Acronis® Backup & Recovery ™ 10 Advanced Server SBS Edition 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 ........................................................................7 1.1 Acronis Backup & Recovery 10 overview ..................................................................................7 1.2 Getting started...........................................................................................................................8 1.2.1 1.3 Acronis Backup & Recovery 10 components ................................................
3.1.3 3.1.4 3.1.5 3.2 Management server options ...................................................................................................78 3.2.1 3.2.2 3.2.3 3.2.4 3.2.5 3.2.6 3.3 Centralized vaults ..................................................................................................................116 4.1.1 4.1.2 4.1.3 4.2 4.3 Working with the "Centralized vault" view ...............................................................................................
6.2 Creating a backup plan ..........................................................................................................181 6.2.1 6.2.2 6.2.3 6.2.4 6.2.5 6.2.6 6.2.7 6.2.8 6.2.9 6.2.10 6.2.11 6.3 Recovering data .....................................................................................................................199 6.3.1 6.3.2 6.3.3 6.3.4 6.3.5 6.3.6 6.3.7 6.3.8 6.3.9 6.3.10 6.3.11 6.3.12 6.3.13 6.4 Task credentials ........................................................
.10.3 6.10.4 6.10.5 6.10.6 Working under bootable media ................................................................................................................. 244 List of commands and utilities available in Linux-based bootable media............................................... 246 Recovering MD devices and logical volumes ............................................................................................ 247 Acronis PXE Server ........................................................
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.
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. Install Acronis Backup & Recovery 10 Management Console and Acronis Backup & Recovery 10 Agent. 2. Start the console.
To recover the entire machine or the operating system that fails to start, use the bootable media (p. 350). You cannot control operations under bootable media using the management server, but you can disconnect the console from the server and connect it to the machine booted from the media. Managing plans and tasks To manage the plans and tasks existing on the registered machines, select Machines > All machines in the Navigation tree and then select each machine in turn.
1.2.1 Using the management console As soon as the console connects to a managed machine (p. 356) or to a management server (p. 357), the respective items appear across the console's workspace (in the menu, in the main area with the Welcome screen, the Navigation pane, the Actions and tools pane) enabling you to perform agentspecific or server-specific operations.
"Navigation" pane The navigation pane includes the Navigation tree and the Shortcuts bar. Navigation tree The Navigation tree enables you to navigate across the program views. Views depend on whether the console is connected to a managed machine or to the management server. Views for a managed machine When the console is connected to a managed machine, the following views are available in the navigation tree. [Machine name]. Root of the tree also called a Welcome view.
the history of operations logged in the local logs of the registered machines and the storage nodes. Shortcuts bar The Shortcuts bar appears under the navigation tree. It offers you an easy and convenient way of connection to the machines in demand by adding them as shortcuts. To add a shortcut to a machine 1. Connect the console to a managed machine. 2. In the navigation tree, right-click the machine's name (a root element of the navigation tree), and then select Create shortcut.
All the actions can also be accessed in the Actions menu. "Actions" bar on a managed machine and on a management server Tools Contains a list of the Acronis tools. Always the same across all the program views. All the tools can also be accessed in the Tools menu. "Tools" bar Help Contains a list of help topics. Different views and action pages of Acronis Backup & Recovery 10 provided with lists of specific help topics.
and action pages according the items you select in the menu, Navigation tree, or on the Actions and Tools pane. Views A view appears on the main area when clicking any item in the Navigation tree in the Navigation pane (p. 11). "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.
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.
the ability to manage storage nodes (p. 358). If there are multiple management servers on the network, they operate independently, manage different machines and use different centralized vaults for storing archives. The management server's databases The management server uses three Microsoft SQL databases: The configuration database that stores the list of registered machines and other configuration information, including backup policies created by the administrator.
Setting up the storage infrastructure Install the storage nodes, add them to the management server (the procedure is similar to the managed machine registration (p. 358)) and create centralized vaults (p. 351). When creating a centralized vault, specify the path to the vault, the storage node that will manage the vault, and the management operations to be performed on the vault.
During group operations, reduces the time required for booting multiple machines as compared to using physical bootable media. License Server The server enables you to manage licenses of Acronis products and install the components that require licenses. For more information about Acronis License Server please see "Using Acronis License Server". 1.3.
ReiserFS4 - volume recovery without the volume resize capability; particular files cannot be recovered from disk backups located on Acronis Backup & Recovery 10 Storage Node XFS - volume recovery without the volume resize capability; particular files cannot be recovered from disk backups located on Acronis Backup & Recovery 10 Storage Node JFS - particular files cannot be recovered from disk backups located on Acronis Backup & Recovery 10 Storage Node Linux SWAP Acronis Backup & Recovery 10
1.6 System requirements The components installed in Windows Component Memory (above the OS and running applications) Disk space required Disk space occupied Additional during installation or by the component(s) update Complete installation 300 MB 2.7 GB 1.
Support shall consist of supplying telephone or other electronic support to you in order to help you locate and, on its own, correct problems with the Software and supplying patches, updates and other changes that Acronis, at its sole discretion, makes or adds to the Software and which Acronis makes generally available, without additional charge, to other licensees of the Software that are enrolled in Support.
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. 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 Full, incremental and differential backups Acronis Backup & Recovery 10 provides the capability to use popular backup schemes, such as Grandfather-Father-Son and Tower of Hanoi, as well as to create custom backup schemes.
It is widely accepted that a full backup is the slowest to do but the fastest to restore. With Acronis technologies, recovery from an incremental backup may be not slower than recovery from a full one. A full backup is most useful when: you need to roll back the system to its initial state this initial state does not change often, so there is no need for regular backup.
Storage space Maximal Medium Minimal Creation time Maximal Medium Minimal Recovery time Minimal Medium Maximal 2.3 User privileges on a managed machine When managing a machine running Windows, the scope of a user's management rights depends on the user's privileges on the machine.
Click Cancel and create your own plan or task. The original task will remain intact. Continue editing. You will have to enter all credentials required for the plan or task execution. Archive owner An archive owner is the user who saved the archive to the destination. To be more precise, this is the user whose account was specified when creating the backup plan in the Where to back up step. By default, the plan's credentials are used.
how many tapes you need to enable recovery with the desired resolution (time interval between recovery points) and roll-back period which tapes you should overwrite with the forthcoming backup. Tape rotation schemes enable you to get by with the minimal number of cartridges and not to be buried in used tapes. A lot of Internet sources describe varieties of the GFS tape rotation scheme. You are free to use any of the varieties when backing up to a locally attached tape device.
Acronis uses incremental and differential backups that help save storage space and optimize the cleanup so that consolidation is not needed. In terms of backup methods, weekly backup is differential (Dif), monthly backup is full (F) and daily backup is incremental (I). The first backup is always full. The Weekly/Monthly parameter splits the total schedule into daily, weekly and monthly schedules. Assume you select Friday for Weekly/Monthly backup.
An ideal archive created according to the GFS scheme. Schedule: Workdays at 8:00 PM Weekly/Monthly: Friday Keep daily backups: 7 days Keep weekly backups: 2 weeks Keep monthly backups: 6 months Starting from the third week, weekly backups will be regularly deleted. After 6 months, monthly backups will start to be deleted. The diagram for weekly and monthly backups will look similar to the week-based timescale.
An archive created according to the GFS scheme by Acronis Backup & Recovery 10. Schedule: Workdays at 8:00 PM Weekly/Monthly: Friday Keep daily backups: 7 days Keep weekly backups: 2 weeks Keep monthly backups: 6 months 2.6 Tower of Hanoi backup scheme The need to have frequent backups always conflicts with the cost of keeping such backups for a long time. The Tower of Hanoi (ToH) backup scheme is a useful compromise.
For example, if there are five rings labeled A, B, C, D, and E in the puzzle, the solution gives the following order of moves: The Tower of Hanoi backup scheme is based on the same patterns. It operates with Sessions instead of Moves and with Backup levels instead of Rings. Commonly an N-level scheme pattern contains (Nth power of two) sessions. So, the five-level Tower of Hanoi backup scheme cycles the pattern that consists of 16 sessions (moves from 1 to 16 in the above figure).
the scheme forces every backup level to keep only the most recent backup, other backups from the level have to be deleted; however backup deletion is postponed in cases where the backup is a base for another incremental or differential one an old backup on a level is kept until a new backup has been successfully created on the level. The table shows the pattern for the five-level backup scheme. The pattern consists of 16 sessions.
to this interval and deletes all backups created before that moment. None of the backups created after this moment will be deleted. 2. Keep the archive size within This is the maximum size of the archive. Every time a retention rule is applied, the program compares the actual archive size with the value you set and deletes the oldest backups to keep the archive size within this value. The diagram below shows the archive content before and after the deletion.
Combination of rules 1 and 2 You can limit both the backups’ lifetime and the archive size. The diagram below illustrates the resulting rule. Example Delete backups older than = 3 Months Keep the archive size within = 200GB Never delete backups younger than = 10 Days Every time the retention rules are applied, the program will delete all backups created more than 3 months (or more exactly, 90 days) ago.
Please be aware that consolidation is just a method of deletion but not an alternative to deletion. The resulting backup will not contain data that was present in the deleted backup and was absent from the retained incremental or differential backup. Backups resulting from consolidation always have maximum compression. This means that all backups in an archive may acquire the maximum compression as a result of repeated cleanup with consolidation.
Recovering dynamic volumes A dynamic volume can be recovered over any type of existing volume to unallocated space of a disk group to unallocated space of a basic disk. Recovery over an existing volume When a dynamic volume is recovered over an existing volume, either basic or dynamic, the target volume’s data is overwritten with the backup content. The type of target volume (basic, simple/spanned, striped, mirrored, RAID 0+1, RAID 5) will not change.
