (p. 399) or multiple backup plans.
More than one storage node, each managing a number of vaults, can be set up and controlled centrally from the Acronis Backup & Recovery 10 Management Server. For more detailed information about storage nodes please refer to Acronis Backup & Recovery 10 Storage Node (p. 21). 2.14.2 Setting up centralized data protection in a heterogeneous network Assume that the network infrastructure includes servers (1, 2, 9) and workstations (3, 5-8) running Windows and Linux.
When installing the agents, register each of the machines on the management server. To do so, enter the server's name or IP address and the server's administrator credentials in the appropriate window of the installation wizard. Or, alternatively, add the machines to the management server later using their names or IP addresses. 4. Install Acronis Backup & Recovery 10 Agent for ESX/ESXi [Agent (ESX)] on the ESX server (4) to back up the virtual machines from the host.
2. Create a static group named, say, S_1. Add all the servers to this group. (A storage node can be added in case the managed vault is not on the local node's drives. Otherwise the archive storage will be backed up to itself). 3. Apply the policy to the S_1 group. Make sure that the policy has been successfully deployed to each of the servers. The policy deployment state has to change from Deploying to Deployed and its status has to be OK. To see the resulting backup plans on each of the servers: a.
2.14.2.3 Protecting the virtual machines Acronis Backup & Recovery 10 Agent for ESX/ESXi provides the flexibility to protect virtual machines in multiple ways: Connect the console to the virtual appliance (Agent for ESX/ESXi) and create a backup plan that will back up all or some of the virtual machines. Connect the console to the virtual appliance (Agent for ESX/ESXi) and create an individual backup plan for each machine. The plan will back up the volumes you specify.
IP address range. Multiple criteria can be specified for a dynamic group. For example, a set of criteria "OS equals Windows 2000, OS equals Windows 2003, OU equals Accounting” is interpreted as "all machines running Windows 2000 or Windows 2003 and belonging to the Accounting organizational unit". The All machines group can be thought of as a dynamic group with the single built-in criterion: include all the registered machines. 2.14.3.
3, 4, 5, 6 - the salesmen's machines (Windows XP) from the "Sales department" AD organization unit. An example of group hierarchy The backup policy on the server has to differ from that on the workstations. The administrator creates the G1 dynamic group that contains machines with the server operating systems, and applies a backup policy to the group.
edit a group, that is: change the group description change the dynamic membership criteria transform a static group into a dynamic one by adding membership criteria transform a dynamic group into a static one with two options: change the group name keep the group members remove the group members move a group from the root to another group (any group type to any group type) move a group from the parent group to the root move a group from one parent group to another (any group
2.14.4.1 A policy on a machine or a group In the diagrams below, each numbered scheme illustrates the result of the respectively numbered action. The container stands for a group; the colored circle stands for a machine with applied policy; the dark colored circle stands for a machine with two applications of the same policy; the white circle stands for a machine to which no policy is applied. Policy on a machine 1. A policy can be applied to a machine. 2. A policy can be revoked from a machine.
2.14.4.2 Operations with a machine This section is a simplified illustration of what happens with the policies on a machine when the machine is moved, copied, or deleted from a group. In the diagram below, the container stands for a group; the one-color circle stands for a machine with one applied policy; the two-color circle stands for a machine with two applied policies; the white circle stands for a machine with no policy applied. 1.
2.14.4.3 Inheritance of policies Policy inheritance can be easily understood if we assume that a machine can be a member of only one group besides the All machines group. Let's start from this simplified approach. In the diagram below, the container stands for a group; the two-color circle stands for a machine with two applied policies; the three-color circle stands for a machine with three applied policies and so on.
#4 #5 or #6 "green" Inherited All machines -> #4 "orange" Inherited G1 -> G2 -> #4 "blue" Inherited G2 -> #4 "violet" Applied directly "green" Inherited All machines -> #5 or #6 "orange" Inherited G1 -> G2 -> #5 or #6 "blue" Inherited G2 -> #5 or #6 2.14.5 Backup policy's state and statuses Centralized management presumes that the administrator can monitor the health of the entire product infrastructure using a few easily understandable parameters.
another policy. In this case, the first policy's state on the machine will be Revoking and the second policy's state will be Deploying. The policies can appear in the GUI simultaneously or one after another. Backup policy state diagram 2.14.5.2 Policy status on a machine To see this parameter, select any group of machines in the tree, then select the machine, and then select the Backup policies tab on the Information pane.
The policy gets the Warning status on Windows machines that have either a D: or F: volume, unless an event that will result in an error occurs. The policy that has to back up the [System] and the /dev/sda1 volumes, will get the Warning status on the Windows machines (since /dev/sda is not found) and on the Linux machines that have the /dev/sda1 volume (since the [System] volume is not found). The policy will get the Error status on Linux machines that do not have a SCSI device.
This status is defined as the most severe status of the policy on the machines included in the group and its child groups. If the policy is currently not applied to any machine, its status is "OK". 2.14.5.5 Cumulative state and status of a policy In addition to the deployment state and status as related to a specific machine or group, the backup policy has a cumulative deployment state and a cumulative status.
Performed on a managed machine during backup. Acronis Backup & Recovery 10 Agent uses the storage node to determine what data can be deduplicated, and does not transfer the data whose duplicates are already present in the vault. Deduplication at target Performed in the vault after a backup is completed. The storage node analyses the vault's archives and deduplicates data in the vault. When creating a backup plan, you have the option to turn off deduplication at source for that plan.
Deduplication at target After backup to a deduplicating vault is completed, the storage node runs the indexing task to deduplicate data in the vault as follows: 1. It moves the items (disk blocks or files) from the archives to a special file within the vault, storing duplicate items there only once. This file is called the deduplication data store. If there are both disk-level and file-level backups in the vault, there are two separate data stores for them.
The deduplicated items that have changed are not identical anymore and therefore will not be deduplicated. 2.14.6.4 Deduplication best practices Follow these recommendations when using deduplication: When creating a deduplicating vault, place the vault and its deduplication database on different disks. This will make deduplication faster, because deduplication involves extensive simultaneous use of both the vault and the database.
Similarly, in case of three machines, the ratio becomes 1.5:1; for four machines, it is 1.6:1. It approaches 2:1 as more such machines are backed up to the same vault. This means that you can buy, say, a 10-TB storage device instead of a 20-TB one. The actual amount of capacity reduction is influenced by numerous factors such as the type of data that is being backed up, the frequency of the backup, and the backups' retention period. 2.14.6.
2.14.7 Privileges for centralized management This section describes the users' privileges that are required to manage a machine locally and remotely, to manage a machine registered on Acronis Backup & Recovery 10 Management Server, and to access and manage Acronis Backup & Recovery 10 Storage Node. 2.14.7.1 Types of connection to a managed machine There are two types of connection to a managed machine: local connection and remote connection.
2. Click Manage this machine. To allow a non-root user to start the console As a root user, add the name of the non-root user whom you want to allow to start the console, to the file /etc/sudoers—for example, by using the visudo command. Caution: As a result of this procedure, the non-root user will not only be allowed to start the console with the root privileges, but also may be able to perform other actions as the root user. To establish a local connection as a non-root user 1.
Remote connection as a non-root user Since accessing the system as the root user should be restricted, the root user can create an authentication policy to enable remote management under non-root credentials. The following are two examples of such policies. Note: As a result, the specified non-root users will be able to connect to the machine remotely as if they were root users.
2.14.7.5 Acronis security groups On a machine running Windows, Acronis security groups determine who can manage the machine remotely and act as Acronis Backup & Recovery 10 Management Server administrator. These groups are created when Acronis Backup & Recovery 10 Agents or Acronis Backup & Recovery 10 Management Server are being installed. During installation, you can specify what users to include in each group.
Tip: To ensure proper group names, you should install Acronis components in a domain controller after you have set up the domain controller itself. If the components were installed before you set up the domain controller, create the groups DCNAME $ Acronis Remote Users and DCNAME $ Acronis Centralized Admins manually, and then include the members of Acronis Remote Users and Acronis Centralized Admins in the newly created groups. 2.14.7.
For users whom you want to act as storage node administrators, add their accounts to the Administrators group. For other users, add their user accounts to the Users group. Additional right of machine administrators A user who is a member of the Administrators group on a machine can view and manage any archives created from that machine in a managed vault—regardless of the type of that user's account on the storage node.
If you choose to specify an existing user account for the management server service, this account will be added to the Acronis Centralized Admins group automatically. If the machine is part of an Active Directory domain, make sure that the domain's security policies do not prevent the accounts described in this section (whether existing or newly created) from having the above listed user rights. Important: After the installation, do not specify a different user account for a component's service.
2.14.8.2 Client and server applications There are two stakeholders of the secure communication process: Client application, or client, is an application that tries to establish connection. Server application, or server, is an application to which the client tries to connect. For example, if Acronis Backup & Recovery 10 Management Console is connecting to Acronis Backup & Recovery 10 Agent on a remote machine, the former is the client and the latter is the server.
4. For the new communication settings to take effect, restart all running Acronis components— preferably, by restarting Windows. If restart is not possible, make sure you do the following: If Acronis Backup & Recovery 10 Management Console is running, close it and start it again. If other Acronis components, such as Acronis Backup & Recovery 10 Agent for Windows or Acronis Backup & Recovery 10 Management Server are running, restart their correspondent services from the Services snap-in in Windows.
Selecting the Trust self-signed certificates check box allows the client to connect to the server applications that use self-signed SSL certificates such as certificates created during the installation of Acronis Backup & Recovery 10 components—see SSL certificates (p. 86). You should keep this check box selected, unless you have a Public Key Infrastructure (PKI) in your environment. In Use Agent Certificate Authentication, select one of the following: Do not use The use of SSL certificates is disabled.
The use of SSL certificates is enabled. The server will use SSL certificates if their use is enabled on the client application, and will not use them otherwise. Always use The use of SSL certificates is enabled. The connection will be established only if the use of SSL certificates is enabled on the client application. Disabled The same as Not configured. 2.14.8.4 Network port configuration Acronis Backup & Recovery 10 components use the 9876/TCP network communication port by default.
Self-signed certificates, such as certificates automatically generated during the installation of an Acronis component. Non-self-signed certificates, such as certificates issued by a third-party Certificate Authority (CA)—for example, by a public CA such as VeriSign® or Thawte™—or by your organization's CA. Certificate path All Acronis components installed on a machine, when acting as a server application, use an SSL certificate called the server certificate.
4. Restart Windows, or restart the running Acronis services. Non-self-signed certificates You have the option to use trusted third-party certificates or certificates created by your organization's CA as an alternative to self-signed certificates, by using Acronis Certificate Commandline Utility. To install a third-party certificate 1. 2. 3. 4. Click Start, then click Run, and then type: certmgr.msc In the Certificates console, double-click the name of the certificate that you want to install.
3 Options This section covers Acronis Backup & Recovery 10 options that can be configured using Graphical User Interface. The content of this section is applicable to both stand-alone and advanced editions of Acronis Backup & Recovery 10. 3.1 Console options The console options define the way information is represented in the Graphical User Interface of Acronis Backup & Recovery 10. To access the console options, select Options > Console options from the top menu. 3.1.
The preset is: Enabled for all results. To make a setting for each result (successful completion, failure or success with warnings) individually, select or clear the respective check box. 3.1.3 Time-based alerts Last backup This option is effective when the console is connected to a managed machine (p. 406) or to the management server (p. 407). The option defines whether to alert if no backup was performed on a given machine for a period of time.
The option defines the fonts to be used in the Graphical User Interface of Acronis Backup & Recovery 10. The Menu setting affects the drop-down and context menus. The Application setting affects the other GUI elements. The preset is: System Default font for both the menus and the application interface items. To make a selection, choose the font from the respective combo-box and set the font's properties. You can preview the font's appearance by clicking the button to the right. 3.
This parameter can also be set by using Acronis Administrative Template (p. 343). 3.2.3 Event tracing You can configure the management server to log events in the Application Event Log of Windows, besides the management server's own log. You can configure the management server to send Simple Network Management Protocol (SNMP) objects to a specified SNMP manager. 3.2.3.
3.2.4 Domain access credentials This option determines the user name and password that the management server will use to access the domain. The preset is: No credentials The management server needs domain access credentials when working with a dynamic group that is based on the Organizational unit criterion (p. 317). When you are creating such group and no credentials are given by this option, the program will ask you for credentials and save them in this option.
3.2.6.1 VMware vCenter integration This option defines whether to show virtual machines managed by a VMware vCenter Server in the management server and show the backup status of these machines in the vCenter. Integration is available in all Acronis Backup & Recovery 10 advanced editions; a license for Virtual Edition is not required. No software installation is required on the vCenter Server.
Note: Acronis Backup & Recovery 10 Online supports only HTTP and HTTPS proxy servers. Proxy settings for the agent and the management server are configured separately, even if both are installed on the same machine. To set up proxy server settings 1. Select the Use a proxy server check box. 2. In Address, specify the network name or IP address of the proxy server—for example: proxy.example.com or 192.168.0.1 3. In Port, specify the port number of the proxy server—for example: 80 4.
3.3.2 Event tracing It is possible to duplicate log events generated by the agent(s), operating on the managed machine, in the Application Event Log of Windows; or send the events to the specified SNMP managers. If you do not modify the event tracing options anywhere except for here, your settings will be effective for each local backup plan and each task created on the machine.
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 (p. 99). In this case, the settings set here will be effective for operations other than backup and recovery, such as archive validation or cleanup. You can further override the settings set in the default backup and recovery options, when creating a backup plan or a recovery task.
