User`s guide

2.11.2.3. Protecting the virtual machines

Acronis Backup & Recovery 10 Agent for ESX provides the flexibility to protect virtual machines in

multiple ways:

• Connect the console to the virtual appliance (Agent for ESX) 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) and create an individual backup plan

for each machine. The plan will back up the volumes you specify.

• Register the virtual appliance (Agent for ESX) on the management server. All virtual machines,

except for the virtual appliance, will appear in the All virtual machines group. You can group

these machines and apply any policy that backs up disks or volumes to them.

• Install Agent for Windows or Agent for Linux on each virtual machine. Register the machines on

the management server. The machines will be considered as physical machines. You can apply a

backup policy to these machines or create a backup plan on each machine separately. If any of

the machines meets membership criteria set for a dynamic group of physical machines, the

machine will be protected by the policy applied to this group.

Advanced product editions other than Virtual Edition (Acronis Backup & Recovery 10 Advanced

Server, Advanced Server SBS Edition and Advanced Workstation) allow using only the last of the

above methods.

2.11.3. Grouping the registered machines

As soon as a machine is registered (p. 381) on the management server, the machine appears in the All

machines built-in group (p. 373). By applying a backup policy to this group, you protect all the

registered machines. The thing is that a single policy may not be satisfactory because of the different

roles of the machines. The backed up data is specific for each department; some data has to be

backed up frequently, other - twice a year; so you may want to create various policies applicable to

different sets of machines. In this case consider creating custom groups.

2.11.4. Policies on machines and groups

This section helps you understand the automatic deployment and revoking policies performed by the

management server when a policy or a number of policies are applied to machines and nested groups

of machines in various combinations; when a policy is revoked from machines and groups; when a

machine or a group is moved from one group to another.

Operations with groups to which backup policies are applied will result in changing the policies on the

member machines. On any hierarchy change, that is, when moving, removing, creating groups;

adding machines to static groups; or when machines enter a group based on dynamic criteria, a huge

number of inheritance changes may occur. Please familiarize yourself with this section to be sure that

your actions yield the desired result and to understand the result of the automated Acronis Backup &

Recovery 10 Management Server operations.

What is applying, deploying and revoking?

Applying a policy establishes the correspondence between the policy and one or more machines. This

process takes place inside the management server's database and does not take much time.