Unallocated space (basic GPT disk) Basic GPT volume Basic GPT volume Basic GPT volume Moving and resizing volumes during recovery You can resize the resulting basic volume, both MBR and GPT, during recovery, or change the volume's location on the disk. A resulting dynamic volume cannot be moved or resized. Preparing disk groups and volumes Before recovering dynamic volumes to bare metal you should create a disk group on the target hardware.
library) by... Windows Agent for Linux Tape written on a tape device through... Backup Server Storage Node 2.9.2 ATIE 9.5 ATIE 9.7 ABR10 ATIE 9.1 ATIE 9.5 ATIE 9.7 ABR10 ATIE 9.1 ATIE 9.5 ATIE 9.7 ABR10 + + + + + + - + + + + + + - + + + + + + - + + + + + + + + + + + Using a single tape drive A tape drive that is locally attached to a managed machine can be used by local backup plans as a storage device.
Recovery from a locally attached tape device Before creating a recovery task, insert or mount the tape containing the backup you need to recover. When creating a recovery task, select the tape device from the list of available locations and then select the backup. After recovery is started, you will be prompted for other tapes if the tapes are needed for recovery. 2.
mount a disk backup to copy files from the backup to a physical disk safely delete archives and backups from the archives. For more information about operations available in Acronis Secure Zone, see the Personal vaults (p. 145) section. Upgrade from Acronis True Image Echo When upgrading from Acronis True Image Echo to Acronis Backup & Recovery 10, Acronis Secure Zone will keep the archives created with Echo.
Acronis Backup & Recovery 10 Universal Restore purpose A system can be easily recovered from a disk backup (image) onto the same system or to identical hardware. However, if you change a motherboard or use another processor version—a likely possibility in case of hardware failure—the recovered system could be unbootable.
profiles. If you are going to change the above settings on a recovered system, you can prepare the system with Sysprep, image it and recover, if need be, using the Universal Restore. Limitations Universal Restore is not available: when a computer is booted with Acronis Startup Recovery Manager (using F11) or the backup image is located in the Acronis Secure Zone or when using Acronis Active Restore, because these features are primarily meant for instant data recovery on the same machine.
Because serving requests is performed simultaneously with recovery, the system operation can slow down even if recovery priority in the recovery options is set to Low. This way, the system downtime is reduced to a minimum at the cost of a temporary performance downgrade. Usage scenarios 1. The system uptime is one of the efficiency criteria. Examples: Client-oriented online services, Web-retailers, polling stations. 2. The system/storage space ratio is heavily biased toward storage.
2.11 Understanding centralized management This section contains an overview of centralized data protection with Acronis Backup & Recovery 10. Please be sure you have an understanding of how data is protected on a single machine (p. 24) before reading this section. 2.11.1 Basic concepts Applying backup policies and tracking their execution To protect data on a single machine, you install on the machine an agent (p. 347) or multiple agents for various data types you want to protect.
backup traffic and saving storage space. The storage node also undertakes operations with archives (such as validation and cleanup), which otherwise are performed by the agent, and thus relieves the managed machines from unnecessary computing load. Last but not least, Acronis Backup & Recovery 10 Storage Node enables using a tape library as a centralized vault for storing backup archives.
3. Install Acronis Backup & Recovery 10 Agent on each of the machines to back up the machine's disks, volumes or files. Agent (W) - Agent for Windows Agent (L) - Agent for 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.
before relocation, etc. In our example, there is no need to back up entire servers on a regular basis. You can manually delete old backups since they are not numerous. 1. Create a policy that backs up [All Volumes] to the managed vault on the storage node. Choose Back up later, manual start and Full backup type. 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.
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.
Revoking a policy is the reverse action to the aggregate of applying and deploying. Revoking removes the correspondence between the policy and one or more machines and then removes the tasks from the machines. If a machine is not available or not reachable at the moment, the change will be propagated on the machine when it becomes available. This means that deploying a policy to multiple machines is not a momentary action. The same is true for revoking.
2. A policy, revoked from the group, remains on the machine. 3. A policy, revoked from the machine, remains on the group and therefore on the machine. 4. To completely revoke the policy from the machine, revoke it from both the group and the machine. 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.
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. 56 Copyright © Acronis, Inc.
Besides the All machines group, we have the custom G1 group in the root and the custom G2 group, which is G1's child. The "green" policy, applied to the All machines group, is inherited by all machines. The "orange" policy, applied to G1, is inherited by the G1 members and all its child groups, both immediate and indirect. The "blue" policy, applied to G2, is inherited only by the G2 members since G2 does not have child groups. The "violet" policy is applied straight to machine #4.
#5 or #6 2.11.5 "green" Inherited All machines -> #5 or #6 "orange" Inherited G1 -> G2 -> #5 or #6 "blue" Inherited G2 -> #5 or #6 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. The state and status of a backup policy are included in such parameters.
Backup policy state diagram 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. In each of the states, the backup policy can have one of the following statuses: Error; Warning; OK. While the policy is in the Deployed state, its status reflects how successfully the policy is executed.
/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. The following table provides details.
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. The cumulative state of a backup policy To see this parameter, select Backup policies in the tree. The Deployment state column displays the cumulative deployment state for each policy.
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. This may lead to faster backups but a greater load on the network and storage node. Deduplicating vault A managed centralized vault where deduplication is enabled is called a deduplicating vault.
1. It moves the items (disk blocks or files) from the archives to a special folder within the vault, storing duplicate items there only once. This folder is called the deduplication data store. Items that cannot be deduplicated remain in the archives. 2. In the archives, it replaces the moved items with the corresponding references to them. As a result, the vault contains a number of unique, deduplicated items, with each item having one or more references to it from the vault's archives.
Indexing of a backup requires that the vault have free space with a minimum size of 1.1 multiplied by the size of the archive the backup belongs to. If there is not enough free space in the vault, the indexing task will fail and start again after 5–10 minutes, on the assumption that some space has been freed up as a result of cleanup or of other indexing tasks. The more free space there is in the vault, the faster your archives will reduce to the minimum possible size.
If the volume is a compressed volume If the volume's allocation unit size—also known as cluster size or block size—is not divisible by 4 KB Tip: The allocation unit size on most NTFS and ext3 volumes is 4 KB and so allows for block-level deduplication. Other examples of allocation unit sizes allowing for block-level deduplication include 8 KB, 16 KB, and 64 KB.
Remote connection A remote connection is established between Acronis Backup & Recovery 10 Management Console on one machine and Acronis Backup & Recovery 10 Agent on another machine. You might need to specify logon credentials to establish a remote connection. To establish a remote connection 1. On the toolbar, click Connect, then point to New connection, and then click Manage a remote machine. 2.
A user who is a member of this group can manage the machine remotely by using Acronis Backup & Recovery 10 Management Console, according to the management rights described in Users' privileges on a managed machine (p. 30). By default, this group includes all members of the Administrators group.
View and manage archives owned by the user A user who is a member of the Administrators group on the storage node can additionally: View and manage any archive in any centralized vault managed by the storage node Re-schedule the compacting task, as described in Operations with storage nodes (p.
Alternatively, when creating a backup policy, the management server administrator has the option to explicitly specify a user account under which the centralized backup plans will run on the registered machines. In this case, the user account must exist on all the machines to which the centralized policy will be deployed. This is not always efficient.
The Acronis Remote Agent Service provides connectivity among Acronis components. It runs under the Network Service account and cannot run under a different account. 2.11.8 Communication between Acronis Backup & Recovery 10 components This section describes how Acronis Backup & Recovery 10 components communicate with each other using secure authentication and encryption.
Acronis Backup & Recovery 10 Agent Yes Yes Acronis Backup & Recovery 10 Management Server Yes Yes Acronis Backup & Recovery 10 Storage Yes Node Yes Acronis PXE Server No Yes Acronis Backup & Recovery 10 Bootable Agent Yes Yes Configuring communication settings You can configure communication settings, such as whether to encrypt transferred data, for Acronis Backup & Recovery 10 components installed on one or more machines, by using Acronis Administrative Template.
The component will use the specified port; type the port number in the Server TCP Port box. Disabled The same as Not configured. For details about the network port and instructions on how to specify it in Linux and a bootable environment, see Network port configuration (p. 73). Client Encryption options Specifies whether to encrypt the transferred data when the component acts as a client application, and whether to trust self-signed SSL certificates.
Server Encryption options Specifies whether to encrypt the transferred data when the component acts as a server application. Select one of the following: Not configured The component will use the default setting, which is to use encryption if possible (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 client application, otherwise it will be unencrypted.
Configuring the port in the operating system Windows To be able to change the ports' numbers, load and configure the Administrative Template, provided by Acronis, as described in Configuring communication settings (p. 71), under "Remote Agent ports". Linux Specify the port in the /etc/Acronis/Policies/Agent.config file. Restart the Acronis_agent daemon.
3. 4. 5. 6. In the Add/Remove Snap-in dialog box, click Add. In the Add Standalone Snap-in dialog box, double-click Certificates. Click Computer account, and then click Next. Click Local computer, and then click Finish. Tip: Alternatively, you can manage the list of certificates of a remote machine. To do this, click Another computer and then type the remote machine's name. 7. Click Close to close the Add Standalone Snap-in dialog box, and then click OK to close the Add/Remove Snap-in dialog box.
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. 356) or to the management server (p. 357). 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.
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. Windows event log This option defines whether the management server has to record its own log events in the Application Event Log of Windows (to see this log, run eventvwr.
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. 289). 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.
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.
To access the machine options, connect the console to the managed machine and then select Options > Machine options from the top menu. 3.3.1 Machine management This option defines whether the machine has to be managed centrally by the Acronis Backup & Recovery 10 Management Server. To be able to use this option, you must be logged on as a member of the Administrators group on the machine.
This option defines whether the agent(s) operating on the managed machine have to log events 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. 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. 85).
Types of events to send – choose the types of events: 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 SNMP management application and the sending machine belong. The typical community is "public". To disable sending SNMP messages, clear the Send messages to SNMP server check box.
3.3.4 Customer Experience Program This option defines whether the machine will participate in the Acronis Customer Experience Program (ACEP). 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.
Source files exclusion (p. 88) + + + + Pre/Post backup commands (p. 89) + + PE only PE only Pre/Post data capture commands (p. 90) + + - - Multi-volume snapshot (p. 92) + + - - File-level backup snapshot (p. 92) - + - - Use VSS (p. 93) + + - - Compression level (p. 93) + + + + + + - - Dest: HDD Dest: HDD Dest: HDD Dest: HDD Network connection speed (p.