/etc/snmp/snmpd.conf - configuration file for the Net-SNMP SNMP agent /etc/snmp/snmptrapd.conf - configuration file for the Net-SNMP trap daemon. 3.3.3 Log cleanup rules This option specifies how to clean up the Acronis Backup & Recovery 10 agent log. This option defines the maximum size of the agent log folder (in Windows XP/2003 Server, %ALLUSERSPROFILE%\Application Data\Acronis\BackupAndRecovery\MMS\LogEvents). The preset is: Maximum log size: 1 GB. On cleanup, keep 95% of the maximum log size.
If you choose Yes, I want to participate in the ACEP, information about the hardware configuration, the most and least used features and about any problems will be automatically collected from the machine and sent to Acronis on a regular basis. The end results are intended to provide software improvements and enhanced functionality to better meet the needs of Acronis customers. Acronis does not collect any personal data.
Pre/Post backup commands (p. 103) + + + + PE only PE only Pre/Post data capture commands (p. 105) + + + + - - Multi-volume snapshot (p. 107) + + - - - - File-level backup snapshot (p. 106) - + - + - - Use VSS (p. 107) + + - - - - Compression level (p. 108) + + + + + + + + + + - - HDD writing speed (p. 109) Dest: HDD Dest: HDD Dest: HDD Dest: HDD Dest: HDD Dest: HDD Network connection speed (p.
Overwrite data on a tape without prompting for user confirmation Dest: Tape Dest: Tape Dest: Tape Dest: Tape Dest: Tape Dest: Tape Dismount media after backup has finished Dest: removable media Dest: removable media Dest: removable media Dest: removable media Dest: removable media Dest: removable media Dest: removable media Dest: removable media Dest: removable media Dest: removable media Dest: removable media Dest: removable media Reset archive bit - + - - - + Restart the machine autom
The AES cryptographic algorithm operates in the Cipher-block chaining (CBC) mode and uses a randomly generated key with a user-defined size of 128, 192 or 256 bits. The larger the key size, the longer it will take for the program to encrypt the archive and the more secure your data will be. The encryption key is then encrypted with AES-256 using a SHA-256 hash of the password as a key.
Windows and Linux 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.
2. Do any of the following: Click Edit to specify a new command or a batch file Select the existing command or the batch file from the drop-down list 3. Click OK. 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.
5. Click Test Command to check if the command is correct. 3.4.1.4 Pre/Post data capture commands This option is effective for both Windows and Linux operating systems. The option enables you to define the commands to be automatically executed before and after data capture (that is, taking the data snapshot) performed by Acronis Backup & Recovery 10 at the beginning of the backup procedure. The following scheme illustrates when the pre/post data capture commands are executed.
command execution fails Selected Do not perform the data capture until the command execution is complete Cleared Selected Cleared Result Preset N/A 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. Perform the data capture concurrently with the command and irrespective of the command execution result.
This option defines whether to back up files one by one or by taking an instant data snapshot. Note: Files that are stored on network shares are always backed up one by one. The preset is: Create snapshot if it is possible. Select one of the following: Always create a snapshot The snapshot enables backing up of all files including files opened for exclusive access. The files will be backed up at the same point in time.
Acronis Backup & Recovery 10 will select the VSS provider automatically based on the operating system running on the machine and whether the machine is a member of an Active Directory domain. Create snapshots without using VSS Choose this option if your database is incompatible with VSS. The data snapshot will be taken by Acronis Backup & Recovery 10.
3.4.1.9 Backup performance Use this group of options to specify the amount of network and system resources to allocate to the backup process. Backup performance options might have a more or less noticeable effect on the speed of the backup process. This depends on the overall system configuration and the physical characteristics of devices the backup is being performed from or to. Backup priority This option is effective for both Windows and Linux operating systems.
Network connection speed This option is effective for Windows and Linux operating systems and bootable media. This option is available when a location on the network (network share, managed vault or an FTP/SFTP server) is selected as the backup destination. The option defines the amount of network connection bandwidth allocated for transferring the backup data. By default the speed is set to maximum, i.e. the software uses all the network bandwidth it can get when transferring the backup data.
From - type the e-mail address of the user from whom the message will be sent. If you leave this field empty, messages will be constructed as if they are from the destination address. Use encryption – you can opt for encrypted connection to the mail server. SSL and TLS encryption types are available for selection. Some Internet service providers require authentication on the incoming mail server before being allowed to send something.
3.4.1.11 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. Windows event log This option is effective only in Windows operating systems. This option is not available when operating under the bootable media.
Types of events to send – choose the types of events to be sent: All events, Errors and warnings, or Errors only. Server name/IP – type the name or IP address of the host running the SNMP management application, the messages will be sent to. Community – type the name of the SNMP community to which both the host running the SNMP management application and the sending machine belong. The typical community is "public". Click Send test message to check if the settings are correct.
The task will enter the Need interaction state and ask for a new media when the previous one is full. Fixed size Enter the desired file size or select it from the drop-down list. The backup will then be split into multiple files of the specified size. This comes in handy when creating a backup that you plan to burn to multiple CDs or DVDs later on.
When backing up to removable media, you can make this media work as regular Linux-based bootable media (p. 400) by writing additional components to it. As a result, you will not need a separate rescue disc. The preset is: None selected. Select the check boxes for the components you want to put on the bootable media: One-Click Restore is the minimal addition to a disk backup stored on removable media, allowing for easy recovery from this backup.
When the option is disabled, the program will display a pop-up window each time it comes across a bad sector and ask for a user decision as to whether to continue or stop the backup procedure. In order to back up the valid information on a rapidly dying disk, enable ignoring bad sectors. The rest of the data will be backed up and you will be able to mount the resulting disk backup and extract valid files to another disk. 3.4.1.
The preset is: Wait until the conditions are met. Wait until the conditions are met With this setting, the scheduler starts monitoring the conditions and launches the task as soon as the conditions are met. If the conditions are never met, the task will never start. To handle the situation when the conditions are not met for too long and further delaying the backup is becoming risky, you can set the time interval after which the task will run irrespective of the condition.
The program will try to execute the failed task again if you select the Restart a failed task check box and specify the number of attempts and the time interval between the attempts. The program stops trying as soon as an attempt completes successfully OR the specified number of attempts is performed, depending on which comes first. 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.
If the console is connected to the management server The Use a separate tape set option has more precise definitions. So for the backup policy to be created you can use a separate tape set for all machines or for each single machine. The A single tape set for all machines option is selected by default. Generally this option ensures more efficient usage of tapes, than the A separate tape set for each single machine option.
Dismount media after backup has finished This option is effective in Windows and Linux operating systems. This option is effective when backing up to a removable media (CD, DVD, tape or floppy disk.) The preset is: Disabled. The destination CD/DVD can be ejected or the tape can be dismounted after the backup is completed. Ask for the first media while backing up to removable media This option is effective only when backing up to removable media.
Deduplicate backup only after transferring it to the vault (do not deduplicate at source) This option is available only in advanced editions of Acronis Backup & Recovery 10. This option is effective for Windows and Linux operating systems and bootable media, when the backup destination is a deduplicating vault. The preset is: Disabled.
To view and change the default recovery options, connect the console to the managed machine and then select Options > Default backup and recovery options > Default recovery options from the top menu.
E-mail (p. 125) + + + + - - Win Pop-up (p. 126) + + + + - - Windows events log (p. 126) + + - - - - SNMP (p. 127) + + + + - - Event tracing: 3.4.2.1 Pre/Post commands This option is effective for Windows and Linux operating systems and PE-based bootable media. The option enables you to define the commands to be automatically executed before and after the data recovery.
complete Result Preset Perform the recovery after the Perform the recovery command is only after the executed despite command is execution failure successfully executed. or success. Fail the task if the command execution failed. N/A Perform the recovery concurrently with the command execution and irrespective of the command execution result. Post-recovery command To specify a command/executable file to be executed after the recovery is completed 1.
High – to maximize the recovery process speed by taking resources from the other processes. 3.4.2.3 File-level security This option is effective only for recovery from file-level backup of Windows files. This option defines whether to recover NTFS permissions for files along with the files. The preset is: Recover files with their security settings. If the file NTFS permissions were preserved during backup (p.
Port – set the port of the POP server. By default, the port is set to 110. User name – enter the user name Password – enter the password. Select the Use the specified outgoing mail server check box to enable an SMTP server and to set up its settings: Outgoing mail server (SMTP) – enter the name of the SMTP server. Port – set the port of the SMTP server. By default, the port is set to 25. User name – enter the user name. Password – enter the password.
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.
3.4.2.6 Error handling These options are effective for Windows and Linux operating systems and bootable media. These options enable you to specify how to handle errors that might occur during recovery. Do not show messages and dialogs while processing (silent mode) The preset is: Disabled. With the silent mode enabled, the program will automatically handle situations requiring user interaction where possible. If an operation cannot continue without user interaction, it will fail.
Restart machine automatically if it is required for recovery This option is effective when recovery takes place on a machine running an operating system. The preset is Disabled. The option defines whether to reboot the machine automatically if it is required for recovery. Such might be the case when a volume locked by the operating system has to be recovered. Reboot machine after recovery This option is effective when operating under bootable media. The preset is Disabled.
4 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, detachable media or a tape device attached to the Acronis Backup & Recovery 10 Storage Node. There are no settings for limiting a vault size or number of backups in a vault.
Way of working with the "Vaults" view Vaults (on the navigation pane) - top element of the vaults tree. Click this item to display groups of centralized and personal vaults. Centralized. This group is available when the console is connected to a managed machine or to a management server. Expand this group to display a list of centralized vaults added by the management server administrator. Click any centralized vault in the vaults tree to open the detailed view of this vault (p.
To learn more about privileges depending on the user rights, see the User privileges on a storage node (p. 80) section. Unmanaged vaults An unmanaged vault is a centralized vault that is not managed by a storage node. To access an unmanaged vault, a user has to have access privileges for the location from the network. Any user that has permission to read/write files in an unmanaged vault can: back up data to the unmanaged vault recover data from any backup located in the unmanaged vault.
Operations with archives stored in a vault (p. 164) Operations with backups (p. 165) Filtering and sorting archives (p. 167) Bars of the "Actions and tools" pane [Vault Name] The Actions bar is available when clicking the vault in the vaults tree. Duplicates actions of the vault's toolbar. [Archive Name] The Actions bar is available when you select an archive in the archives table. Duplicates actions of the archives toolbar.
Delete a vault 1. Select the vault. 2. Click Delete. You'll be asked whether to keep the archives stored in the vault, or delete the vault along with all the archives. The plans and tasks that use this vault will fail. If you choose to keep the archives for a managed vault, the vault will be detached from the storage node. Later on, you'll be able to attach this vault to the same or to another storage node. Explore an unmanaged vault 1. Select the unmanaged vault. 2. Click Explore.
Select the Acronis Backup & Recovery 10 Storage Node that will manage the vault. You may need to enter access credentials for the storage node. Path (p. 135) Specify where the vault will be created. Managed centralized vaults can reside on a network share, SAN, NAS, or on a hard drive local to the storage node. Database path (p. 136) Specify a local folder on the storage server to create a vault-specific database.
Vault database path To specify the path where the vault's database will be created 1. In the Local folders of the storage node, select the desired folder or enter the full path to the folder in the Path field. To create a new folder for the database, click 2. Click OK. Create folder. When choosing a folder for the vault's database, follow these considerations: The folder must reside on a fixed drive. Please do not try to place the database on external detachable drives.
4.1.2.2 Creating an unmanaged centralized vault To create an unmanaged centralized vault, perform the following steps. Vault Name Specify a unique name for the vault. The creation of two centralized vaults with the same name is prohibited. Comments Enter the distinctive description of the vault. Type Select the Unmanaged type. Path (p. 137) Specify where the vault will be created. After you have performed all the required steps, click OK to commit creating the unmanaged centralized vault.
To attach a managed vault to a storage node, perform the following steps. Vault Storage node Select the Acronis Backup & Recovery 10 Storage Node that will manage the vault. Path Specify the path to the location where the archives are stored. Database path Specify a local folder on the storage server to create a vault-specific database. This database will store the metadata required for cataloguing the archives and performing deduplication.
by different components of other versions of the product by means of Acronis Backup & Recovery 10, see the Tape compatibility table (p. 49) section. Acronis Backup & Recovery 10 enables you to set up distribution of backups by media. For example, a separate tape set can be used to back up some specific data, and the backups of all other data will be written onto any currently mounted tape, which does not belong to the tape set. See the Tape support (p. 118) section for more information.
4. A tape with backups written by the storage node cannot be read on a tape device, locally attached to a machine, the agent is installed on, because of a difference in tape format. To get information about the readability of the archives on tapes, written by different components of other versions of the product by means of Acronis Backup & Recovery 10, see the Tape compatibility table (p. 49) section. 5. Barcode printers are not used. 4.1.3.
4.1.3.5 Getting started with a tape library If you have a tape library device attached to a machine with Acronis Backup & Recovery 10 Storage Node installed, all you need to do to back up onto the tape library is to create an archive vault on the device under storage node management. Prerequisites A tape library device has to be installed on a machine running Windows in accordance with the device manufacturer’s installation instructions.
If the tape barcode cannot be read, another Tasks Need Interaction window asks you to label a tape. Actions on a tape library vault If a tape library vault is selected on the Navigation pane of the console, the Centralized vaults page toolbar will contain the following two actions that are used for tape libraries only: Manage tapes displays the Tape Management window allowing you to refresh information on the library slots, inventory tapes in the slots, and define labels for the tapes.