Overwrite data on a tape without prompting user for confirmation Dest: Tape Dest: Tape Dest: Tape Dest: Tape Dismount media after backup is 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 Validate backup after creation - - + + Reset archive bit - + - + Reboot after the backup - - + + E-mail (p. 95) + + - - Win Pop-up (p.
Source files exclusion This option is effective for Windows and Linux operating systems and bootable media. This option is effective for disk-level backup of NTFS and FAT file systems only. This option is effective for file-level backup of all supported file systems. The option defines which files and folders to skip during the backup process and thus exclude from the list of backed-up items. The preset is: Exclude files matching the following criteria: *.tmp, *.~, *.bak.
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 backup procedure. The following scheme illustrates when pre/post commands are executed.
Perform the backup only after the command is successfully executed. Fail the task if the command execution fails. the command execution and irrespective of the command execution result. command is executed despite execution failure or success. Post-backup command To specify a command/executable file to be executed after the backup is completed 1. In the Command field, type a command or browse to a batch file. 2.
Execute after the data capture 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-data capture command To specify a command/batch file to be executed before data capture 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.
Selected Do not back up until the command execution is complete Cleared Selected Cleared Result Preset Continue the backup after the Continue the backup command is only after the executed despite command is command successfully execution failure executed. Delete the or success. TIB file and temporary files and fail the task if the command execution fails. N/A Continue the backup concurrently with the command execution and irrespective of the command execution result.
When this option is set to Enable, snapshots of all volumes being backed up will be created simultaneously. Use this option to create a time-consistent backup of data spanned across multiple volumes, for instance for an Oracle database. When this option is set to Disable, the volumes' snapshots will be taken one after the other. As a result, if the data spans across several volumes, the resulting backup may be not consistent.
compressed files, such as .jpg, .pdf or .mp3. However, formats such as .doc or .xls will be compressed well. To specify the compression level Select one of the following: None – the data will be copied as is, without any compression. The resulting backup size will be maximal. Normal – recommended in most cases. High – the resulting backup size will typically be less than for the Normal level. Maximum – the data will be compressed as much as possible. The backup duration will be maximal.
Backing up to a fixed hard disk (for example, to Acronis Secure Zone) may slow performance of the operating system and applications because of the large amounts of data that needs to be written to the disk. You can limit the hard disk usage by the backup process to the desired level. The preset is: Maximum.
2. In the E-mail addresses field, type the e-mail address to which notifications will be sent. You can enter several addresses separated by semicolons. 3. Under Send notifications, select the appropriate check boxes as follows: When backup completes successfully – to send a notification when the backup task has completed successfully When backup fails – to send a notification when the backup task has failed The When user interaction is required check box is always selected. 4.
2. In the Machine name field, enter the name of the machine to which notifications will be sent. Multiple names are not supported.
Acronis Backup & Recovery 10 provides the following Simple Network Management Protocol (SNMP) objects to SNMP management applications: 1.3.6.1.4.1.24769.100.200.1.0 - string identifying the type of event (Information, Warning, Error) 1.3.6.1.4.1.24769.100.200.2.0 - string containing the text description of the event (it looks identical to messages published by Acronis Backup & Recovery 10 in its log). The preset is: Use the setting set in the Machine options.
Automatic With this setting, Acronis Backup & Recovery 10 will act as follows. When backing up to a hard disk: A single backup file will be created if the destination disk's file system allows the estimated file size. The backup will automatically be split into several files if the destination disk's file system does not allow the estimated file size. Such might be the case when the backup is placed on FAT16 and FAT32 file systems that have a 4GB file size limit.
To completely eliminate this kind of problem, disable preserving file security settings in archives. The recovered files and folders will always inherit the permissions from the folder to which they are recovered or from the disk, if recovered to the root. Alternatively, you can disable recovery (p. 110) of the security settings, even if they are available in the archive. The result will be the same - the files will inherit the permissions from the parent folder.
When a recoverable error occurs, the program re-attempts to perform the unsuccessful operation. You can set the time interval and the number of attempts. The attempts will be stopped as soon as the operation succeeds OR the specified number of attempts is performed, depending on which comes first. For example, if the backup destination on the network becomes unavailable or not reachable, the program will attempt to reach the destination every 30 seconds, but no more than 5 times.
You might have to provide the access credentials for the secondary destination. Enter the credentials on prompt. Task start conditions This option is effective in Windows and Linux operating systems. This option is not available when operating under bootable media. This option determines the program behavior in case a backup task is about to start (the scheduled time comes or the event specified in the schedule occurs), but the condition (or any of multiple conditions) is not met.
Skip the task execution Delaying a backup might be unacceptable, for example, when you need to back up data strictly at the specified time. Then it makes sense to skip the backup rather than wait for the conditions, especially if the events occur relatively often. Task failure handling This option is effective for Windows and Linux operating systems. This option is not available when operating under the bootable media. This option determines the program behavior when any of the backup plan's tasks fails.
Separate tape set is a tape set which contains only backups of the specific protected data. Other backups cannot be written to a separate tape set. (For the backup policy/plan to be created) Use a separate tape set The preset is: Disabled. 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.
Additional settings Specify the additional settings for the backup operation by selecting or clearing the following check boxes. Overwrite data on a tape without prompting for user confirmation This option is effective only when backing up to a tape device. The preset is: Disabled. When starting backup to a non-empty tape in a locally attached tape device, the program will warn that you are about to lose data on the tape. To disable this warning, select this check box.
Restart the machine automatically after backup is finished This option is available only when operating under bootable media. The preset is: Disabled. When the option is enabled, Acronis Backup & Recovery 10 will restart the machine after the backup process is completed. For example, if the machine boots from a hard disk drive by default and you select this check box, the machine will be restarted and the operating system will start as soon as the bootable agent has finished creating the backup.
3.4.2 Default recovery options Each Acronis agent has its own default recovery options. Once an agent is installed, the default options have pre-defined values, which are referred to as presets in the documentation. When creating a recovery task, you can either use a default option, or override the default option with the custom value that will be specific for this task only. You can also customize a default option itself by changing its value against the pre-defined one.
Check file system after recovery + - + - Reboot machine automatically if it is required for recovery + + - - Windows recovery - Windows recovery - E-mail (p. 110) + + - - Win Pop-up (p. 111) + + - - Windows events log (p. 112) + + - - SNMP (p. 112) + + - - Change SID after recovery Notifications: Event tracing: Pre/Post commands This option is effective for Windows and Linux operating systems and PE-based bootable media.
4. Depending on the result you want to obtain, select the appropriate options as described in the table below. 5. Click Test command to check if the command is correct. Check box Selection Fail the task if the command execution fails Selected Cleared Selected Cleared Do not recover until the command execution is complete Selected Selected Cleared Cleared N/A Perform the recovery concurrently with the command execution and irrespective of the command execution result.
To specify the recovery process priority Select one of the following: Low – to minimize resources taken by the recovery process, leaving more resources to other processes running on the machine Normal – to run the recovery process with normal speed, allocating resources on a par with other processes High – to maximize the recovery process speed by taking resources from the other processes. File-level security This option is effective only for recovery from file-level backup of Windows files.
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. If this is your case, select the Log on to incoming mail server check box to enable a POP server and to set up its settings: Incoming mail server (POP) – enter the name of the POP server. Port – set the port of the POP server.
Windows event log This option is effective only in Windows operating systems. This option is not available when operating under the bootable media. 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.
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 SNMP community to which both the host running SNMP management application and the sending machine belong. The typical community is "public". Click Send test message to check if the settings are correct.
This option defines whether to validate a backup to ensure that the backup is not corrupted, before data is recovered from it. Check file system after recovery This option is effective only when recovering disks or volumes. When operating under bootable media, this option is not effective for the NTFS file system. The preset is Disabled. This option defines whether to check the integrity of the file system after a disk or volume recovery.
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. 67) 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 backups (p. 149) Filtering and sorting archives (p. 150) 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. [Backup Name] The Actions bar is available when you expand the archive and click on any of its backups.
another storage node. Explore an unmanaged vault 1. Select the unmanaged vault. 2. Click Explore. The vault will be available for examination with the standard file manager program. Attach the managed vault that was deleted without removing its content. Change user credentials for accessing a vault Refresh a vault's information Click Attach. The procedure of attaching a managed vault to a storage node is described in-depth in the Attaching a managed vault (p. 122) section. Click Change user.
Path (p. 120) 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. 120) 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. Deduplication [Optional] Select whether to enable archive deduplication in the vault.
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 size may become large—one estimate is 200 GB per 8 TB of used space, or about 2.5 percent. The folder permissions must allow the user account under which the storage node's service is running (by default, ASN User) to write to the folder. When assigning permissions, specify the user account explicitly (not just Everyone).
Enter the distinctive description of the vault. Type Select the Unmanaged type. Path (p. 122) Specify where the vault will be created. After you have performed all the required steps, click OK to commit creating the unmanaged centralized vault. Vault path To specify the path where the unmanaged vault will be created 1. Enter the full path to the folder in the Path field or select the desired folder in the folders tree.
For the vault that was encrypted, provide the encryption password. After you have performed all the required steps, click OK to commit to attaching the vault. This procedure may last for quite a while since the storage node has to scan the archives, write the metadata in the database, and deduplicate the archives if the vault was originally deduplicating. 4.1.3 Tape libraries This section describes in detail how to use robotic tape devices as vaults for storing backup archives.
Hardware A tape library (robotic library) is a high-capacity storage device that contains the following: one or more tape drives barcode readers (optional).
System media pools include Free pool, Import pool and Unrecognized pool. The System pools hold media that are not currently used by applications. The Free pool holds media that are considered as free and can be used by applications. The Import and Unrecognized pools are temporary pools for media that are new in certain library.
1. Click Administrative Tools > Server Manager > Features > Add Feature. 2. Select the Removable Storage Manager check box. To activate Removable Storage Manager in Microsoft Windows Vista: 1. Click Control Panel > Programs > Programs and Features > Turn Windows features on or off. 2. Select the Removable Storage Management check box. Fill the library slots with tape cartridges. If a tape does not get a barcode or its barcode is corrupted, you can define the tape label for identification purposes later.
It should be noted, these functions have some specific features for a tape library. So the Edit operation enables you to substitute a tape library device without the Rescan operation. The Delete operation clears all the information on the selected tape library vault from the storage node database, i.e. the operation deletes the content data of all the tapes, when ever the data is used by the storage node on the tape library device.
When recovering, you start creating a recovery task, select the tape device vault, and select the archive and the backup to recover data from. At task creation, the program uses the storage node database instead of accessing tapes. However, selection of data to recover (e.g. some files or specific volumes) requires reading of one or more tapes, so it might be durational. The program finds the tapes and inserts them automatically in the right order.
To launch the procedure select the tape library vault in the Navigation pane of the console, click Manage tapes and then click Start inventory on the Tape Management window. When inventorying is completed a user has the list of tapes currently loaded into the library. Perform the procedure every time you load new tapes into tape library slots. Rescan As stated above the storage node keeps information about tapes and their contents in a dedicated database.
To define your own label for a tape, select a related data field, type in a new label, click Eject tape, write the same label on the tape cartridge (to make association with the label) and insert it back into the same slot. Once all the required tape labels are specified press Set labels to store labels in the storage node database. Tape support These options are effective when the backup destination is a managed vault located on a tape library.
Always use a free tape If you leave the options below unchanged, then each backup will be written onto the tape specified by the Use a separate tape set option. With some of the options below enabled, the program will add new tapes to the tape set every time when a full, incremental or differential backup is created. For each full backup The preset is: Disabled. When this option is enabled, each full backup will be written onto a free tape.
If your backup archive must provide recovery with daily resolution for the last several days, weekly resolution for the last several weeks and monthly resolution for any time in the past, the most preferred scheme for you is the Grandfather-Father-Son scheme. If the main goal is to provide data protection for the longest period with the minimal number of used tapes permanently loaded into a small tape library (e.g. autoloader), the best solution is to probably choose the Tower of Hanoi scheme.
Weekly/differential backups (40 GB) are displayed as a blue rectangle: . Any full monthly backup (320 GB) is drawn in orange: . A whole tape (400 GB) is drawn as a gray rectangle: . Using the Grandfather-Father-Son tape rotation scheme Tape rotation for the GFS backup scheme is substantially defined by the tape options specified for the backup policy/plan to be created.
loaded especially for backing up the data. The tape is marked with number 01 in the figure below. In accordance with the legend described in the Case to analyze (p. 132) section, the full data backup is displayed as an orange rectangle in the figure. The specified GFS backup scheme settings force the data to be backed up on Workdays only, so the next backup is created at the same time (11:00 PM) on Monday 4th of January.
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. 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.
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. So the ToH scheme is the best choice for small tape libraries, especially for autoloaders.
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. The recurring part of the scheme contains sixteen backup sessions.
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. The only difference between ToH Example 2 and ToH Example 1 is that the Always use a free tape: For each full backup 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. Maximal number of tapes used in the rotation is seven that is more than in classical five-level ToH scheme. Two additional tapes used for: 1.
compression level specified for backing up the data tape rotation scheme ( frequency of backups, retention rules) tape-append options requirements to support off-site tape cartridge archives. There is no common formula to calculate a number of tapes required in all possible combinations of above listed considerations. But the general way to get a number of tapes for a case includes the following steps: 1. 2. 3. 4.
compression level provides CL average reduction coefficient selected tape rotation scheme is Custom with the following settings: differential backup - every 2 days incremental backup - every 1 day, every 6 hours retention rules: delete backups older than 5 days tape options are the following: full backup - every 10 days 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 increme
node cannot be read by an agent in a locally attached tape device. However the storage node can read tapes written by an agent. Please refer to the tape compatibility table (p. 42) to get comprehensive information about the compatibility of tape formats in Acronis Backup & Recovery 10.
Vault toolbar The toolbar contains operational buttons that let you perform operations with the selected personal vault. See the Actions on personal vaults (p. 146) section for details. Pie chart with legend The pie chart lets you estimate the vault's load: it shows the proportion of the vault's free space and occupied space. - free space: space on the storage device, where the vault is located.
The following is a guideline for you to perform operations with personal vaults. To Do Create a personal vault Click Create. The procedure of creating personal vaults is described in-depth in the Creating a personal vault (p. 147) section. Edit a vault 1. Select the vault. 2. Click Edit. The Edit personal vault page lets you edit the vault's name and information in the Comments field. Change user account for accessing a vault Click Change user.
Merging and moving personal vaults What if I need to move the existing vault from a one place to another? Proceed as follows 1. Make sure that none of the backup plans uses the existing vault while moving files, or temporarily disable (p. 176) schedules of the given plans. 2. Move the vault folder with all its archives to a new place manually by means of a third-party file manager. 3. Create a new vault. 4. Edit the backup plans and tasks: redirect their destination to the new vault. 5.
or multiple archives 2. Click Delete. The program duplicates your selection in the Backups deletion (p. 150) window that has check boxes for each archive and each backup. Review the selection and correct if need be (select the check boxes for the desired archives), then confirm the deletion. Delete all archives in the Please be aware that if filters have been applied to the vaults list, you see only a part vault of the vault content.
if need be (select the check boxes for the desired backups), then confirm the deletion. Delete all archives and backups in the vault Please be aware that if filters have been applied to the vaults list, you see only a part of the vault content. Be sure that the vault does not contain archives you need to retain before starting the operation. Click Delete all. The program duplicates your selection in the Backups deletion (p. 150) window that has check boxes for each archive and each backup.
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. Copyright © Acronis, Inc.
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.
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. What if an event occurs while the scheduler is waiting for the condition required by the previous event? The event will be ignored. What if the condition is not met for a very long time? If delaying a backup is getting risky, you can force the condition (tell the users to log off) or run the task manually.
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. "Three-hour time interval lasting for three months" schedule Run the task every three hours. The task starts on a certain date (say, September 15, 2009), and ends after three months.
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: <...> Specify a certain number of weeks and the days of the week you want the task to be run.
To: 11/13/2009. The task will be performed for the last time on this date, but the task itself will still be available in the Tasks view after this date. (If this date were not a Friday, the task would be last performed on the last Friday preceding this date.) This schedule is widely used when creating a custom backup scheme. The "One day in the week"-like schedule is added to the full backups, while the incremental backups are scheduled to be performed on workdays.
From: not set. To: not set. Second schedule 1. Every 1 week(s) on: Tue, Wed, Thu. 2. Every 3 hours From 09:00:00 AM until 09:00:00 PM. 3. Effective: From: not set. To: not set. Third schedule 1. Every: 1 week(s) on: Sat, Sun. 2. Once at: 09:00:00 PM. 3. Effective: From: not set. To: not set. 5.3 Monthly schedule Monthly schedule is effective in Windows and Linux operating systems. To specify a monthly schedule In the Schedule area, select the appropriate parameter as follows: Months: <...
Examples "Last day of every month" schedule Run the task once at 10 PM on the last day of every month. The schedule's parameters are set up as follows. 1. 2. 3. 4. Months: . Days: Last. The task will run on the last day of every month despite its actual date. Once at: 10:00:00 PM. Effective: From: empty. To: empty. This schedule is widely used when creating a custom backup scheme.
2. On: 3. Once at: 10:00:00 PM. 4. Effective: From: 11/01/2009. To: not set. Second schedule 1. Months: March, April, May, September, October, November. 2. On: . 3. Every: 12 hours From: 12:00:00 AM Until: 12:00:00 PM. 4. Effective: From: 11/01/2009. To: not set. Third schedule 1. 2. 3. 4. Months: June, July, August. Days: 1, 15. Once at: 10:00:00 PM. Effective: From: 11/01/2009. To: not set. 5.
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.
You can schedule a backup task to start when a certain Windows event has been recorded in one of the event logs such as the Application, Security, or System log. For example, you may want to set up a backup plan that will automatically perform an emergency full backup of your data as soon as Windows discovers that your hard disk drive is about to fail. Parameters Log name Specifies the name of the log.
WindowsUpdateClient and event number 18 into the System log; the type of this event is Information. When creating the plan, type or select the following in the Schedule area: 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.
Example: It is required to run the backup task after free space on the managed machine is changed by at least 1 GB, but only if all users are logged off and more than 12 hours have passed since the last backup. Set the schedule, conditions and the Task start conditions backup option as follows: Schedule: When free space changed; Value: Run task if free space has changed by at least: 1 GB. Condition: User logged off; Value: Run the task on schedule only if all users are logged off.
As a result, (1) If 9:00 PM comes and the location's host is available, the backup task starts right on time. (2) If 9:00 PM comes but the host is unavailable at the moment, the backup task will start on the next workday if the location's host is available. (3) If the location's host will never be available on workdays at 9:00 PM, the task never starts. 5.6.3 Fits time interval Applies to: Windows, Linux Restricts a backup task's start time to a specified interval.
5.6.4 User logged off Applies to: Windows Enables to put a backup task run on hold until all users log off from Windows on the managed machine. 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.
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.
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.
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. System view Shows summarized statistics of backup plans, tasks, and brief information on the last backup. Click the items in this section to obtain the relevant information.
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. 178) and Task details (p. 176) windows respectively. Understanding states and statuses Backup plan execution states A backup plan can be in one of the following execution states: Idle; Waiting; Running; Stopping; Need Interaction.
Otherwise, see 2 following: Remove the reason of the failure -> [optionally] Start the failed task manually Edit the local plan to prevent its future failure in case a local plan has failed Edit the backup policy on the management server in case a centralized plan has failed When creating a backup plan or policy the administrator can turn on the option to stop executing the backup plan as soon as the backup plan gets the Error status.
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. In this case, since the task is not running, "stop" means removing it from the queue . Task state diagram Task statuses A task can have one of the following statuses: Error; Warning; OK. A task status is derived from the result of the last run of the task.
Working with backup plans and tasks Actions on backup plans and tasks The following is a guideline for you to perform operations with backup plans and tasks. To Do Create a new backup plan, or a task Click New, then select one of the following: Backup plan (p. 181) Recovery task (p. 199) Validation task (p. 218) View details of a plan/task Backup plan Click View details. In the Plan Details (p. 178) window, review the plan details. Task View details. Click In the Task Details (p.