To change the settings of the backup policy/plan to be created click Change… in the Backup options section on the Create backup policy/plan page. It opens the Backup options window where the Tape support page is contained with the pre-defined values. When backing up to a tape and the end of the tape is reached, a free tape will be mounted automatically and the operation will continue onto the new tape.
Any user with access to a managed vault on a tape library is able to perform these operations. However two or more users cannot manage a tape library drive simultaneously, because some operations can take minutes, hours or even days. For example, if a user launches a tape library Rescan task, all other users' requests to perform the same task will be canceled automatically, as it is already running on the vault.
Labeling When a tape required for data recovery is not found, the Task Need Interaction window will ask the user to bring the tape and insert it into a tape library slot. So, all the tape cartridges need a barcode or other readable labels. If a tape does not get a label, you should define it before the tape will be used.
If you leave this option unchanged, then the backups, belonging to the policy or plan being created, might be written onto tapes containing backups written by different backup policies and comprising of data from different machines. Similarly, backups from other policies might be written onto the tapes containing this policy's backups. You will not have a problem with such tapes, as the program manages all the tapes automatically.
cycle. The same tape rotation enables you to get by with the minimum number of cartridges and not to be buried in used tapes. Acronis Backup & Recovery 10 enables you to achieve full automation of tape rotation while backing up onto tape libraries. This section provides you with useful information to choose a backup scheme and tape options for tape rotation. To calculate the number of tapes required for tape rotation schemes, you can use the method described in the Tape planning (p. 158) section.
capability of the tape library (number of drives, loaders, slots and available tapes; capacity of tapes) requirements for performing data recovery (maximal duration) You need to analyze every argument that is relevant for your case and select the main criteria for the choice. Then choose a backup scheme and specify the tape options. Note, that any backup scheme in combination with different tape options will have quite different results for efficient use of both tapes and devices.
backup policy/plan starts on Wednesday and full backups should be created on every fourth Friday, on Wednesday the first backup will be full instead of an incremental one. There are analyzed examples showing how the GFS scheme can be combined with different tape options in the following sections: GFS Example 1 (p. 149). The Use a separate tape set option is selected. All the Always use a free tape options are cleared. It requires 25 tapes in rotation. GFS Example 2 (p. 152).
The next figure demonstrates the data backup archive at the moment. The differential backup is drawn as a blue rectangle in the figure. Number 1 in the green rectangle marks the incremental backup created on Monday of the 1st week of the year. Then the following backups are written onto tape 02: four incremental and one differential backup on the second week four incremental and one differential backup on the third week four incremental backups on the 4th week.
Below, the figure shows the deleted backups as actual, but demonstrates tape usage during the whole year for the GFS backup scheme in combination with the specified tape options. A number in the green rectangle marks an incremental backup created on Monday of the corresponding week of the year. Tape usage during the first year The next figure shows the actual usage of the tapes with free space instead of the deleted backups on the first Friday of the following year.
The full backup stored on tape 01 is deleted after the next full backup is created onto both tapes 23 and 24 on Friday of the 52nd week. As all backups of tape 01 have been deleted, the tape is considered as free and can be reused. Further analysis of the example proves that the maximal number of tapes required to store the data backups is 25 tapes. This maximum occurs on the 16th week of the following year.
If all the backups have to be kept during the year, the archive will require 28 tapes. As the GFS backup scheme forces automatic deletion of the outdated backups, on the first Friday of the second year the tapes keep only the backups displayed in the next figure. 153 Copyright © Acronis, Inc.
This figure demonstrates that the GFS Example 2 tape rotation scheme is more suitable for the case than GFS Example 1. The advantages of the GFS Example 2 tape rotation scheme for the analyzed case are the following: it uses 16 tapes instead of 25 a data recovery task requires one (25%) or two (75%) tapes data recovery from a full backup requires only one tape that makes the data recovery from an incremental or differential backup faster.
backup deletion frees a tape so it can be reused. The main drawback is the large number of required tapes that is used 5-10%. If we have to keep a daily backup for a week (4 backups) and a weekly backup for a month (4 backups), the total number of required tapes will be equal to 4+4+13+1 = 22. Using the Tower of Hanoi tape rotation scheme The ToH scheme requires fewer tapes for rotation as compared with the GFS scheme.
ToH Example 1 Suppose, the backup plan has the following tape options: the Use a separate tape set option is selected the Always use a free tape: For each full backup option is cleared the Always use a free tape: For each incremental backup option is cleared the Always use a free tape: For each differential backup option is cleared. The figure below shows the tapes’ usage for the ToH scheme combined with the above mentioned tape options.
five-level scheme requires up to five tapes for this case. ToH Example 2 Suppose, the backup plan has the following tape options: the Use a separate tape set option is selected the Always use a free tape: For each full backup option is selected the Always use a free tape: For each incremental backup option is cleared the Always use a free tape: For each differential backup option is cleared.
ToH Example 3 Imagine the backup plan has the following tape options: the Use a separate tape set option is selected the Always use a free tape: For each full backup option is selected the Always use a free tape: For each incremental backup option is selected the Always use a free tape: For each differential backup option is selected. The figure shows tape rotation for the ToH scheme with these options.
To simplify the tape planning lets discard the possibility that the calculated tapes might contain backups of other data. It is implied that the Use a separate tape set option is enabled.
Total number of required tapes = round up ((2*F_GB + 12*I_GB + 11*D_GB) * CL / T_GB) + 1 = round up ( (2*320 + 12*16 + 11*40) * 1 / 400 ) + 1 = round up ( 3.18 ) + 1 = 5 (tapes).
node database has all the required information about the content of the moved tapes. So all you need to do is to perform the inventory (p. 144) procedure for the managed vault on the library where the tapes were placed to. 2. If you move tapes to a tape library managed by another storage node, you should rescan (p. 144) each relocated tape to provide the storage node with information about backups contained on the tape.
Metadata The .meta folder is created during backup in every personal vault. This folder contains additional information about archives and backups stored in the vault, such as archive owners or the machine name. If you accidentally delete the .meta folder, it will be automatically recreated next time you access the vault. But some information like owner names and machine names may be lost. 4.2.
[Archive Name] The Actions bar is available when you select an archive in the archives table. Duplicates actions of the archives toolbar. [Backup Name] The Actions bar is available when you expand the archive and click on any of its backups. Duplicates actions of the archives toolbar. 4.2.2 Actions on personal vaults To perform any operation (except for creation) with a vault, you must select it first.
4.2.2.1 Creating a personal vault To create a personal vault 1. In the Name field, type a name for the vault being created. 2. [Optional] In the Comments field, add a description of the vault. 3. In the Path field, click Change... In the opened Personal Vault Path window, specify a path to the folder that will be used as the vault. A personal vault can be organized on detachable or removable media, on a network share, or on FTP. 4. Click OK.
To Do Validate an archive Click Validate. The Validation (p. 243) page will be opened with the pre-selected archive as a source. Validation of an archive will check all the archive's backups. Export an archive Click Export. The Export (p. 251) page will be opened with the pre-selected archive as a source. The export of an archive creates a duplicate of the archive with all its backups in the location you specify. Delete a single archive or multiple archives 1.
Validate a backup Click Validate. The Validation (p. 243) page will be opened with the pre-selected backup as a source. Validation of a file backup imitates recovering of all files from the backup to a dummy destination. Validation of a disk backup calculates a checksum for every data block saved in the backup. Export a backup Click Export. The Export (p. 251) page will be opened with the pre-selected backup as a source.
4.3.4 Filtering and sorting archives The following is a guideline for you to filter and sort archives in the archives table. To Do Sort backup archives by any column Click the column's header to sort the archives in ascending order. Filter archives by name, owner, or machine. In the field below the corresponding column's header, type the archive name (the owner name, or the machine name). Click it once again to sort the archives in descending order.
5 Scheduling Acronis scheduler helps the administrator adapt backup plans to the company’s daily routine and each employee’s work style. The plans’ tasks will be launched systematically keeping the critical data safely protected. The scheduler uses local time of the machine the backup plan exists on. Before creating a schedule, be sure the machine’s date and time settings are correct. Schedule To define when a task has to be executed, you need to specify an event or multiple events.
The specified period of time has passed since the last successful backup completed + + 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. 116) backup option. What-ifs What if an event occurs (and a condition, if any, is met) while the previous task run has not completed? The event will be ignored.
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.
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. 5.2 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: <...
Run the task every Friday at 10PM, starting from a certain date (say 05/14/2009) and ending after six months. The schedule's parameters are thus set up as follows. 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.
Sunday: once at 9 PM Combining the identical times, the following three schedules can be added to the task: First schedule 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.
From: <...> Set up a date when this schedule will be enabled (an effective date). If this check box is cleared, the task will be started on the nearest day and time you have specified above. To: <...> Set up a date when this schedule will be disabled. If this check box is cleared, the task will be run for an indefinite number of months. Advanced scheduling settings (p. 177) are available only for machines registered on Acronis Backup & Recovery 10 Management Server.
In the case when the task needs to be run on different days or weeks with different time intervals depending on the month, consider adding a dedicated schedule to every desired month or several months. Suppose that the task goes into effect on 11/01/2009. During northern winter, the task runs once at 10PM on every workday. During northern spring and autumn, the task runs every 12 hours on all workdays. During northern summer, the task runs every first and fifteenth of every month at 10 PM.
Parameters Log name Specifies the name of the log. Select the name of a standard log (Application, Security, or System) from the list, or type a log name—for example: Microsoft Office Sessions Event source Specifies the event source, which typically indicates the program or the system component that caused the event—for example: disk Event type Specifies the event type: Error, Warning, Information, Audit success, or Audit failure.
Log name: System Event source: Microsoft-Windows-WindowsUpdateClient Event type: Information Event ID: 18 Tip: To set up a similar backup plan for machines running Microsoft Windows XP, replace the text in Event source with Windows Update Agent and leave the remaining fields the same. How to view events in Event viewer To open a log in Event Viewer 1. On the Desktop or in the Start menu, right-click My Computer, and then click Manage. 2.
Delay values range from zero to the specified maximum delay value, and are determined according to the chosen distribution method. The delay value for each machine is determined when the policy is deployed to the machine, and remains the same until you edit the policy and change the maximum delay value. The conditions, if any, will be checked at the task's actual start time on each machine. The following examples illustrate this setting.
5.6 When an ADRM alert is received This schedule is effective in Windows operating systems when Acronis® Drive Monitor™ (ADRM) is installed. Acronis Drive Monitor reports on hard disk health by using the hard disk’s internal monitoring system (S.M.A.R.T.). Based on alerts from Acronis Drive Monitor, you can set up emergency backups of your data in addition to regular backups. The emergency backup will start when a hard disk with your data is about to fail.
Condition: Time since last backup; Value: Time since the last backup: 12 hour(s). Task start conditions: Wait until the conditions are met. If the free space changes by more than 1 GB, the scheduler will wait until both conditions are met at the same time and then run the backup task. 5.7.1 User is idle Applies to: Windows "User is idle" means that a screen saver is running on the managed machine or the machine is locked.
5.7.3 Fits time interval Applies to: Windows, Linux Restricts a backup task's start time to a specified interval. Example A company uses different locations on the same network-attached storage for backing up users data and servers. The workday starts at 8AM and ends at 5 PM. Users' data should be backed up as soon as the users log off, but not earlier than 4:30 PM and not later than 10 PM. Every day at 11 PM the company's servers are backed up.
Example Run the backup task at 8 PM on the first and third Friday of every month, preferably when all users are logged off. If one of the users is still logged on at 11 PM, run the task anyway. Event: Monthly, Months: ; On: , ; Once at 08:00:00 PM. Condition: User logged off. Task start conditions: Wait until the conditions are met, Run the task anyway after 3 hour(s). As a result, (1) If all users are logged off at 8PM, the backup task will start at 8PM.
6 Direct management This section covers operations that can be performed directly on a managed machine by using the direct console-agent connection. The content of this section is applicable to both stand-alone and advanced editions of Acronis Backup & Recovery 10. 6.1 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. 6.1.
licenses. After a successful license check the agent will start working. Please make sure you have a valid license on Acronis License Server. Trial version of product expires in X day(s) Connect Once the trial version of the product is installed, the program starts the countdown of days remaining until the trial period expires. Connect 15 day trial period has expired. Enter a full license key.
Errors Highlight the date in red if at least one "Error" entry appeared in the log on this date. Warnings Highlight the date in yellow if no "Error" entries appeared and at least one "Warning" entry appeared in the log on this date. Information Highlight the date in green if only "Information" log entries appeared on this date (normal activity.) The Select current date link focuses selection to the current date.
Use the toolbar's buttons to take an action on the selected plan (task). See the Actions on backup plans and tasks (p. 189) section for details. You can run, edit, stop and delete the created plans and tasks. Use the Information panel to review detailed information on the selected plan (task). The panel chevron. The content of the panel is is collapsed by default. To expand the panel, click the also duplicated in the Plan details (p. 195) and Task details (p. 193) windows respectively. 6.1.2.
1 Status How it is determined How to handle Error At least one task has failed.
Any running task can put itself into the Need interaction state when it needs human interaction such as changing media or ignoring a read error. The next state may be Stopping (if the user chooses to stop the task) or Running (on selecting Ignore/Retry or another action, such as Reboot, that can put the task to the Running state.) Stopping The user can stop a running task or a task that needs interaction. The task changes to the Stopping state and then to the Idle state. A waiting task can also be stopped.
2 Warning Last result is "Succeeded View the log to read the warnings -> [optionally] Perform with warning" actions to prevent the future warnings or failure. 3 OK Last result is "Succeeded", "-", or "Stopped" 6.1.2.2 No action is required. The "-" state means that the task has never been started or has been started, but has not finished yet and so its result is not available.