Stop a plan/task Backup plan Click Stop. Stopping the running backup plan stops all its tasks. Thus, all the task operations will be aborted. 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.
Edit a plan/task Backup plan Click Edit. Backup plan editing is performed in the same way as creation (p. 181), 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 (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 backup to a new virtual machine Validat
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. It contains a brief description of the problem and action buttons that let you select the appropriate action or stop the plan.
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. With the log, you can examine operations, results of tasks' execution including reasons for failure, if any. Way of working with log entries Use filters to display the desired log entries.
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. Set filters to get a list of the log entries that satisfy the filtering criteria. 2.
Log entry details Displays detailed information on the log entry you have selected and lets you copy the details to the clipboard. To copy the details, click the Copy to clipboard button.
[Optional] Type a description of the backup plan. To access this option, select the Advanced view check box. What to backup Source type (p. 184) Select the type of data to back up. The type of data depends on the agents installed on the machine. Items to backup (p. 184) Specify the data items to back up. A list of items to backup depends on the data type, specified previously. Access credentials (p.
After any of the settings is changed against the default value, a new line that displays the newly set value appears. The setting status changes from Default to Custom. Should you 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 this section of the Create backup plan page.
To specify credentials 1. Select one of the following: Run under the current user The tasks will run under the credentials with which the user who starts the tasks is logged on. If any of the tasks has to run on schedule, you will be asked for the current user's password on completing the plan creation. Use the following credentials The tasks will always run under the credentials you specify, whether started manually or executed on schedule. Specify: User name.
Selecting disks and volumes To specify disks/volumes to back up 1. Select the check boxes for the disks and/or volumes to back up. You can select a random set of disks and volumes. If your operating system and its loader reside on different volumes, always include both volumes in the backup. The volumes must also be recovered together; otherwise there is a high risk that the operating system will not start. 2.
6.2.5 Access credentials for source Specify the credentials required for access to the data you are going to backup. To specify credentials 1. Select one of the following: Use the plan's credentials 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.
By name File1.log Excludes all files named File1.log. By path C:\Finance\test.log Excludes the file named test.log located in the folder C:\Finance Mask (*) *.log Excludes all files with the .log extension. Mask (?) my???.log Excludes all .log files with names consisting of five symbols and starting with “my”. 6.2.7 Archive Specify where the archive will be stored and the name of the archive. 1.
unique within the selected location. If you are satisfied with the automatically generated name, click OK. Otherwise enter another unique name and click OK. Backing up to an existing archive You can configure the backup plan to back up to an existing archive. To do so, select the archive in the archives table or type the archive name in the Name field. If the archive is protected with a password, the program will ask for it in the pop-up window.
6.2.9 Backup schemes Choose one of the available backup schemes: Back up now – to create a backup task for manual start and run the task immediately after its creation. Back up later – to create a backup task for manual start OR schedule one-time task execution in the future. Simple – to schedule when and how often to backup data and specify retention rules. Grandfather-Father-Son – to use the Grandfather-Father-Son backup scheme.
To set up the simple backup scheme, specify the appropriate settings as follows. Backup Set up the backup schedule - when and how often to back up the data. To learn more about setting up the schedule, see the Scheduling (p. 152) section. Retention rule With the simple scheme, only one retention rule (p. 37) is available. Set the retention period for the backups.
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.
Be able to recover an accidentally deleted or inadvertently modified file if this has been discovered relatively quickly Have access to a weekly backup for 10 days after it was created Keep monthly backups for half a year. Backup scheme parameters can then be set up as follows.
Start backup at: 12:00 PM Back up on: Friday Weekly/monthly: Friday Keep backups: Daily: 1 week Weekly: 1 month Monthly: indefinitely Backup is thus performed only on Fridays. This makes Friday the only choice for weekly and monthly backups, leaving no other date for daily backups. The resulting “Grandfather-Father” archive will hence consist only of weekly differential and monthly full backups.
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 cleanup mechanism ensures that only the most recent backups of each level are kept. Here is how the archive looks on day 8, a day before creating a new full backup.
1 4 2 1 3 2 4 1 5 3 6 1 7 2 8 1 9 4 10 1 11 2 12 1 13 3 14 1 The roll-back period shows how many days we are guaranteed to have even in the worst case. For a four-level scheme, it is four days. Custom backup scheme At a glance Custom schedule and conditions for backups of each type Custom schedule and retention rules Parameters Parameter Meaning Full backup Specifies on what schedule and under which conditions to perform a full backup.
This setting enables deletion of the last backup in the archive, in case your storage device cannot accommodate more than one backup. However, you might end up with no backups if the program is not able to create the new backup for some reason. Apply the rules Specifies when to apply the retention rules (p. 37). (only if the retention rules are set) For example, the cleanup procedure can be set up to run after each backup, and also on schedule.
Suppose that we need a scheme that will produce monthly full backups, weekly differential backups, and daily incremental backups. Then the backup schedule can look as follows. Full backup: Schedule: Monthly, every Last Sunday of the month, at 9:00 PM Incremental: Schedule: Weekly, every workday, at 7:00 PM Differential: Schedule: Weekly, every Saturday, at 8:00 PM Further, we want to add conditions that have to be satisfied for a backup task to start.
If you have also specified the retention rules in your backup scheme, the scheme will result in four tasks: three backup tasks and one cleanup task. 6.2.10 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.
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. 350) or using Acronis Startup Recovery Manager (p. 45). Then, create a recovery task. Acronis Universal Restore (p. 45) 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. 205) Volumes (p.
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. 6.3.1 Task credentials Provide credentials for the account under which the task will run. To specify credentials 1.
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.
There are probably other times when you may need to recover the MBR, but the above are the most common. When recovering the MBR of one disk to another Acronis Backup & Recovery 10 recovers Track 0, which does not affect the target disk’s partition table and partition layout. Acronis Backup & Recovery 10 automatically updates Windows loaders after recovery, so there is no need to recover the MBR and Track 0 for Windows systems, unless the MBR is damaged.
Disks Available disk 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 disks will be recovered to the physical disks of the machine the console is connected to. On selecting this, you proceed to the regular disk mapping procedure described below. New virtual machine (p. 209) If Acronis Backup & Recovery 10 Agent for Windows is installed.
NT signature When the MBR is selected along with the disk backup, you need to retain operating system bootability on the target disk volume. The operating system must have the system volume information (e.g. volume letter) matched with the disk NT signature, which is kept in the MBR disk record. But two disks with the same NT signature cannot work properly under one operating system.
The new virtual machine will be configured automatically, the source machine configuration being copied where possible. The configuration is displayed in the Virtual Machine Settings (p. 209) section. Check the settings and make changes if necessary. Then you proceed to the regular volume mapping procedure described below. Existing virtual machine Available when the Acronis Backup & Recovery 10 Agent for Hyper-V or Agent for ESX/ESXi is installed.
Volume properties Resizing and relocating When recovering a volume to a basic MBR disk, you can resize and relocate the volume by dragging it or its borders with a mouse or by entering corresponding values in the appropriate fields. Using this feature, you can redistribute the disk space between the volumes being recovered. In this case, you will have to recover the volume to be reduced first. Tip: A volume cannot be resized when being recovered from a backup split into multiple removable media.
Virtual machine type / virtualization server selection The new virtual machine can be created either on a virtualization server (this requires Acronis Backup & Recovery 10 Agent for Hyper-V or Agent for ESX/ESXi to be installed) or in any accessible local or networked folder. To select the virtualization server the new virtual machine will be created on 1. Choose the Place on the virtualization server that I select option. 2. In the left part of the window, select the virtualization server.
This is the number of processors of the new virtual machine. In most cases it is set to one. The result of assignment of more than one processor to the machine is not guaranteed. The number of virtual processors may be limited by the host CPU configuration, the virtualization product and the guest operating system. Multiple virtual processors are generally available on multi-processor hosts. A multicore host CPU or hyperthreading may enable multiple virtual processors on a single-processor host.
Overwriting Choose what to do if the program finds in the target folder a file with the same name as in the archive: Overwrite existing file - this will give the file in the backup priority over the file on the hard disk. Overwrite existing file if it is older - this will give priority to the most recent file modification, whether it be in the backup or on the disk. Do not overwrite existing file - this will give the file on the hard disk priority over the file in the backup.
you have chosen to use Acronis Active Restore (p. 347) because these features are primarily meant for instant data recovery on the same machine. Preparation Before recovering Windows to dissimilar hardware, make sure that you have the drivers for the new HDD controller and the chipset. These drivers are critical to start the operating system. Use the CD or 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 *.
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.
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. On a Microsoft Virtual PC, be sure to recover the disk or volume where the operating system's loader resides to the Hard disk 1. Otherwise the operating system will not boot.
Solution: Boot the machine from the Acronis Disk Director's bootable media and select in the menu Tools -> Activate OS Selector. The system uses GRand Unified Bootloader (GRUB) and was recovered from a normal (not from a raw, that is, sector-by-sector) backup One part of the GRUB loader resides either in the first several sectors of the disk or in the first several sectors of the volume. The rest is on the file system of one of the volumes.
cp /mnt/system/boot/grub/menu.lst /mnt/system/boot/grub/menu.lst.backup or cp /mnt/system/boot/grub/grub.conf /mnt/system/boot/grub/grub.conf.backup 5. Edit the /mnt/system/boot/grub/menu.lst file (for Debian, Ubuntu, and SUSE Linux distributions) or the /mnt/system/boot/grub/grub.conf file (for Fedora and Red Hat Enterprise Linux distributions)—for example, as follows: vi /mnt/system/boot/grub/menu.lst 6. In the menu.lst file (respectively grub.
About Windows loaders Windows NT/2000/XP/2003 A part of the loader resides in the partition boot sector, the rest is in the files ntldr, boot.ini, ntdetect.com, ntbootdd.sys. boot.ini is a text file that contains the loader configuration.
If this does not resolve the problem, or for more details on adding these registry settings, see the corresponding Microsoft Help and Support article. Tip: In general, if a volume contains many files, consider using a disk-level backup instead of a file-level one. In this case, you will be able to recover the entire volume as well as particular files stored on it. 6.3.
Different ways to create a validation task Using the Validation page is the most general way to create a validation task. Here you can validate immediately or set up a validation schedule for any backup, archive or location you have permission to access. Validation of an archive or of the latest backup in the archive can be scheduled as part of the backup plan. For more information see the Creating a backup plan (p. 181) section. You can access the Validation page from the Vaults (p. 115) view.
The task will run under the credentials with which the user who starts the tasks is logged on. If the task has to run on schedule, you will be asked for the current user's password on completing the task creation. Use the following credentials The task will always run under the credentials you specify, whether started manually or executed on schedule. Specify: User name.
If the archive is stored on a locally attached tape device, expand the Tape drives group, then click the required device. 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 Refresh button to refresh the list of archives. 3. Click OK. 6.
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.
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. To do so, click Use anonymous access instead of entering credentials. According to the original FTP specification, credentials required for access to FTP servers are transferred through a network as plaintext.
6.5.4 Volume selection Select the volumes to mount and configure the mounting parameters for each of the selected volumes as follows: 1. Select the check box for each volume you need to mount. 2. Click on the selected volume to set its mounting parameters. Access mode - choose the mode you want the volume to be mounted in: Read only - enables exploring and opening files within the backup without committing any changes.
a single backup - an archive consisting of a single full backup will be created. The export of an incremental or a differential backup is performed using consolidation of the preceding backups up to the nearest full backup your choice of backups belonging to the same archive - the resulting archive will contain only the specified backups. Consolidation is performed as required, so the resulting archive may contain full, incremental and differential backups.
export from a managed vault. The export is performed by the storage node that manages the vault. The destination can be a network share or a local folder of the storage node. export from an unmanaged centralized vault. The export is performed by the agent installed on the managed machine you specify. The destination can be any location accessible to the agent, including a managed vault. Tip.
Where to export Archive (p. 230) Enter the path to the location where the new archive will be created. Be sure to provide a distinct name and comment for the new archive. Access credentials (p. 231) [Optional] Provide credentials for the destination if the task credentials do not have enough privileges to access it. To access this option, select the Advanced view check box. After you have performed all the required steps, click OK to start the export task. 6.7.
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. Note for Linux users: To specify a Common Internet File System (CIFS) network share which is mounted on a mount point such as /mnt/share, select this mount point instead of the network share itself.
The 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.
Network folders group to export data to a network share. 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. 2.
6.8 Acronis Secure Zone Acronis Secure Zone is a secure partition that enables keeping backup archives on a managed machine disk space and therefore recovery of a disk to the same disk where the backup resides. Certain Windows applications, such as Acronis disk management tools, can access the zone. To learn more about the advantages and limitations of the Acronis Secure Zone, see the Acronis Secure Zone (p. 44) topic in the "Proprietary Acronis technologies" section. 6.8.
Acronis Secure Zone Size Enter the Acronis Secure Zone size or drag the slider to select any size between the minimum and the maximum ones. The minimum size is approximately 50MB, depending on the geometry of the hard disk. The maximum size is equal to the disk's unallocated space plus the total free space on all the volumes you have selected in the previous step.
As is apparent from the above, setting the maximum possible zone size is not advisable. You will end up with no free space on any volume which might cause the operating system or applications to work unstably and even fail to start. 6.8.2 Managing Acronis Secure Zone Acronis Secure Zone is considered as a personal vault (p. 360). Once created on a managed machine, the zone is always present in the list of Personal vaults. Centralized backup plans can use Acronis Secure Zone as well as local plans.
dragging the slider and selecting any size between the current and minimum values. The minimum size is approximately 50MB, depending on the geometry of the hard disk; typing an exact value in the Acronis Secure Zone Size field. 4. Click OK. Deleting Acronis Secure Zone To delete the zone without uninstalling the program, proceed as follows: 1. In the Acronis Secure Zone Actions bar (on the Actions and tools pane), select Delete. 2.
6.10 Bootable media Bootable media Bootable media is physical media (CD, DVD, USB drive or other media supported by a machine BIOS as a boot device) that boots on any PC-compatible machine and enables you to run Acronis Backup & Recovery 10 Agent either in a Linux-based environment or Windows Preinstallation Environment (WinPE), without the help of an operating system.
6.10.1 How to create bootable media To enable creating physical media, the machine must have a CD/DVD recording drive or allow a flash drive to be attached. To enable PXE or WDS/RIS configuration, the machine must have a network connection. Bootable Media Builder can also create an ISO image of a bootable disk to burn it later on a blank disk.
3. Install the Microsoft .NET Framework v.2.0 from this kit (NETFXx86 or NETFXx64, depending on your hardware.) 4. Install Microsoft Core XML (MSXML) 5.0 or 6.0 Parser from this kit. 5. Install Windows AIK from this kit. 6. Install Bootable Media Builder on the same machine. It is recommended that you familiarize yourself with the help documentation supplied with Windows AIK. To access the documentation, select Microsoft Windows AIK -> Documentation from the start menu.
8. [optional] Windows system drivers to be used by Acronis Universal Restore (p. 241). This window appears only if the Acronis Universal Restore add-on is installed and a media other than PXE or WDS/RIS is selected. 9. Path to the media ISO file or the name or IP and credentials for PXE or WDS/RIS. Kernel parameters This window lets you specify one or more parameters of the Linux kernel. They will be automatically applied when the bootable media starts.
nodma Disables direct memory access (DMA) for all IDE hard disk drives. Prevents the kernel from freezing on some hardware. nofw Disables the FireWire (IEEE1394) interface support. nopcmcia Disables detection of PCMCIA hardware. nomouse Disables mouse support. module_name=off Disables the module whose name is given by module_name. For example, to disable the use of the SATA module, specify: sata_sis=off pci=bios Forces the use of PCI BIOS instead of accessing the hardware device directly.
customized. When you select an existing NIC in the wizard window, its settings are selected for saving on the media. The MAC address of each existing NIC is also saved on the media. You can change the settings, except for the MAC address; or configure the settings for a non-existent NIC, if need be. Once the bootable agent starts on the server, it retrieves the list of available NICs. This list is sorted by the slots the NICs occupy: the closest to the processor on top.
The drivers will be placed in the visible Drivers folder on the bootable media. The drivers are not loaded into the target machine RAM, therefore, the media must stay inserted or connected throughout the Universal Restore operation. Adding drivers to bootable media is available on the condition that: 1. The Acronis Backup & Recovery 10 Universal Restore add-on is installed on the machine where the bootable media is created AND 2.
Adding the Acronis Plug-in to a WIM file for any future purpose (manual ISO building, adding other tools to the image and so on). To be able to perform any of the above operations, install Bootable Media Builder on a machine where Windows Automated Installation Kit (WAIK) is installed. If you do not have such machine, prepare as described in How to create bootable media (p. 237). Bootable Media Builder supports only x86 WinPE 2.x or 3.0. These WnPE distributions can also work on x64 hardware.
Building Bart PE with Acronis Plug-in from Windows distribution 1. Get the Bart PE builder. 2. Install Bootable Media Builder from the Acronis Backup & Recovery 10 setup file. 3. Change the current folder to the folder where the Acronis Plug-in for WinPE is installed—by default: C:\Program Files\Acronis\Bootable Components\WinPE.
Be careful! To be on the safe side, it is advisable to assign unique names to the volumes. 2. The Linux-style bootable media shows local disks and volumes as unmounted (sda1, sda2...). 3. The Linux-style bootable media cannot write a backup to an NTFS-formatted volume. Switch to the Windows style if you need to do so. 4. You can switch the bootable media between the Windows style and the Linux style by selecting Tools > Change volume representation. 5. There is no Navigation tree in the media GUI.
2. Click Configure iSCSI/NDAS devices (in a Linux-based media) or Run the iSCSI Setup (in a PEbased media). 3. Specify the IP address and port of the iSCSI device's host, and the name of the iSCSI initiator. 4. If the host requires authentication, specify the user name and password for it. 5. Click OK. 6. Select the iSCSI device from the list, and then click Connect. 7. If prompted, specify the user name and password to access the iSCSI device. To add an NDAS device 1. 2. 3. 4. 5.
dmesg lvm ssh dmraid mdadm sshd e2fsck mkdir strace e2label mke2fs swapoff echo mknod swapon egrep mkswap sysinfo fdisk more tar fsck mount tune2fs fxload mtx udev gawk mv udevinfo gpm pccardctl udevstart grep ping umount growisofs pktsetup uuidgen grub poweroff vconfig gunzip ps vi halt raidautorun zcat hexdump readcd hotplug reboot 6.10.
If disk configuration has changed. An MD device or a logical volume resides on one or more disks, each of its own size. If you replaced any of these disks between backup and recovery—or if you are recovering the volumes to a different machine—make sure that the new disk configuration includes enough disks whose sizes are at least those of the original disks. 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.
6. If you previously mounted the backup by using the trueimagemnt utility, use this utility again to unmount the backup (see "Mounting backup volumes" later in this topic). 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.
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.
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.
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. In such case with the help of Acronis Disk Director Lite, the user has the possibility to recreate the necessary disk configuration so that the volume image can be recovered exactly “as it was” or with any alteration of the disk or volume structure the user might consider necessary.
6.11.3 Choosing the operating system for disk management On a machine with two or more operating systems, representation of disks and volumes depends on which operating system is currently running. A volume may have a different letter in different Windows operating systems. For example, volume E: might appear as D: or L: when you boot another Windows operating system installed on the same machine.
6.11.5 Disk operations Acronis Disk Director Lite includes the following operations that can be performed on disks: Disk Initialization (p. 255) - initializes the new hardware added to the system Basic disk cloning (p. 255) - transfers complete data from the source basic MBR disk to the target Disk conversion: MBR to GPT (p. 257) - converts an MBR partition table to GPT Disk conversion: GPT to MBR (p. 258) - converts a GPT partition table to MBR Disk conversion: Basic to Dynamic (p.
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. Acronis Disk Director Lite allows the operation to be carried out to basic MBR disks only. To plan the Clone basic disk operation: 1. Select a disk you want to clone. 2. Select a disk as target for the cloning operation. 3. Select a cloning method and specify advanced options.