Run a plan/task Backup plan Click Run. In the Run Backup Plan (p. 193) window, select the task you need to be run. Running the backup plan starts the selected task of that plan immediately in spite of its schedule and conditions. Why can't I run the backup plan? Do not have the appropriate privilege Without the Administrator privileges on the machine, a user cannot run plans owned by other users. Task Click Run. The task will be executed immediately in spite of its schedule and conditions.
Edit a plan/task Backup plan Click Edit. Backup plan editing is performed in the same way as creation (p. 198), 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.
Delete a plan/task Backup plan Click Delete. What will happen if I delete the backup plan? The plan's deletion deletes all its tasks. Why can't I delete the backup plan? The backup plan is in the "Running" state A backup plan cannot be deleted, if at least one of its tasks is running. Do not have the appropriate privilege Without the Administrator's privileges on the machine, a user cannot delete plans owned by other users. The backup plan has a centralized origin.
Configuring backup plans and the tasks table By default, the table has six columns that are displayed, others are hidden. If required, you can hide the displayed columns and show hidden ones. To show or hide columns 1. Right-click any column header to open the context menu. The menu items that are ticked off correspond to the column headers presented in the table. 2. Click the items you want to be displayed/hidden.
Recovery (disk) Disk backup recovery Recovery (file) File and folder recovery Recovery (volume) Recovery of volumes from a disk backup Recovery (MBR) Master boot record recovery Recovery (disk to existing VM) Recovery of a disk/volume backup to an existing virtual machine Recovery (disk to new VM) Recovery of a disk/volume backup to a new virtual machine Recovery (existing VM) Recovery of a virtual machine backup to an existing virtual machine Recovery (new VM) Recovery of a virtual machine b
Progress The Progress tab is available while the task is running. It is common for all types of tasks. The tab provides information about task progress, elapsed time and other parameters. Backup plan details The Backup plan details window (also duplicated on the Information panel) aggregates in four tabs all the information on the selected backup plan. The respective message will appear at the top of the tabs, if one of the plan's tasks requires user interaction.
Validation (if selected) - events before or after which the validation is performed, and validation schedule. Backup options - backup options changed against the default values. 6.1.3 Log The Log stores the history of operations performed by Acronis Backup & Recovery 10 on the machine, or actions a user takes on the machine using the program. For instance, when a user edits a task, the respective entry is added to the log. When the program executes a task, it adds multiple entries.
View a log entry’s details 1. Select a log entry. 2. Do one of the following Click View Details. The log entry's details will be displayed in a separate window. Expand the Information panel, by clicking the chevron. Save the selected log entries to a file 1. Select a single log entry or multiple log entries. 2. Click Save Selected to File. 3. In the opened window, specify a path and a name for the file. Save all the log entries to a file 1. Make sure, that the filters are not set. 2.
Configuring the log table By default, the table has seven columns that are displayed, others are hidden. If required, you can hide the shown columns and show the hidden ones. To show or hide columns 1. Right-click any column header to open the context menu. The menu items that are ticked off correspond to the column headers presented in the table. 2. Click the items you want to be displayed/hidden. 6.1.3.
To create a backup plan, perform the following steps. General Plan name [Optional] Enter a unique name for the backup plan. A conscious name lets you identify the plan among others. Plan's credentials (p. 201) [Optional] The backup plan will run on behalf of the user who is creating the plan. You can change the plan account credentials if necessary. To access this option, select the Advanced view check box . Comments [Optional] Type a description of the backup plan.
[Optional] Provide credentials for the location if the plan account does not have access permissions to the location. To access this option, select the Advanced view check box. Archive comments [Optional] Enter comments on the archive. To access this option, select the Advanced view check box. How to back up Backup scheme (p.
Here you select the resulting virtual machine type and location. Available options depend on the host you selected in the previous step. Storage (p. 221) 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. After you have performed all the required steps, click OK to create the backup plan. After that, you might be prompted for the password (p. 201).
Available if the Acronis Backup & Recovery 10 Agent for Windows (or for Linux) is installed. Select this option to back up specific files and folders. If you are not concerned about recovery of the operating system along with all the settings and applications, but plan to keep safe only certain data (the current project, for example), choose file backup. This will reduce the archive size, thus saving storage space.
The swap file (pagefile.sys) and the file that keeps the RAM content when the machine goes into hibernation (hiberfil.sys) are not backed up. After recovery, the files will be re-created in the appropriate place with the zero size.
6.2.6 Exclusions Set up exclusions for the specific types of files you do not wish to back up. For example, you may not want database, hidden and system files and folders, as well as files with specific extensions, to be stored in the archive. To specify which files and folders to exclude: Set up any of the following parameters: Exclude all hidden files and folders This option is effective only for file systems that are supported by Windows.
By file path C:\Finance\F.log Excludes the file named "F.log" located in the folder C:\Finance By folder path C:\Finance\F\ Excludes the folder C:\Finance\F (be sure to specify the full path starting from the disk letter) Linux By file path /home/user/Finance/F.log Excludes the file named "F.log" located in the folder /home/user/Finance By folder path /home/user/Finance/ Excludes the folder /home/user/Finance 6.2.7 Archive Specify where the archive will be stored and the name of the archive.
To back up data to a locally attached tape device, expand the Tape drives group, then click the required device. 2. Using the archives table To assist you with choosing the right destination, 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.
This behavior can be suppressed by adding the [Date] variable (p. 210) to the archive name. If you do not select the Name backup files using the archive name... check box: Each backup will have a unique file name with the exact time stamp and the backup type; for example: MyData_2010_03_26_17_01_38_960D.tib. This standard file naming allows for a wider range of backup destinations and backup schemes.
Your script can move older backups based on the date stamp. See also “The [Date] variable” (p. 210). 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.
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 and D:\ as the archive location, select the Name backup files using the archive name... check box, select Full as the backup type, and schedule the backups to run every week on Monday.
6.2.8.2 The [DATE] variable If you specify the [DATE] variable in the archive name, the file name of each backup will include that backup’s creation date. When using this variable, the first backup of a new day will be a full backup. Before creating the next full backup, the software deletes all backups taken earlier that day. Backups taken before that day are kept. This means you can store multiple full backups with or without incremental ones, but no more than one full backup per day.
The program will access the source data using the credentials of the backup plan account specified in the General section. Use the following credentials The program will access the source data using the credentials you specify. Use this option if the plan 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. Specify: User name.
In the Backup type field, select whether you want to create a full, incremental or differential backup (p. 33). 6.2.10.2 Back up later scheme With the Back up later scheme, the backup will be performed only once, at the date and time you specify. Specify the appropriate settings as follows Backup type Select the type of backup: full, incremental, or differential. If there is no full backup in the archive, a full backup will be created regardless of your selection.
Feb 5—Feb 11 D D D D W - - Feb 12—Feb 18 D D D D W - - Feb 19—Feb 25 D D D D M - - Feb 26—Mar 4 D D D D W - - Daily backups run every workday except Friday, which is left for weekly and monthly backups. Monthly backups run every fourth Friday, and weekly backups run on all other Fridays. Monthly ("Grandfather") backups are full; Weekly ("Father") backups are differential; Daily ("Son") backups are incremental.
Keep monthly backups indefinitely. Backup scheme parameters can then be set up as follows. Start backup at: 11:00 PM Back up on: All days Weekly/monthly: Saturday (for example) Keep backups: Daily: 1 week Weekly: 1 month Monthly: indefinitely As a result, an archive of daily, weekly, and monthly backups will be created. Daily backups will be available for seven days since creation.
Have a weekly summary of file changes since last month (Friday weekly differential backup). Have a monthly full backup of your files. Moreover, assume that you want to retain access to all backups, including the daily ones, for at least six months.
Parameters You can set up the following parameters of a Tower of Hanoi scheme. Schedule Set up a daily (p. 169), weekly (p. 171), or monthly (p. 173) schedule. Setting up schedule parameters allows creating simple schedules (example of a simple daily 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.
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).
Incremental Specifies on what schedule and under which conditions to perform an incremental backup. If the archive contains no backups at the time of the task run, a full backup is created instead of the incremental backup. Differential Specifies on what schedule and under which conditions to perform a differential backup. If the archive contains no full backups at the time of the task run, a full backup is created instead of the differential backup.
Examples Weekly full backup The following scheme yields a full backup performed every Friday night. Full backup: Schedule: Weekly, every Friday, at 10:00 PM Here, all parameters except Schedule in Full backup are left empty. All backups in the archive are kept indefinitely (no archive cleanup is performed). Full and incremental backup plus cleanup With the following scheme, the archive will consist of weekly full backups and daily incremental backups.
Finally, we create retention rules for the archive: let us retain only backups that are no older than six months, and let the cleanup be performed after each backup task and also on the last day of every month. Retention rules: Delete backups older than 6 months Apply the rules: After backing up, On schedule Cleanup schedule: Monthly, on the Last day of All months, at 10:00 PM By default, a backup is not deleted as long as it has dependent backups that must be kept.
6.2.11 Archive validation Set up the validation task to check if the backed up data is recoverable. If the backup could not pass the validation successfully, the validation task fails and the backup plan gets the Error status. To set up validation, specify the following parameters 1. When to validate – select when to perform the validation. As the validation is a resourceintensive operation, it makes sense to schedule the validation to the managed machine's offpeak period.
Which agent is installed on the host? The resulting virtual machine type and location depend on the agent that resides on the selected host. Agent for Windows is installed on the host You have a choice of virtual machine types: VMware Workstation, Microsoft Virtual PC, or Parallels Workstation. Files of the new virtual machine will be placed in the folder you select. Agent for ESX/ESXi is installed on the host A VMware virtual machine will be created on the ESX/ESXi server.
If the managed machine's operating system fails to start or you need to recover data to bare metal, boot the machine from the bootable media (p. 400) or using Acronis Startup Recovery Manager (p. 52). Then, create a recovery task. Acronis Universal Restore (p. 53) lets you recover and boot up Windows on dissimilar hardware or a virtual machine. A Windows system can be brought online in seconds while it is still being recovered. Using the proprietary Acronis Active Restore (p.
[Optional] Provide credentials for the archive location if the task account does not have the right to access it. To access this option, select the Advanced view check box. Where to recover This section appears after the required backup is selected and the type of data to recover is defined. The parameters you specify here depend on the type of data being recovered. Disks (p. 228) Volumes (p.
modify the setting again, the line will display the new value unless the new value is the default one. When the default value is set, the line disappears and so you always see only the settings that differ from the default values in the Settings section. Clicking Reset to default resets all the settings to default values. After you complete all the required steps, click OK to create the commit creating of the recovery task. 6.3.
If the archive is located on removable media, e.g. DVDs, first insert the last DVD and then insert the discs in order starting from the first one when the program prompts. If the archive is stored on a network share, expand the Network folders group, then select the required networked machine and then click the shared folder. If the network share requires access credentials, the program will ask for them.
6.3.4.1 Disks/volumes selection To select a backup and disks/volumes to recover: 1. Select one of the successive backups by its creation date and time. Thus, you can revert the disk data to a certain moment in time. Specify the items to recover. By default, all items of the selected backup will be selected. If you do not want to recover certain items, just uncheck them. To obtain information on a disk/volume, right-click it and then click Information. 2. Click OK.
The program 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. 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.
Disk #: Disk # (MODEL) (p. 231) Select the destination disk for each of the source disks. NT signature (p. 229) Select the way the recovered disk's signature will be handled. The disk signature is used by Windows and the Linux kernel version 2.6 and later. Disk destination To specify a destination disk: 1. Select a disk where you want the selected disk to recover to. The destination disk's space should be at least the same size as the uncompressed image data. 2. Click OK.
6.3.6.2 Volumes Available volume destinations depend on the agents operating on the machine. Recover to: Physical machine Available when the Acronis Backup & Recovery 10 Agent for Windows or Agent for Linux is installed. The selected volumes will be recovered to the physical disks of the machine the console is connected to. On selecting this, you proceed to the regular volume mapping procedure described below. New virtual machine (p. 232) If Acronis Backup & Recovery 10 Agent for Windows is installed.
MBR destination To specify a destination disk: 1. Select the disk to recover the MBR to. 2. Click OK. Volume destination To specify a destination volume: 1. Select a volume or unallocated space where you want the selected volume to be recovered to. The destination volume/unallocated space should be at least the same size as the uncompressed image data. 2. Click OK.
set as active. If you recover a system volume to another hard disk with its own volumes and operating system, you will most likely need only the data. In this case, you can recover the volume as logical to access the data only. File system Change the volume file system, if required. By default, the program selects the original volume's file system. Acronis Backup & Recovery 10 can make the following file system conversions: FAT 16 -> FAT 32 and Ext2 -> Ext3.
Storage Initial setting: the default storage of the virtualization server if the new machine is created on the virtualization server. Otherwise the current user's documents folder. This is the place where the new virtual machine will be created. Whether you can change the storage on the virtualization server or not, depends on the virtualization product brand and settings. VMware ESX may have multiple storages. A Microsoft Hyper-V server enables creating a new virtual machine in any local folder.
Recovery exclusions Set up exclusions for the specific files you do not wish to recover. Use the Add, Edit, Remove and Remove All buttons to create the list of file masks. Files whose names match any of the masks will be skipped during recovery. You can use one or more wildcard characters * and ? in a file mask: The asterisk (*) substitutes for zero or more characters in a file name; for example, the file mask Doc*.txt yields files such as Doc.txt and Document.
Do not overwrite existing file - this will give the file on the hard disk priority over the file in the backup. If you allow files to be overwritten, you still have an option to prevent overwriting of specific files by excluding (p. 234) them from the recovery operation. 6.3.7 Access credentials for destination To specify credentials 1.