(To finish the added operation you will have to commit (p. 267) it. Exiting the program without committing the pending operations will effectively cancel them.) Using advanced options When cloning a disk comprising of a system volume, you need to retain an operating system bootability on the target disk volume. It means that the operating system must have the system volume information (e.g. volume letter) matched with the disk NT signature, which is kept in the MBR disk record.
2. Right-click on the selected volume, and then click Convert to GPT in the context menu. You will receive a warning window, stating that you are about to convert MBR into GPT. 3. By clicking OK, you'll add a pending operation of MBR to GPT disk conversion. (To finish the added operation you will have to commit (p. 267) it. Exiting the program without committing the pending operations will effectively cancel them.
If you need to convert a basic disk to dynamic: 1. Select the basic disk to convert to dynamic. 2. Right-click on the selected volume, and then click Convert to dynamic in the context menu. You will receive a final warning about the basic disk being converted to dynamic. 3. If you click OK in this warning window, the conversion will be performed immediately and if necessary, your machine will be restarted.
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 disk space are reserved for the future conversion of the disk from basic to dynamic). System disk conversion Acronis Disk Director Lite does not require an operating system reboot after dynamic to basic conversion of the disk, if: 1. There is a single Windows 2008/Vista operating system installed on the disk. 2.
The full version of Acronis Disk Director will provide more tools and utilities for working with volumes. Acronis Disk Director Lite must obtain exclusive access to the target volume. This means no other disk management utilities (like Windows Disk Management utility) can access it at that time. If you receive a message stating that the volume cannot be blocked, close the disk management applications that use this volume and start again.
Mirrored-Striped Volume A fault-tolerant volume, also sometimes called RAID 1+0, combining the advantage of the high I/O speed of the striped layout and redundancy of the mirror type. The evident disadvantage remains inherent with the mirror architecture - a low disk-to-volume size ratio. RAID-5 A fault-tolerant volume whose data is striped across an array of three or more disks.
To create a basic volume: Select a destination disk and specify the unallocated space to create the basic volume on. To create a Simple/Spanned volume: Select one or more destination disks to create the volume on. To create a Mirrored volume: Select two destination disks to create the volume on. To create a Striped volume: Select two or more destination disks to create the volume on. To create a RAID-5 volume: Select three destination disks to create the volume on.
The wizard will prompt you to choose one of the Windows file systems: FAT16 (disabled, if the volume size has been set at more than 2 GB), FAT32 (disabled, if the volume size has been set at more than 2 TB), NTFS or to leave the volume Unformatted. In setting the cluster size you can choose between any number in the preset amount for each file system. Note, the program suggests the cluster size best suited to the volume with the chosen file system.
(To finish the added operation you will have to commit (p. 267) it. Exiting the program without committing the pending operations will effectively cancel them.) Set active volume If you have several primary volumes, you must specify one to be the boot volume. For this, you can set a volume to become active. A disk can have only one active volume, so if you set a volume as active, the volume, which was active before, will be automatically unset. If you need to set a volume active: 1.
Change volume label The volume label is an optional attribute. It is a name assigned to a volume for easier recognition. For example, one volume could be called SYSTEM — a volume with an operating system, or PROGRAM — an application volume, DATA — a data volume, etc., but it does not imply that only the type of data stated with the label could be stored on such a volume. In Windows, volume labels are shown in the Explorer disk and folder tree: LABEL1(C:), LABEL2(D:), LABEL3(E:), etc.
If you set a 64K cluster size for FAT16/FAT32 or an 8KB-64KB cluster size for NTFS, Windows can mount the volume, but some programs (e.g. Setup programs) might calculate its disk space incorrectly. 6.11.7 Pending operations All operations, which were prepared by the user in manual mode or with the aid of a wizard, are considered pending until the user issues the specific command for the changes to be made permanent.
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.
less than 10% free space. View vaults will take you to the Centralized vaults (p. 117) 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. Back up the system volume (and the boot volume, if it is different) 2. Create at least one bootable media (p. 350). Create now will launch the Bootable Media Builder (p.
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.
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 Click Edit. Editing policies is performed in the same way as creating (p. 327). 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.
Filter backup policies by name/owner Type a policy's name / owner's name in the fields below the corresponding column's header. 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. Filter backup policies by deployment state, status, source type, last result, schedule In the field below the corresponding column's header, select the required value from the list.
machine (group). View log of the machine (group) Revoke policy from the machine (group). 7.1.3 Click View log. The Log (p. 302) view will display a list of the log entries, pre-filtered by the selected machine (group). Click Revoke. The management server will revoke the policy from the selected machine or group of machines. The policy itself remains on the management server.
existing machines' properties and will analyze every newly registered machine. The machine that meets a certain dynamic criterion will appear in all groups that use this dynamic criterion. To learn more about grouping machines, see the Grouping the registered machines (p. 53) section. To learn more about how policies are applied to machines and groups, see the Policies on machines and groups (p. 53) section. Way of working with machines First, add machines to the management server.
In the Import machines from file (p. 281) window, browse for a .txt or .csv file, containing the names (or IP addresses) of machines to import to the management server. The management console addresses to the agent and initiates the registration procedure. Because registration requires the agent's participation, it cannot take place when the machine is offline. An additional agent installed on a registered machine becomes registered on the same management server automatically.
actions will be performed on the machine as soon as the machine becomes available to the management server. Other actions Direct management operations Create a backup plan on a machine Click Recover data Click Backup. This operation is described in depth in the Creating a backup plan (p. 181) section. Recover. This operation is described in depth in the Recovering data (p. 199) section. Connect to a machine directly Click Connect directly. Establishes a direct connection to the managed machine.
Note for Virtual Edition users: When adding a VMware ESX/ESXi host, enter the IP of the virtual appliance running Acronis Backup & Recovery 10 Agent for ESX/ESXi. 4. Specify the user name and password of a user who is a member of the Administrators group on the machine. Note for Virtual Edition users: When adding a VMware ESX/ESXi host, specify the user name and password for your vCenter or ESX/ESXi host. Click Options>> and specify: User name.
Deletes and then tries again to add registered machines that are present in the list, but their current availability (p. 282) is Withdrawn. As a result, only those physical machines that are listed in the file will be present in the All physical machines group. Text file requirements The file should contain machine names or IP addresses, one machine per line. Example: Machine_name_1 Machine_name_2 192.168.1.14 192.168.1.
{username password} belong to a user who is a member of the Administrators group on all machines listed in the file. If not specified, the single sign-on mechanism is used to operate on all the machines. Importing machines from a text file To import machines from a file 1. In the Navigation tree, select Physical machines, or All physical machines. Import machines from file on the toolbar. 2. Click 3. In the Path field, enter a path to the .txt or .
Once the machines appear in the group, the policy that was applied to the group (if any), is deployed to the machines. If any of the selected machines is not available or reachable at the moment, the action will be kept in the management server as pending and will be performed as soon as the machine becomes available to the server. Machine details Accumulates in four tabs all information on the selected machine.
Backup policies Displays a list of backup policies applied to the selected machine and lets the management server administrator perform the following operations: To Do View details of a policy Click View details. In the Policy details (p. 274) window, examine all information related to the selected backup policy. View tasks of a policy Click View tasks. The Tasks (p. 300) 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.
You will be taken to the Log (p. 179) view containing the list of the plan-related log entries. Task Click View log. You will be taken to the Log (p. 179) view containing the list of the task-related log entries. Run a plan/task Backup plan Click Run. In the Run Backup Plan (p. 176) window, select the task you need to run. Running the backup plan starts the selected task of that plan immediately in spite of its schedule and conditions. Task Click Run.
Edit a plan/task Backup plan Click Edit. Backup plan editing is performed in the same way as creation (p. 181), except for the following limitations: It is not always possible to change backup scheme properties 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.
Task belongs to a backup plan A task belonging to a backup plan cannot be deleted separately from the plan. Edit the plan to remove the task or delete the entire plan. Refresh table Click Refresh. The management console will update the list of backup plans and tasks existing on the machine with the most recent information. Though the list is refreshed automatically based on events, the data may not be retrieved immediately from the managed machine, due to some latency.
You can create a dynamic group based on the list of the hosted virtual machines. To do this, click Create a dynamic group. The created group will be accessible in the Virtual machines view (p. 293). Inheritance order The Inheritance order window lets you examine where the policy applied to the machine came from.
Create a custom static or a dynamic group Click Create group. In the Create group (p. 288) window, specify the required parameters of the group. Custom groups can be created in the root folder ( other custom groups. Apply a backup policy to a group View detailed information on a group Rename a custom group/subgroup Click Physical machines), or in Apply backup policy. In the Policy selection window, specify the backup policy you need to apply to the selected group.
All the machines running the selected operating system will be members of the dynamic group. Organizational unit (p. 289) All the machines belonging to the specified organizational unit (OU) will be members of the dynamic group. IP address range All the machines whose IP addresses are within the specified IP range will be members of the dynamic group. Listed in txt/csv file (p. 290) All the machines that are listed in the specified .txt or .csv file will be members of the dynamic group. 3.
Select an organizational unit from the Active Directory tree by clicking Browse, or typing it manually. If the domain access credentials were not specified in the management server options, the program will ask you to provide them. The credentials will be saved in the Domain access credentials (p. 80) option. For example, suppose that the domain us.corp.example.com has OU1 (which is in the root), OU1 has OU2, and OU2 has OU3. And you need to add the machines of OU3.
Changing the type of group will result in its conversion. Any custom group can be converted to a dynamic group if it was static, and vice versa. When converting a static group to dynamic, provide grouping criteria. All the members that exist in the static group that do not match the provided criteria will be removed from the dynamic group. When converting a dynamic group to static, two options are available – either to leave the current content of the group or to empty the group.
Filtering and sorting Filtering and sorting of the backup policies is performed in the same way as for the Backup policies view. See the Filtering and sorting backup policies (p. 273) section for details. Inheritance order The Inheritance order window lets you examine where the policy applied to the group came from.