DVD supplied by the hardware vendor or download the drivers from the vendor’s Web site. The driver files should have the *.inf, *.sys or *.oem extensions. If you download the drivers in the *.exe, *.cab or *.zip format, extract them using a third-party application, such as WinRAR (http://www.rarlab.com/) or Universal Extractor (http://legroom.net/software/uniextract).
Drivers for a virtual machine When recovering a system to a new virtual machine, the Universal Restore technology is applied in the background, because the program knows what drivers are required for the supported virtual machines. When recovering the system to an existing virtual machine that uses SCSI hard drive controller, be sure to specify SCSI drivers for the virtual environment, in the Mass storage drivers to install anyway step.
8. [Optionally] Review the Virtual machine settings (p. 232) and make changes if necessary. Here you can change the path to the new virtual machine. The same type of machines with the same name cannot be created in the same folder. Change either the VM name, or the path if you get an error message caused by identical names. 9. Select the destination disk for each of the source disks or source volumes and MBRs.
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.
6.3.11.1 How to reactivate GRUB and change its configuration Generally, you should refer to the boot loader manual pages for the appropriate procedure. There is also the corresponding Knowledge Base article on the Acronis Web site. 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.
root (hd0,0) 10. Install GRUB. For example, to install GRUB in the master boot record (MBR) of the first disk, run the following command: setup (hd0) 11. Exit the GRUB shell: 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.
If the recovery requires the machine to be rebooted (usually, when the volumes to recover include the boot partition), follow these guidelines: If all parts of the MD device are volumes (a typical case, such as in the first example), make sure that the type of each volume—called partition type or system ID—is Linux raid automount; the hexadecimal code of this partition type is 0xFD. This will guarantee that the device will be automatically assembled following the reboot.
6.3.14 Recovering the storage node In addition to backing up data to centralized vaults managed by Acronis Backup & Recovery 10 Storage Node, you may want to perform a disk backup of the machine where the storage node itself is installed. This section describes how to recover the storage node registered on the management server in case the storage node and the management server are installed on different machines (if they are installed on the same machine, simply recover that machine).
You can access the Validation page from the Vaults (p. 130) view. Right-click the object to validate (archive, backup or vault) and select Validate from the context menu. The Validation page will be opened with the pre-selected object as a source. All you need to do is to select when to validate and (optionally) provide a name for the task. To create a validation task, perform the following steps. General Task name [Optional] Enter a unique name for the validation task.
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. To learn more about using credentials in Acronis Backup & Recovery 10, see the Owners and credentials (p. 32) section. To learn more about operations available depending on the user privileges, see the User privileges on a managed machine (p. 31) section. 6.4.
To access a managed vault, type the following string in the Path field: bsp://node_address/vault_name/ To access an unmanaged centralized vault, type the full path to the vault's folder. 2. In the table to the right of the tree, select the archive. The table displays the names of the archives contained in each vault/folder 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 task credentials The program will access the location using the credentials of the task account specified in the General section. Use the following credentials The program 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. Specify: User name.
"Band aid" database recovery solution: mount up an image that contains an SQL database from a recently failed machine. This will give access to the database until the failed machine is recovered. Offline virus clean: if a machine is attacked, the administrator shuts it down, boots with bootable media and creates an image. Then, the administrator mounts this image in read/write mode, scans and cleans it with an antivirus program, and finally recovers the machine.
If the archive is stored on an FTP or SFTP server, type the server name or address in the Path field as follows: ftp://ftp_server:port _number or sftp://sftp_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. You can access the server as an anonymous user if the server enables such access.
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. 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. 6.5.
6.7 Exporting archives and backups The export operation creates a copy of an archive or a self-sufficient part copy of an archive in the location you specify. The original archive remains untouched. The export operation can be applied to: a single archive - an exact archive copy will be created your choice of backups belonging to the same archive - the resulting archive will contain only the specified backups.
The resulting archive's options The exported archive inherits the options of the original archive, including encryption and the password. When exporting a password-protected archive, you are prompted for the password. If the original archive is encrypted, the password is used to encrypt the resulting archive.
[Optional] The export task will run on behalf of the user who is creating the task. You can change the task credentials if necessary. To access this option, select the Advanced view check box. What to export Export Select an object to export: Archive (p. 225) - in that case, you need to specify the archive only. Backups (p. 255) - specify the archive first, and then select the desired backup(s) in this archive Access credentials (p.
6.7.2 Archive selection To select an archive 1. Enter the full path to the location in the Path field, or select the desired folder in the folders tree. If the archive is stored in Acronis Online Backup Storage, click Log in and specify the credentials to log in to the online storage. Then expand the Online backup storage group and select the account. Exporting and mounting are not supported for backups stored in Acronis Online Backup Storage.
6.7.3 Backup selection To specify a backup(s) to export 1. At the top of the window, select the respective check box(es). To ensure that you choose the right backup, click on the backup and look at the bottom table that displays the volumes contained in the selected backup. To obtain information on a volume, right-click it and then select Information. 2. Click OK. 6.7.
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.
6.7.6 Access credentials for destination Specify credentials required for access to the location where the resulting archive will be stored. The user whose name is specified will be considered as the archive owner. To specify credentials 1. Select one of the following: Use the task credentials The program will access the location using the credentials of the task account specified in the General section.
[Optional] Protect the Acronis Secure Zone from unauthorized access with a password. The prompt for the password appear at any operation relating to the zone. After you configure the required settings, click OK. In the Result confirmation (p. 259) window, review the expected layout and click OK to start creating the zone. 6.8.1.1 Acronis Secure Zone Disk The Acronis Secure Zone can be located on any fixed hard drive. Acronis Secure Zone is always created at the end of the hard disk.
6.8.1.4 Result confirmation The Result confirmation window displays the expected partition layout according to the settings you have chosen. Click OK, if you are satisfied with the layout and the Acronis Secure Zone creation will start. How the settings you make will be processed This helps you to understand how creating the Acronis Secure Zone will transform a disk containing multiple volumes. Acronis Secure Zone is always created at the end of the hard disk.
2. Select volumes from which free space will be used to increase the Acronis Secure Zone. 3. Specify the new size of the zone by: dragging the slider and selecting any size between the current and maximum values. The maximum size is equal to the disk’s unallocated space plus the total free space of all selected partitions; typing an exact value in the Acronis Secure Zone Size field. When increasing the size of the zone, the program will act as follows: first, it will use the unallocated space.
Activate 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). If the system fails to boot, you will be able to start the bootable rescue utility, by pressing F11 or by selecting it from the menu, respectively. The system disk (or, the /boot partition in Linux) should have at least 70 MB of free space to activate Acronis Startup Recovery Manager.
Linux-based bootable media Linux-based media contains Acronis Backup & Recovery 10 Bootable Agent based on Linux kernel. The agent can boot and perform operations on any PC-compatible hardware, including bare metal and machines with corrupted or non-supported file systems. The operations can be configured and controlled either locally or remotely using the management console.
Windows Vista (PE 2.0) Windows Vista SP1 and Windows Server 2008 (PE 2.1) Windows 7 (PE 3.0) If you already have media with PE1.x distribution, unpack the media ISO to a local folder and start the Bootable Media Builder either from the management console, by selecting Tools > Create Bootable Media or, as a separate component. The wizard will guide you through the necessary operations. Please refer to Adding the Acronis Plug-in to WinPE 1.x (p. 268) for details. To be able to create or modify PE 2.
Universal Restore can be enabled if Acronis Backup & Recovery 10 Universal Restore is installed on the machine where the media is created. 3. [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.
Disables Advanced Programmable Interrupt Controller (APIC). You may want to use this parameter when experiencing problems with a particular hardware configuration. vga=ask Prompts for the video mode to be used by the bootable media's graphical user interface. Without the vga parameter, the video mode is detected automatically. vga=mode_number Specifies the video mode to be used by the bootable media's graphical user interface.
Disables the use of PCI BIOS; only direct hardware access methods will be allowed. You may want to use this parameter when the bootable media fails to start, which may be caused by the BIOS. pci=biosirq Uses PCI BIOS calls to get the interrupt routing table. You may want to use this parameter if the kernel is unable to allocate interrupt requests (IRQs) or discover secondary PCI buses on the motherboard. These calls might not work properly on some machines.
Sizeable data for recovery could be transferred through the second NIC, included in the dedicated backup network by means of static TCP/IP settings. Network port While creating bootable media, you have an option to pre-configure the network port that the bootable agent listens for incoming connection. The choice is available between: 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.
2. Click Remove. 6.10.1.2 Adding the Acronis Plug-in to WinPE 1.x Acronis Plug-in for WinPE can be added to: Windows PE 2004 (1.5) (Windows XP Professional with Service Pack 2) Windows PE 2005 (1.6) (Windows Server 2003 with Service Pack 1). To add Acronis Plug-in to WinPE 1.x: 1. Unpack all files of your WinPE 1.x ISO to a separate folder on the hard disk. 2. Start the Bootable Media Builder either from the management console, by selecting Tools > Create Bootable Media or, as a separate component.
3. Select Bootable media type: Windows PE. When creating a new PE ISO: Select Create Windows PE 2.x or 3.0 automatically Select Use WinPE files located in the folder I specify The software runs the appropriate script and proceeds to the next window. When adding the plug-in to the existing PE ISO: 4. 5. 6. 7. 8. 9. Specify path to the folder where the WinPE files are located. Specify network settings (p. 266) for the machine network adapters or choose DHCP auto configuration.
6. Copy the contents of the current folder—by default: C:\Program Files\Acronis\Bootable Components\WinPE—to the %BartPE folder%\plugins\Acronis. 7. Insert your Windows distribution CD if you do not have a copy of Windows installation files on the HDD. 8. Start the Bart PE builder. 9. Specify the path to the Windows installation files or Windows distribution CD. 10. Click Plugins and check whether the Acronis Backup & Recovery 10 plug-in is enabled. Enable if disabled. 11.
7. Tasks cannot be scheduled; in fact, tasks are not created at all. If you need to repeat the operation, configure it from scratch. 8. The log lifetime is limited to the current session. You can save the entire log or the filtered log entries to a file. 9. Centralized vaults are not displayed in the folder tree of the Archive window.
To add an NDAS device 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. In a Linux-based bootable media, run the management console. Click Configure iSCSI/NDAS devices. In NDAS devices, click Add device. Specify the 20-character device ID. If you want to allow writing data onto the device, specify the five-character write key. Without this key, the device will be available in the read-only mode. 6. Click OK. 6.10.
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 hotplug reboot 6.10.
To create the volume structure by using the management console 1. Boot the machine from a Linux-based bootable media. 2. Click Acronis Bootable Agent. Then, click Run management console. 3. In the management console, click Recover. Under the archive contents, Acronis Backup & Recovery 10 will display a message saying that it detected information about the volume structure. 4. Click Details in the area with that message. 5. Review the volume structure, and then click Apply RAID/LVM to create it.
7. Return to the management console by pressing CTRL+ALT+F1, or by running the command: /bin/product (Do not reboot the machine at this point. Otherwise, you will have to create the volume structure again.) 8. Click Recover, then specify the path to the archive and any other required parameters, and then click OK. Note: This procedure does not work when connected to Acronis Backup & Recovery 10 Bootable Agent remotely, because the command shell is not available in this case.
lvm pvcreate /dev/md0 /dev/md1 lvm vgcreate my_volgroup /dev/md0 /dev/md1 lvm vgdisplay The output of the lvm vgdisplay command will contain lines similar to the following: --- Volume group --VG Name my_volgroup ... VG Access read/write VG Status resizable ... VG Size 1.99 GB ... VG UUID 0qoQ4l-Vk7W-yDG3-uF1l-Q2AL-C0z0-vMeACu 5. Run the following command to create the logical volume; in the -L parameter, specify the size given by VG Size: lvm lvcreate -L1.99G --name my_logvol my_volgroup 6.
Num Idx Partition Flags Start Size ---- --- --------- ----- ----- --------Disk 1: Table 0 Disk 2: Table 0 ... Dynamic & GPT Volumes: DYN1 4 my_volgroup-my_logvol 12533760 Type -----Table Table Ext2 You will need the volume's index, given in the Idx column, in the next step. 2. Use the --mount command, specifying the volume's index in the -i parameter. For example: trueimagemnt --mount /mnt --filename smb://server/backups/linux_machine.
6.10.6.2 Setting up a machine to boot from PXE For bare metal, it is enough that the machine’s BIOS supports network booting. On a machine that has an operating system on the hard disk, the BIOS must be configured so that the network interface card is either the first boot device, or at least prior to the Hard Drive device. The example below shows one of reasonable BIOS configurations. If you don’t insert bootable media, the machine will boot from the network.
6.11 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 & Recovery 10 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.
Running Acronis Disk Director Lite from a bootable media You can run Acronis Disk Director Lite on a bare metal, on a machine that cannot boot or on a nonWindows machine. To do so, boot the machine from a bootable media (p. 400) created with the Acronis Bootable Media Builder; run the management console and then click Disk Management. 6.11.
Displaying operation results The results of any disk or volume operation, you have just planned, are immediately displayed in the Disk management view of the console. For example, if you create a volume, it will be immediately shown in the table, as well as in graphical form at the bottom of the view. Any volume changes, including changing the volume letter or label, are also immediately displayed in the view. 6.11.
If you decide to change the disk settings it can be done later using the standard Acronis Disk Director Lite disk tools. 6.11.5.2 Basic disk cloning Sometimes it is necessary to transfer all the disk data onto a new disk. It can be a case of expanding the system volume, starting a new system layout or disk evacuation due to a hardware fault. In any case, the reason for the Clone basic disk operation can be summed up as the necessity to transfer all the source disk data to a target disk exactly as it is.
data loss , then the user will be allowed to proceed. If due to the size limitations safe transfer of all the source disk data to the target disk is impossible even with the proportional resizing of the volumes, then the Clone basic disk operation will be impossible and the user will not be able to continue. If you are about to clone a disk comprising of a system volume, pay attention to the Advanced options. By clicking Finish, you'll add the pending operation of the disk cloning.
5. Wait until the task is finished. 6.11.5.3 Disk conversion: MBR to GPT You would want to convert an MBR basic disk to a GPT basic disk in the following cases: If you need more than 4 primary volumes on one disk. If you need additional disk reliability against any possible data damage. If you need to convert a basic MBR disk to basic GPT: 1. Select a basic MBR disk to convert to GPT. 2. Right-click on the selected volume, and then click Convert to GPT in the context menu.
Please note, a volume, belonging to a GPT disk to convert, will be a logical one after the operation and is irreversible. 3. By clicking OK, you'll add a pending operation of GPT to MBR disk conversion. (To finish the added operation you will have to commit (p. 293) it. Exiting the program without committing the pending operations will effectively cancel them.) 6.11.5.
You will be advised about the changes that will happen to the system if the chosen disk is converted from dynamic into basic. E.g.
the following Microsoft knowledge base article: http://technet.microsoft.com/enus/library/cc732026.aspx. 6.11.6 Volume operations Acronis Disk Director Lite includes the following operations that can be performed on volumes: Create Volume (p. 287) - Creates a new volume with the help of the Create Volume Wizard. Delete Volume (p. 291) - Deletes the selected volume. Set Active (p. 291) - Sets the selected volume Active so that the machine will be able to boot with the OS installed there.
A volume, also sometimes called RAID 0, consisting of equal sized stripes of data, written across each disk in the volume; it means that to create a striped volume, a user will need two or more dynamic disks. The disks in a striped volume don’t have to be identical, but there must be unused space available on each disk that you want to include in the volume and the size of the volume will depend on the size of the smallest space.
Striped Mirrored RAID-5 You will obtain a brief description of every type of volume for better understanding of the advantages and limitations of each possible volume architecture. If the current operating system, installed on this machine, does not support the selected type of volume , you will receive the appropriate warning. In this case the Next button will be disabled and you will have to select another type of volume to proceed with the new volume creation.
minimum and the maximum values or click on the special handle, and hold and drag the borders of the disk's picture with the cursor. The maximum value normally includes the most possible unallocated space. But in some cases the possible unallocated space and the proposed maximum volume size might differ (e.g. when the size of one mirror establishes the size of the other mirror, or the last 8Mb of the disk space is reserved for the future conversion of the disk from basic to dynamic).
6.11.6.2 Delete volume This version of Acronis Disk Director Lite has reduced functionality because it is mainly a tool for preparing bare-metal systems for recovering previously saved volume images.
6.11.6.4 Change volume letter Windows operating systems assign letters (C:, D:, etc) to hard disk volumes at startup. These letters are used by applications and operating systems to locate files and folders in the volumes. Connecting an additional disk, as well as creating or deleting a volume on existing disks, might change your system configuration. As a result, some applications might stop working normally or user files might not be automatically found and opened.
to save additional space which is being lost due to the cluster size on the FAT16 or FAT32 file systems as a quick and more or less reliable way of destroying data, residing in this volume If you want to format a volume: 1. Select a volume to format. 2. Right-click on the selected volume, and then click Format in the context menu. You will be forwarded to the Format Volume window, where you will be able to set the new file system options.
Quitting Acronis Disk Director Lite without committing the pending operations effectively cancels them, so if you try to exit Disk management without committing the pending operations, you will receive the appropriate warning. 6.12 Collecting system information The system information collection tool gathers information about the machine to which the management console is connected, and saves it to a file. You may want to provide this file when contacting Acronis technical support.
7 Centralized management This section covers operations that can be performed centrally by using the components for centralized management. The content of this section is only applicable to advanced editions of Acronis Backup & Recovery 10. 7.1 Administering Acronis Backup & Recovery 10 Management Server This section describes the views that are available through the navigation tree of the console connected to the management server, and explains how to work with each view. 7.1.
Vaults with low free space: X View vaults The alert is displayed if at least one centralized vault has less than 10% free space. View vaults will take you to the Centralized vaults (p. 132) view where you can examine the vault size, free space, content and take the necessary steps to increase the free space. Bootable media was not created Create now To be able to recover an operating system when the machine fails to boot, you must: 1.
Statistics for the selected date are displayed to the right of the chart. All the statistics fields are interactive, i.e. if you click any field, the Log view will be opened with the log entries pre-filtered by this field. At the top of the chart, you can select the activities to display depending on the presence and severity of the errors. The Select current date link focuses selection to the current date.
7.1.2.1 Backup policy deployment states A backup policy deployment state is a combination of the policy deployment states on all machines the policy is applied to. For example, if the policy is applied to three machines and has the "Deploying" state on the 1st machine, the "Updating" state on the 2nd machine and the "Deployed" state on the 3rd machine, the state of the policy will be "Deploying, Updating, Deployed.
In the Log view, apply the Error filter if there are too many log entries. You can also sort the "error" entries by backup plans, managed entities or machines. 2. Once the reason of the failure is clear, do one or more of the following: Remove the reason of the failure. After that, you may want to start the failed task manually to maintain the backup scheme consistency, for example, if the policy uses the GFS or Tower of Hanoi backup scheme. Edit the backup policy to prevent future failure.
Edit a policy Edit. Click Editing policies is performed in the same way as creating (p. 356). Once the policy is edited, the management server updates the policy on all machines the policy was deployed to. Delete a policy Click Delete. As a result, the policy will be revoked from the machines it was deployed to and deleted from the management server. If the machine is currently offline, the policy will be revoked when the machine comes online again.
Sort backup policies by any column Click the column's header to sort the backup policies in ascending order. Filter backup policies by name/owner Type a policy's name / owner's name in the fields below the corresponding column's header. Click it once again to sort the backup policies in descending order. As a result you will see the list of the backup policies, whose names (or their owners' names) fully or just partly coincide with the entered value.
View details of the machine (group). Click View tasks of the machine (group). Click View log of the machine (group) Click Revoke policy from the machine (group). Click 7.1.3 View details. In the Machine details (p. 309)/Group details (p. 318) window, examine all information on the selected machine (or the selected group). View tasks. The Tasks (p. 328) view will display a list of the tasks, pre-filtered by the selected machine (group). View log. The Log (p.
Static groups contain machines manually added to the group by the administrator. A static member remains in the group until the administrator removes the member from the group or deletes the corresponding managed machine from the management server. Dynamic groups Dynamic groups contain machines added automatically according to the criteria specified by the administrator.
added to the management server. Import machines from Active Click Import machines from Active Directory. Directory In the Import machines from Active Directory (p. 306) window, specify the machines or organizational units whose machines you need to import to the management server. Import machines from a text Click Import machines from file. file In the Import machines from file (p. 308) window, browse for a .txt or .
Remove a machine from the Click Remove from group. current static group The backup policies applied to the group will be revoked from the machine automatically. Deleting the selected machine from the management server To Do Delete a machine from the management server Click Delete machine from AMS. As a result, backup policies are revoked and shortcuts to centralized vaults are deleted from the machine.
Adding a machine to the management server To be able to deploy backup policies from Acronis Backup & Recovery 10 Management Server to a managed machine and perform other centralized management operations, you need to register the machine on the management server. To add a machine 1. In the Navigation tree, select Physical machines. Add a machine to AMS on the toolbar. 2. Click 3. In the IP/Name field, enter the machine's name or its IP address, or click Browse... and browse the network for the machine.
If more than 1000 matches are found, only the first 1000 items will be displayed. In this case, it is recommended that you refine your search and try again. The right part of the window displays the items you selected for import. If required, remove the erroneously selected items by using the respective Remove and Remove all buttons. 4. Click OK to start import.
Synchronization command line tool Acronis Backup & Recovery 10 Management Server has a command line tool that enables you to create a batch file and schedule the synchronization task using Windows scheduler. To synchronize machines with a text file using command line 1. Log on as a member of the Acronis Centralized Admins security group. 2.
Moving a machine to another group To move the selected machine to another group 1. In the group tree, select the group the machine will be moved to. 2. Click OK. The machine being moved leaves one group and becomes a member of another group. As a result, the backup policies applied to the first group will be revoked from the machine, and the backup policies applied to the second group will be deployed to the machine. Adding machines to a group To add machines to the selected group 1. 2. 3. 4.
Unknown - this status is displayed until the first connection between the management server and the machine is established after adding the machine or starting the management server's service. Withdrawn - the machine was registered on another management server, or the Standalone management parameter is selected in the Options > Machine options > Machine management (p. 95). As a result, it is not possible to control the machine from the current management server.
Plans and tasks Displays a list of the plans (both local and centralized) and tasks existing on the selected machine. Operations The following is a guideline for you to perform operations with backup plans and tasks. To Do View details of a plan/task Backup plan Click View details. In the Plan Details (p. 195) window, review the plan details. Task Click View details. In the Task Details (p. 193) window, review the task details. View plan's/task's log Backup plan Click View log.
recovery task (from the disk backup): The target volume will be deleted and its space unallocated – you will get the same result if the recovery is unsuccessful. To recover the "lost" volume, you will have to run the task once again. recovery task (from the file backup): The aborted operation may cause changes in the destination folder. Some files may be recovered, but some not, depending when you stopped the task. To recover all the files, you will have to run the task once again.
Delete a plan/task Backup plan Click Delete. What will happen if I delete the backup plan? The plan's deletion deletes all its tasks. Why can't I delete the backup plan? The backup plan is in the "Running" state A backup plan cannot be deleted, if at least one of its tasks is running. The backup plan has a centralized origin. A centralized plan can be deleted by the management server administrator by revoking the backup policy that produced the plan. Task Click Delete.
This opens Log view with pre-filtered log entries of the selected group. Remove machine from a group. Click Remove. The centralized plans, which were deployed to the parent group, will no longer affect this machine. Hosted virtual machines The tab displays a list of the machines hosted on the selected virtualization server or managed by the specified virtual appliance. You can create a dynamic group based on the list of the hosted virtual machines. To do this, click Create a dynamic group.
To show or hide columns 1. Right-click any column header to open the context menu. The menu items that are ticked off correspond to the column headers presented in the table. 2. Click the items you want to be displayed/hidden. 7.1.3.2 Actions on groups Actions are available when you select the then click on a group. Physical machines view in the Navigation tree, and The following is a guideline for you to perform actions on selected groups.
Refresh a list of groups Click Refresh. The management console will update the list of groups from the management server with the most recent information. Though the list of groups is refreshed automatically based on events, the data may not be retrieved immediately from the management server due to some latency. Manual Refresh guarantees that the most recent data is displayed. Creating a custom static or dynamic group To create a group 1.
IP range: 192.168.17.0 - 192.168.17.55 will add to the same group all the machines whose operating system is Windows 2000 or Windows 2003 and belong to the SERVERS organizational unit and whose IP addresses are within the range 192.168.17.0 - 192.168.17.55. How long does a dynamic group member remain in the group? A dynamic group member remains in the group as long as the member meets the criteria.
when the machine was initially added to the management server. Otherwise, the machine will not be added to the group. The registration address of each machine can be found in the Registration address column in any management server view that contains the machine (the column is hidden by default). Move one group to another To move the selected group to another group or to the root 1. In the groups tree, click the group to move the selected group to.
View details of a policy Click View details. In the Policy details (p. 301) window, examine all information related to the selected backup policy. View tasks of a policy Click View tasks. The Tasks (p. 328) view will display a list of the tasks related to the selected backup policy. View log of a policy Click View log. The Log (p. 330) view will display a list of the log entries related to the selected backup policy. Revoke a policy from the group.
This approach comes in handy when: the machine is not hosted on a virtualization server you want to use pre/post backup or pre/post data capture commands on the machine the virtualization product installed on the host server is not supported by Acronis Backup & Recovery 10 Advanced Server Virtual Edition you want to apply file backup policies to the machine.
When virtual machines become unavailable for the agent (this happens when machines are removed from the virtualization server inventory, deleted from the disk, or the server's storage is down or disconnected), the machines disappear from the All virtual machines groups and other groups they are included in. Tasks that back up these virtual machines will fail with an appropriate log record; as a result, the generative policy will have the Error status.
5. Click OK As a result, a group that has the same name as the vCenter Server appears on the management server under Virtual machines. For more information, please refer to "VMware vCenter integration (p. 94)." To remove integration with a VMware vCenter Server: 1. 2. 3. 4.
When you select a host or cluster where the agent is already installed, the right panel of the ESX Agent Deployment window displays: Update ESX agent on this host. Other settings are not available. If you only need the update, proceed directly to step 6. 4. [Optional] The agents' settings You can deploy Agents for ESX/ESXi with default settings or specify custom settings for any agent.
Monitoring the deployment progress and result Creating or updating virtual appliances may take some time. Watch the progress of the operations at the bottom of the virtual machines' views underneath the Information bar. After a virtual appliance is created and registered, a corresponding group of virtual machines appears on the management server.
Storage node enables you to: relieve managed machines of unnecessary CPU load by using the storage node-side cleanup (p. 409) and storage node-side validation (p. 409). drastically reduce backup traffic and storage space taken by the archives by using deduplication (p. 71). prevent access to the backup archives, even in case the storage medium is stolen or accessed by a malefactor, by using encrypted vaults (p. 405).
Add a storage node to the management server Click Add. In the Add storage node (p. 326) window, specify the machine the storage node is installed on. Adding a storage node establishes a trusted relationship between the management server and the storage node, in the same way as when you add machines to the server. Once the storage node is added to the management server, you will be able to create managed vaults on the node. Remove a storage node from the management server Click Remove.
Use the fully-qualified domain name (FQDN) of the storage node, that is, a completely specified domain name ending in a top-level domain. Do not enter “127.0.0.1” or “localhost” as the storage node IP/name. These settings are no good even if the management server and the storage node are on the same machine, because, after the policy using the storage node is deployed, each agent will try to access the storage node as if it were installed on the agent's host. 2.
Services This tab displays the compacting task scheduling parameters. Service tasks This tab lets the management server administrator manage the compacting task and review its parameters. Only one compacting task can exist on a storage node. 7.1.6 Tasks The Tasks view lets you monitor and manage tasks existing on the registered machines. You can view tasks' details, their states and execution results, as well as run, stop and delete tasks.
Stop a task Click Stop. What will happen if I stop the task? Generally, stopping the task aborts its operation (backup, recovery, validation, exporting, conversion, migration). The task enters the Stopping state first, then becomes Idle. The task schedule, if created, remains valid. To complete the operation you will have to run the task over again.
7.1.6.2 Filtering and sorting tasks The following is a guideline for you to filter and sort tasks. To Do Set a number of tasks to display Select Options > Console options > Number of tasks (p. 90) and set the desired value. The maximum number of tasks that can be displayed is 500. If the number of tasks exceeds the specified value, use filters to display the tasks that are beyond the scope. Sort tasks by column Click the column's header to sort the tasks in ascending order.
Acronis Backup & Recovery 10 Storage Node has its own local event log. This log's events are accessible through the centralized log only. Centralized event log Way of working with log entries The maximum number of entries stored in the centralized log is 50000. The maximum number of entries that can be displayed is 10000. In case the number of log entries is greater than 10000, use filtering and sorting capabilities to display the desired log entries in the table.
window. Expand the Information panel, by clicking the chevron. Save the selected log entries to a file 1. Select a single log entry or multiple log entries. 2. Click Save Selected to File. 3. In the opened window, specify a path and a name for the file. Save all the log entries to a file 1. Make sure, that the filters are not set. 2. Click Save All to File. 3. In the opened window, specify a path and a name for the file. Save all the filtered log entries to a file 1.
Configuring the log table By default, the table has seven columns that are displayed, others are hidden. If required, you can hide the shown columns and show the hidden ones. To show or hide columns 1. Right-click any column header to open the context menu. The menu items that are ticked off correspond to the column headers presented in the table. 2. Click the items you want to be displayed/hidden. 7.1.7.
7.1.8 Reporting Reporting provides the management server administrator with detailed and well-structured information concerning the enterprise data protection operations. Reports can be used as an instrument for profound analysis of the whole backup infrastructure within a corporate network. The management server generates reports using statistics and logs which are collected from registered machines and are stored in the dedicated databases. Reports are generated based on report templates.
Status: The machine statuses—OK, Warning, and/or Error. Last successful backup: The period within which the last successful backup finished on each of the machines. Next backup: The period within which the next scheduled backup will start on each of the machines. Operating system: The operating systems that the machines run. Availability (physical machines only): The types of the machines' availability—Online or Offline.
7.1.8.3 Report about the backup plans In this view, you can generate a report about backup plans existing on registered machines. This report consists of one or more tables. Filters Under Filters, choose which backup plans to include in the report. Only the backup plans that meet all filter criteria are included. Origin: The types of origin of the backup plans—Local and/or Centralized. Machines: The list of machines on which the backup plans exist.
Owner: The list of users who created the tasks. Duration: The limits for the amount of time within which each of the tasks last ran. With the default filter settings, the report includes all tasks from all machines. Report view Under Report view, choose how the report will look: Select whether to show all items in a single table or to group them by a particular column. Specify which table columns to show, and in which order. Specify how to sort the table. 7.1.8.
Filters Under Filters, select which centralized managed vaults to include in the report, and whether to include information about the combined total of all the selected vaults. A combined total is the total free and occupied space, total amount of backed up data, total number of archives and backups, and average ratios across the selected vaults. With the default filter settings, the report includes information about all centralized managed vaults plus the combined total.
When choosing the columns to display, use the left arrow and right arrow buttons to include or exclude columns, and the up arrow and down arrow buttons to change the order of columns. Some columns—such as Machine name in a report about machines—cannot be excluded from the list, or moved up or down in it. 7.1.8.9 Report view In order for your web browser to correctly display dates and other information in generated reports, enable active content (JavaScript).
7.2.1 Parameters set through administrative template The following are the parameters of Acronis Backup & Recovery 10 components that can be set by using Acronis Administrative Template. For information on how to apply the administrative template, see How to load Acronis Administrative Template (p. 340).
http://msdn2.microsoft.com/en-us/library/aa374177.aspx 7.2.1.2 Acronis Backup & Recovery 10 Storage Node The following are the parameters of Acronis Backup & Recovery 10 Storage Node that can be set by using Acronis Administrative Template. Client Connection Limit Description: Specifies the maximum number of simultaneous connections to the storage node by the agents that perform backup or recovery.
In this case, the component's connection to the storage node will fail. If the component is an Acronis Backup & Recovery 10 Agent, the corresponding backup or recovery task will stop with the Failed status. Vault Warnings and Limits Specifies the amount of free space in a vault (both as an absolute value and as a percentage) below which a warning or error is recorded in the log.
When the amount of free space in a vault is equal to the value in Vault Free Space Error Limit or less, an error is recorded in the storage node's log. Backups performed to the vault will keep failing until the vault's free space is above the limit. Vault Database Free Space Warning Limit Description: Specifies the amount of free space, in megabytes, on the volume containing a managed vault's database, below which a warning is recorded in the storage node's log.
Possible values: 0 (Internal event), 1 (Debugging information), 2 (Information), 3 (Warning), 4 (Error), or 5 (Critical error) Default value: 0 (all entries will be collected) Log Cleanup Rules Specifies how to clean up the centralized event log stored in the management server's reporting database. This parameter has the following settings: Max Size Description: Specifies the maximum size of the centralized event log, in kilobytes.
Description: Specifies the minimum level of severity of events for sending SNMP notifications about them. Only notifications about events of levels greater than or equal to Trace Level will be sent. Possible values: 0 (Internal event), 1 (Debugging information), 2 (Information), 3 (Warning), 4 (Error), or 5 (Critical error) Default value: 4 (only errors and critical errors will be sent—if Trace State is set to True) SNMP Address Description: Specifies the network name or IP address of the SNMP server.
A connected machine to be synchronized waits for an available worker. For this reason, the actual number of workers will never exceed the maximum number of connections (see Maximum Connections described previously). Period (in seconds) Description: Specifies how often, in seconds, to perform synchronization for machines that have a normal synchronization priority—typically, the machines without currently running centralized backup tasks.
When connecting to a registered machine, Acronis Backup & Recovery 10 Management Server first uses the machine's network name—provided that the machine was added to the management server by name. If Second Connection Attempt is set to True and a connection to the machine by using its network name has failed, the management server performs a second connection attempt, this time using the latest IP address which was associated with that network name.
Description: Specifies the initial size of the snapshot storage, in megabytes. Possible values: Any integer number between 0 and 2147483647 Default value: 0 If this setting is 0, the management server uses the Snapshot Storage Relative Size setting. The initial size will not exceed the available space minus 50 MB. Snapshot Storage Relative Size This setting is effective only when the Snapshot Storage Absolute Size setting is 0.
If Acronis License Server is unavailable, Acronis Backup & Recovery 10 will continue working with full functionality for the number of days specified in Maximum Time Without License Server, as counted from the moment of installation or from the last successful check. License Server Connection Retry Interval (in hours) Description: Specifies the interval, in hours, between connection attempts when Acronis License Server is unavailable.
Default value: 4 (only errors and critical errors will be recorded—if Trace State is set to True) SNMP Specifies the types of the agent's events to send notifications about by means of Simple Network Management Protocol (SNMP). This parameter has the following settings: Trace State Description: Specifies whether to send the SNMP notifications.
You can specify a local folder on any volume, including a volume you are backing up. Snapshot Storage Absolute Size Description: Specifies the initial size of the snapshot storage, in megabytes. Possible values: Any integer number between 0 and 2147483647 Default value: 0 If this setting is 0, the management server uses the Snapshot Storage Relative Size setting. The initial size will not exceed the available space minus 50 MB.
The component will use the default settings, which is to use encryption if possible and to trust self-signed SSL certificates (see the following option). Enabled Encryption is enabled. In Encryption, select one of the following: Enabled Data transfer will be encrypted if encryption is enabled on the server application, otherwise it will be unencrypted. Disabled Encryption is disabled; any connection to a server application which requires encryption will not be established.
Disabled Encryption is disabled; any connection to a client application which requires encryption will not be established. Required Data transfer will be performed only if encryption is enabled on the client application (see "Client Encryption options"); it will be encrypted. Authentication parameters In Use Agent Certificate Authentication, select one of the following: Do not use The use of SSL certificates is disabled.
Description: Specifies the minimum severity level of events to be recorded in the file. Only events of levels greater than or equal to File Trace Minimal Level will be recorded.
7.2.3 Parameters set through Windows registry The following are the parameters of Acronis Backup & Recovery 10 Storage Node that can be set only by editing the registry. Parameter related to deduplication CompactingTriggerThreshold Description: Specifies the percentage of used items in the data stores below which compacting occurs.
Registry key: HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Acronis\ASN\Configuration\StorageNode\DatabasePath TapesDatabasePath Description: Specifies the folder where Acronis Backup & Recovery 10 Storage Node stores its tape vaults database. This database contains a list of tape vaults that are managed by the storage node. Its size depends on the number of archives stored in the tape libraries, and approximately equals 10 MB per hundred archives.
Exclusions (p. 364) [Optional] Set up exclusions for the specific types of files you do not wish to back up. To access this option, select the Advanced view check box. Where to back up Archive (p. 365) Specify the path to the location, where the backup archive will be stored, and the archive name. It is advisable that the archive name be unique within the location. The location must be available at the time when the management server starts to deploy the policy. Access credentials (p.
By setting up regular conversion, you obtain a copy of your server or workstation on a virtual machine which can be readily powered on in case the original machine fails. The conversion can be performed by any machine that is registered on the management server and has Acronis Backup & Recovery 10 Agent with the corresponding functionality. The archive has to be stored in a shared location, such as a network folder or a managed vault, so that the selected machine can access the archive. When to convert (p.
2. Click OK. To learn more about Acronis service credentials, see the Rights for Acronis services (p. 81) section. To learn more about operations available depending on the user privileges, see the User privileges on a managed machine (p. 31) section. 7.3.2 Items to back up Specify selection rules for backing up items, selected in the Source type field of the General section. Volumes to back up selection rules (p. 359) Files to back up selection rules (p. 362) 7.3.2.
Boot volume Type or select: [BOOT] Refers to the registered machine's boot volume. The boot volume contains the Windows folder and the supporting files for the Windows operating system (typically located in the Windows\System32 folder). It may or may not be the same as the system volume. If multiple operating systems are installed on the computer, this is the boot volume of the operating system in which the agent is working. For more details, see "Note on Windows machines" below.
Linux A volume backup stores all files and folders 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. Volumes with unsupported file systems will be backed up sector-by-sector.
In general, the standard name for a Linux partition consists of three components: Disk type; hd for IDE drives, sd for SCSI drives, md for software RAID drives (for example, dynamic volumes); Disk number; a for the first disk, b for the second disk, etc.; Partition number on the disk; 1 for the first partition, 2 for the second partition, etc.
Windows Full path Point to the folders and files to be backed up. If you specified a path to a file or folder explicitly, the policy will back up this item on each machine where this exact path will be found. To include In the Files and folders column, type or select: File Text.doc in folder D:\Work D:\Work\Text.doc Folder C:\Windows C:\Windows Environment variables Some environment variables point to Windows folders.
Text file file.txt on the volume /dev/hda3 mounted on /home/usr/docs /dev/hda3/file.txt or /home/usr/docs/file.txt Home directory of the common users /home The root user's home directory /root Directory for all userrelated programs /usr Directory for system configuration files /etc 7.3.3 Access credentials for source Specify credentials required for access to the data you are going to back up. To specify credentials 1.
You can view file or folder attributes in the file/folder properties or by using the attrib command. For more information, refer to the Help and Support Center in Windows. Exclude files matching the following criteria Select this check box to skip files and folders whose names match any of the criteria — called file masks — in the list; use the Add, Edit, Remove and Remove All buttons to create the list of file masks.
To back up data to Acronis Online Backup Storage, click Log in and specify the credentials to log in to the online storage. Then, expand the Online backup storage group and select the account. Prior to backing up to the online storage, you need to buy a subscription (p. 390) to the online backup service and activate (p. 391) the subscription on the machine(s) you want to back up. Online backup is not available in Linux. Acronis Backup & Recovery 10 Online might be unavailable in your region.
The name looks like ArchiveN, where N is a sequence number. If the program finds that the archive Archive1 is already stored in the location, it will automatically suggest the name Archive2. 7.3.6 Access credentials for location Specify credentials required for access to the location where the backup archive will be stored. The user name of these credentials will be considered as the archive owner. To specify credentials 1.
Custom – to create a custom scheme, where you are free to set up a backup strategy in the way your enterprise needs it most: specify multiple schedules for different backup types, add conditions and specify the retention rules. Initial seeding - to save locally a full backup whose final destination is Acronis Online Backup Storage. 7.3.7.1 Back up now scheme With the Back up now scheme, the backup will be performed immediately, right after you click the OK button at the bottom of the page.
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.
Keep backups: Specifies how long you want the backups to be stored in the archive. A term can be set in hours, days, weeks, months, or years. For monthly backups, you can also select Keep indefinitely if you want them to be saved forever. The default values for each backup type are as follows.
Limited storage If you do not want to arrange a vast amount of space to store a huge archive, you may set up a GFS scheme so as to make your backups more short-lived, at the same time ensuring that your information can be recovered in case of an accidental data loss.
Here, daily incremental backups will be created on Tuesdays and Thursdays, with weekly and monthly backups performed on Fridays. Note that, in order to choose Friday in the Weekly/monthly field, you need to first select it in the Back up on field. Such an archive would allow you to compare your financial documents as of the first and the last day of work, and have a five-year history of all documents, etc.
Recur: Every 1 day Frequency: Once at 6 PM Number of levels: 4 This is how the first 14 days (or 14 sessions) of this scheme's schedule look. Shaded numbers denote backup levels. 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 4 1 2 1 3 1 2 1 4 1 2 1 3 1 Backups of different levels have different types: Last-level (in this case, level 4) backups are full; Backups of intermediate levels (2, 3) are differential; First-level (1) backups are incremental.
A new level 3 differential backup has not yet been created, so the backup of day five is still stored. Since it depends on the full backup of day one, that backup is available as well. This enables us to go as far back as 11 days, which is the best-case scenario. The following day, however, a new third-level differential backup is created, and the old full backup is deleted.
The archive will be cleaned up only during backup and only if there is not enough space to create a new backup.
Retention rules: Delete backups older than 12 months Apply the rules: After backing up By default, a one-year-old full backup will not be deleted until all incremental backups that depend on it become subject to deletion too. For more information, see Retention rules (p. 41). Monthly full, weekly differential, and daily incremental backups plus cleanup This example demonstrates the use of all options available in the Custom scheme.
In the first of the previous examples, we set up a schedule only for full backups. However, the scheme will still result in three backup tasks, enabling you to manually start a backup of any type: Full backup, runs every Friday at 10:00 PM Incremental backup, runs manually Differential backup, runs manually You can run any of these backup tasks by selecting it from the list of tasks in the Backup plans and tasks section in the left pane.
Acronis Backup & Recovery 10 Online might be unavailable in your region. To find more information, click here: http://www.acronis.eu/my/backup-recovery-online/ To configure backup to the online storage or recovery from the storage, follow the regular steps described in the corresponding sections: Creating a backup plan (p. 198) Creating a backup policy (p. 356) Recovering data (p. 222) The main difference is that you select the online storage as the backup destination.
8.1.3 How long will my backups be kept in the online storage? Your backups remain in the online storage until you delete them or until the subscription expires. Recovering data from the online storage is possible for 30 days following the subscription expiration date. For effective use of the storage space, you have the option to set up the "Delete backups older than" retention rule. Example You might want to use the following backup strategy for a file server.
you want to perform file-level backup and recovery you want to back up an independent disk or an RDM disk attached in the physical compatibility mode on a running ESX(i) machine. Installing the software, backing up, and recovery are the same as with a physical machine. 8.1.6 Backup and recovery FAQ This section answers questions related to backup and recovery processes. 8.1.6.
backups. You may also want to set or edit the retention rule (p. 379) so that an overflow does not occur. Once the occupied space reaches the limit, the backups will cease to run. 8.1.6.6 What is the cleanup task for? Any backup plan where the retention rule is set contains a cleanup task in addition to a backup task. The cleanup task checks the archive created by the backup plan for backups that have outlived their lifetime. If such backups are found, the task makes the online storage delete them.
8.1.7.4 What types of hard drive can I use for Initial Seeding? Acronis accepts hard disk drives of the following interface types: IDE, ATA, SATA, USB connected drives. SCSI drives are not accepted. You can back up directly to the device or back up to a local or network folder and then copy the backup to the device. Make sure that the device has only one volume and that the file system on that volume is NTFS or FAT32. 8.1.7.
4. [Optional] If you want to add more backups to the media, repeat step 3 selecting the different data in What to back up. (Do not edit the backup plan, create a new one!) 5. [Optional] If you want to add backups from another machine, attach the media to that machine and perform the same steps. 6. Package (p. 383) the media along with a prepaid return shipping label and send it to Acronis by physical mail.
Step 2 Place the hard drive into an anti-static bag to protect the drive from electrostatic discharge. If you do not have an anti-static bag, simply wrap the hard drive into aluminum foil. Step 3 Use a sturdy box that is at least twice the size of the drive. Pack the drive with a bubble wrap around all 6 sides so it can fit tight into the box and cannot be moved within. DO NOT use Styrofoam peanuts for packing as they do not provide enough protection.
You might want to use the most cost-efficient delivery method for having your hard drive returned. 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. 8.1.7.10 How do I track an Initial Seeding order status? On the Acronis Web site, the Initial Seeding / Recovery tab shows you the status of all your orders.
You will receive a notification message when Acronis receives the order and when the order is completed. If necessary, Acronis may contact you during order processing. [Occasional] Backup creation error – An error occurred when backing up. Please check the backup plan parameters and try again. The media has been shipped – This status is set after you mark the order as "shipped". The data upload has started – The process of uploading data to Acronis Online Backup Storage has started.
8.1.8.4 Is Large Scale Recovery a paid service? Yes, you need to buy one Large Scale Recovery license per machine. The license enables you to get a disk with all of the currently available backups of this machine. To obtain backups that will be created in the future, you will need a new Large Scale Recovery license. 8.1.8.5 Can I perform large scale recovery on a different machine? Yes. You can recover the data an unlimited number of times on any machine you wish.
[Occasional] Address is undeliverable – Acronis cannot send the disk. On the same Web page, click Change my delivery address and specify the correct address for the order. [Occasional] Address has been updated – This status is set after you have updated the delivery address on Acronis web site. 8.1.8.9 How to perform large scale recovery? The recovery procedure is the same as when recovering from the online storage. Just specify the path to the location where your backups are.
8.1.9.4 What happens when my subscription expires? A month before the subscription expiration date you receive an e-mail notification with an alert. In addition, you can see this alert on the account management web page near the machine. This means you need to renew (p. 389) the subscription to continue backing up the machine. If you do not renew the subscription, you will be able to back up data to the online storage for five days following the expiration date.
group. Click the Group column header to sort the subscriptions and then apply the desired actions to the group. 8.1.9.7 Can I revoke a subscription from a machine? You cannot return an activated subscription to the list of available subscriptions, but you can reassign (p. 392) it to a different machine in Acronis Backup & Recovery 10 GUI. 8.1.9.8 Can I cancel my subscription? Just wait until the subscription expires. Refunds are not available for the online backup subscriptions. 8.
VMware ESX(i) 4.0 and 4.1 (Host-based backup is available only for paid licenses of VMware ESXi.) Windows Server 2008/2008 R2 (x64) with Hyper-V Microsoft Hyper-V Server 2008/2008 R2 If your backups are likely to exceed the storage quota for this type of subscription, you may want to use a subscription with larger storage quota. For example, you can use a server subscription or a subscription for virtual machines on a workstation.
4. 5. 6. 7. Select the machine and then click Select subscription. From Available subscriptions, select the subscription that you want to activate for the machine. Click Activate now. Perform the previous three steps for each machine for which you want to activate a subscription. Alternatively, you can activate a subscription when the console is connected to a machine instead of the management server. 8.4.
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. Therefore, it is not practical to reassign a subscription to a machine whose first backup was done as an initial seeding. You will need to either redo the initial seeding (which requires a new license) or to transfer the sizeable backup over the Internet. All earlier created backups remain intact. You can delete them manually if necessary.
To configure proxy settings for an agent 1. 2. 3. 4. Connect the console to the machine for which you want to configure proxy settings. In the Options menu, located on the toolbar, click Machine options. Click Online backup proxy. Enter the proxy server settings. For detailed information (p. 98) about the settings please refer to the context-sensitive help. 5. Repeat steps 2–5 for all machines that connect to the Internet through a proxy server. To configure proxy settings for the management server 1. 2.
Dual destination (p. 116) By using the Backup performance > Network connection speed option, you can vary the transferring speed as kilobytes per second, but not as a percentage. Command-line mode Acronis Backup & Recovery 10 command-line utilities do not support online backup. 8.7 Terminology reference The following is the list of terms related to the Acronis Backup & Recovery 10 Online service. Activate a subscription Allow the machine to use the online storage according to the subscription.
Reassign a subscription Assign a subscription that is already activated, to a different machine. Registration code A character string for registering a subscription or license that was bought from an Acronis partner. When you purchase such subscriptions or licenses, you receive a confirmation e-mail containing the registration codes for each of them. You then enter the registration codes on the account management Web page, and these subscriptions and licenses become available for use.
9 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. 403) 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.
Limitation: requires re-activation of loaders other than Windows loaders and GRUB. Agent (Acronis Backup & Recovery 10 Agent) An application that performs data backup and recovery and enables other management operations on the machine (p. 406), such as task management and operations with hard disks. The type of data that can be backed up depends on the agent type.
Backup options Configuration parameters of a backup operation (p. 398), 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. 399). 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 where to store the backup archive (p. 398) (the backup archive name and location) the backup scheme (p.
4. On each machine, the agent (p. 398) installed on the machine finds data items using the selection rules. For example, if the selection rule is [All volumes], the entire machine will be backed up. 5. On each machine, the agent installed on the machine creates a backup plan (p. 399) using other rules specified by the policy. Such backup plan is called a centralized plan (p. 401). 6. On each machine, the agent installed on the machine creates a set of centralized tasks (p. 401) that will carry out the plan.
Built-in groups cannot be deleted, moved to other groups or manually modified. Custom groups cannot be created within built-in groups. There is no way to remove a physical machine from the built-in group except for removing the machine from the management server. Virtual machines are removed as a result of their host server removal. A backup policy (p. 399) can be applied to a built-in group. C Centralized backup plan A backup plan (p. 399) that appears on the managed machine (p.
Cleanup Deleting backups (p. 398) from a backup archive (p. 398) in order to get rid of outdated backups or prevent the archive from exceeding the desired size. Cleanup consists in applying to an archive the retention rules set by the backup plan (p. 399) that produces the archive. This operation checks if the archive has exceeded its maximum size and/or for expired backups. This may or may not result in deleting backups depending on whether the retention rules are violated or not.
Direct management Any management operation that is performed on a managed machine (p. 406) using the direct console (p. 402)-agent (p. 398) connection (as opposed to centralized management (p. 401) when the operations are configured on the management server (p. 407) and propagated by the server to the managed machines). The direct management operations include: creating and managing local backup plans (p.
222189 Description of Disk Groups in Windows Disk Management http://support.microsoft.com/kb/222189/EN-US/ Dynamic disk A hard disk managed by Logical Disk Manager (LDM) that is available in Windows starting with Windows 2000. LDM helps flexibly allocate volumes on a storage device for better fault tolerance, better performance or larger volume size. A dynamic disk can use either the master boot record (MBR) or GUID partition table (GPT) partition style.
the administrator changes the criteria so that the machine does not meet them anymore. There is no way to remove a machine from a dynamic group manually except for deleting the machine from the management server. Dynamic volume Any volume located on dynamic disks (p. 404), or more precisely, on a disk group (p. 403). Dynamic volumes can span multiple disks.
F Full backup A self-sufficient backup (p. 398) containing all data chosen for backup. You do not need access to any other backup to recover the data from a full backup. G GFS (Grandfather-Father-Son) A popular backup scheme (p. 400) aimed to maintain the optimal balance between a backup archive (p. 398) size and the number of recovery points (p. 408) available from the archive.
Managed vault A centralized vault (p. 401) managed by a storage node (p. 408). Archives (p. 398) 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 storage node-side cleanup (p. 409) and storage node-side validation (p. 409) for each archive stored in the managed vault.
Plan See Backup plan (p. 399). Policy See Backup policy (p. 399). R Recovery point Date and time to which the backed up data can be reverted to. Registered machine A machine (p. 406) managed by a management server (p. 407). A machine can be registered on only one management server at a time. A machine becomes registered as a result of the registration (p. 408) procedure. Registration A procedure that adds a managed machine (p. 406) to a management server (p. 407).
prevent access to the backup archives, even in case the storage medium is stolen or accessed by a malefactor, by using encrypted vaults (p. 405). Storage node-side cleanup Cleanup (p. 401) performed by a storage node (p. 408) according to the backup plans (p. 399) that produce the archives (p. 398) stored in a managed vault (p. 406). Being an alternative to the agentside cleanup (p. 398), the cleanup on the storage node side relieves the production servers of unnecessary CPU load.
U Universal Restore (Acronis Backup & Recovery 10 Universal Restore) The Acronis proprietary technology that helps boot up Windows on dissimilar hardware or a virtual machine. The Universal Restore handles differences in devices that are critical for the operating system start-up, such as storage controllers, motherboard or chipset. The Universal Restore is not available: when the machine is booted with Acronis Startup Recovery Manager (p.
Virtual machine On Acronis Backup & Recovery 10 Management Server, a machine (p. 406) is considered virtual if it can be backed up from the virtualization host without installing an agent (p. 398) on the machine. A virtual machine appears on the management server after registration of the virtualization server that hosts the machine, provided that Acronis Backup & Recovery 10 agent for virtual machines is installed on that server.