3. Register (p. 278) the Hyper-V host on the management server. If the machine is already registered, skip this step. 4. The virtual machines hosted on the Hyper-V server appear in the All virtual machines group. Adding ESX/ESXi virtual machines 1. VMware Tools have to be installed in the guest systems. 2. Acronis Backup & Recovery 10 Agent for ESX/ESXi is delivered as a virtual appliance. Do either of the following: Deploy the agent (p.
Grouping of virtual machines The Virtual machines section of the navigation tree contains one built-in group called All virtual machines. You cannot modify this group manually, delete or move it. You can apply policies that back up disks or volumes to this group. You can create both static and dynamic groups of virtual machines. Any virtual machine that is currently available can be added to a static group. You cannot create groups that contain both physical and virtual machines.
Deploying and updating Agent for ESX/ESXi Acronis Backup & Recovery 10 Management Server provides an easy way to deploy Agent for ESX/ESXi to every VMware ESX or ESXi server whose virtual machines you want to back up. A virtual appliance with an agent will be created on every ESX/ESXi server you specify and registered on the management server.
The management server will use this account to establish a trusted relationship with the agent during registration. Centralized backup plans and recovery tasks, originating from the management server, will run under this account by default. This means the account must have the necessary privileges on the vCenter Server. By default, the software will use the account that you have already specified, either when configuring integration with the vCenter, or when getting access to the ESX/ESXi server.
Server 3 uses storages B, C, D The VA can be deployed to either C or D. If there is no storage shared by all the servers, you can import the VA manually into any of the hosts. This will work, but backup performance will be far from optimal. After deployment, the agent virtual appliance can appear on any of the hosts included in the cluster, depending on how the load balancing is configured.
For information about user rights on a storage node and in its managed vaults, see User rights on a storage node (p. 67). 3. Add (p. 299) the storage node to the Acronis Backup & Recovery 10 Management Server. 4. Create a managed vault (p. 119): specify the path to the vault, select the storage node that will manage the vault and select the management operations such as deduplication or encryption. 5. Create a backup policy (p. 327) or a backup plan that will use the managed vault.
View details of the storage node Refresh the list of storage nodes Click View details. In the Storage node details (p. 299) window (the content of which is duplicated on the Information panel), examine information about the storage node and the vaults managed by this node. You can also manage the compacting task: manually start and stop the task. Click Refresh. The management console will update the list of storage nodes from the management server with the most recent information.
Online - the storage node is available for the management server. This means that the last management server's connection to the node was successful. Connection is established every 2 minutes. Offline - the storage node is unavailable. Withdrawn - the storage node was registered on another management server. As a result, it is not possible to control the node from the current management server.
the backup plan will run. View details of a task Click View details. In the Tasks details (p. 176) window, examine all information related to the selected task. View a task's log Click View log. The Log (p. 302) view will display a list of the log entries related to the selected task. Run a task Click Run. The task will be executed immediately in spite of its schedule. Stop a task Click Stop.
This is a built-in compacting task Each storage node has a built-in service task called a compacting task. This task cannot be deleted. Refresh tasks table Click Refresh. The management console will update the list of tasks existing on the machines with the most recent information. Though the list of tasks is refreshed automatically based on events, the data may not be retrieved immediately from the managed machine due to some latency. Manual refresh guarantees that the most recent data is displayed.
added to the log. When the software executes a task, it adds multiple entries saying what it is currently doing. Local and centralized logging in Acronis Backup & Recovery 10 Acronis Backup & Recovery 10 has local and centralized logs of events. Local event log A local event log holds information about Acronis Backup & Recovery 10 operations on a managed machine.
Actions on log entries All the operations described below are performed by clicking the corresponding items on the log toolbar. All these operations can also be performed with the context menu (by right-clicking the log entry), or with the Log actions bar (on the Actions and tools pane). The following is a guideline for you to perform actions on log entries. To Do Select a single log entry Click on it.
Filter log entries by type Press or release the following toolbar buttons: to filter error messages to filter warning messages to filter information messages Filter log entries by the original backup plan or managed entity type Under the Backup plan (or Managed entity type) column header, select the backup plan or the type of managed entity from the list. Filter log entries by task, Type the required value (task name, machine name, owner name, etc.
Message - The event text description. The log entry's details that you copy will have the following appearance: ---------------------------Log Entry Details--------------------------Type: Information Date and time: DD.MM.
The report will contain the information selected, grouped and sorted according to the template settings. The report appears in a separate interactive window that enables expanding and collapsing the tables. You can export the report to an XML file and open it later using Microsoft Excel or Microsoft Access. Report about the machines In this view, you can generate a report about the machines that are registered on the management server. This report consists of one or more tables.
Schedule: The types of the backup policies' schedules—Manual and/or Scheduled. Manual schedule means that the corresponding centralized backup plan runs only when you start it manually. Owner: The list of users who created the backup policies. With the default filter settings, the report includes all backup policies. 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.
Filters Under Filters, choose which tasks to include in the report. Only the tasks that meet all filter criteria are included. Origin: The types of origin of the tasks—Centralized, Local, and/or Local without backup plan. A centralized task belongs to a centralized backup plan. A local task might not belong to a backup plan (for example, a recovery task). Backup policies (centralized tasks only): The backup policies on which the tasks are based.
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. Report about the vaults' statistics In this view, you can generate a report about the use of the centralized managed vaults that are currently added to the management server. This report consists of one or more tables and diagrams.
Backup policies (centralized tasks only): The backup policies on which the tasks are based. The default setting means all backup policies that ever existed during the report period. Machines: The list of machines on which the tasks exist. Type: The task types—for example, disk backup tasks. Owner: The list of users who created the tasks. With the default filter settings, the report includes all tasks that existed on the registered machines any time during the report period.
By using the graphical user interface (GUI) By modifying the Windows registry In Linux, instead of using the administrative template and modifying the registry, parameters are configured by editing the corresponding configuration files.
http://msdn2.microsoft.com/en-us/library/aa374177.aspx 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.
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. This parameter contains the following settings: Vault Free Space Warning Limit Description: Specifies the amount of free space in a managed vault, in megabytes, below which a warning is recorded in the storage node's log.
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: Any integer number between 0 and 2147483647 Default value: 20 If the amount of free space on the volume containing a managed vault's database is less than the value in Vault Database Free Space Warning Limit, a warning is recorded in the storage node's log, indicating the vault in question.
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 network name or IP address of the SNMP server. Possible values: Any string 0 to 32765 characters long Default value: Empty string SNMP Community Description: Specifies the community name for the SNMP notifications.
Default value: 120 Acronis Backup & Recovery 10 Management Server tries to perform synchronization for each normal-priority machine once in the number of seconds given by Period, by using an available worker thread (see Maximum Workers described previously). If there are fewer worker threads than normal-priority machines, the actual interval between synchronizations may be longer than the value of this parameter.
Offline Period Threshold (in seconds) Description: Specifies the maximum interval, in seconds, between attempts to connect to a registered machine which appears to be offline. Possible values: Any integer number between 120 and 2147483647 Default value: 1800 Normally, the management server connects to each registered machine with a certain time interval (see Period and Period-High Priority earlier in this section).
If this setting is 0, the snapshot storage will not be created. The initial size will not exceed the available space minus 50 MB. Without the snapshot storage, taking snapshots is still possible. The size of the snapshot storage does not affect the size of the backup. Acronis Backup & Recovery 10 Agent for Windows The following are the parameters of Acronis Backup & Recovery 10 Agent that can be set by using Acronis Administrative Template.
If the value is 0, no reconnection attempts will be performed; the agent will only check for the license as determined by License Check Interval. License Server Address Description: Specifies the network name or IP address of Acronis License Server. Possible values: Any string 0 to 32765 characters long Default value: Empty string Log Cleanup Rules Specifies how to clean up the agent log.
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 recorded—if Trace State is set to True) SNMP Address Description: Specifies the network name or IP address of the SNMP server.
Possible values: Any integer number between 0 and 100 Default value: 50 If this setting is 0, the snapshot storage will not be created. The initial size will not exceed the available space minus 50 MB. Without the snapshot storage, taking snapshots is still possible. The size of the snapshot storage does not affect the size of the backup.
Authentication parameters 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. 74). You should keep this check box selected, unless you have a Public Key Infrastructure (PKI) in your environment.
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. Event tracing parameters In Windows, the events occurring in Acronis Backup & Recovery 10 can be recorded into the event log, a file, or both.
Specifies whether the machine where the Acronis Backup & Recovery 10 component is installed will participate in the Customer Experience Program. Select one of the following: Not Configured By default, the machine does not participate in the Customer Experience Program.
This database contains a list of vaults that are managed by the storage node, other than tape vaults (see the next parameter). Its typical size does not exceed a few kilobytes. Possible values: Any string 0 to 32765 characters long Default value: C:\Program Files\Acronis\StorageNode 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.
Where to back up Archive (p. 335) 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. 336) [Optional] Provide credentials for the location if the backup policy account does not have access permissions to the location. To access this option, select the Advanced view check box.
When to convert (p. 198) [Optional] Specify whether to convert every full, every incremental or every differential backup or convert the last created backup on schedule. Specify the conversion schedule if required. Host (p. 198) Specify the machine that will perform the conversion. The machine has to have Acronis Backup & Recovery 10 Agent for Windows, Agent for ESX/ESXi or Agent for Hyper-V installed. Virtualization server (p. 198) Here you select the resulting virtual machine type and location.
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. 330) Files to back up selection rules (p. 333) Volumes to back up selection rules Define volume selection rules, according to which the volumes will be backed up on the machines the policy will be applied to. To define volume selection rules In the first line, select the rule from the list, or type it manually.
All fixed volumes Type or select: [Fixed Volumes] Refers to all volumes other than removable media. Fixed volumes include volumes on SCSI, ATAPI, ATA, SSA, SAS and SATA devices, and on RAID arrays. Linux volumes First partition on the first IDE hard disk of a Linux machine Type or select: /dev/hda1 hda1 is the standard device name for the first partition of the first IDE hard disk drive. For more details, see "Note on Linux machines" below.
Operating systems starting from Windows 7 and Windows Server 2008 R2 create a dedicated system volume called System Reserved. If you select [SYSTEM], only this dedicated volume will be backed up. Always select both [SYSTEM] and [BOOT] when backing up machines running these operating systems.
/dev/mda1 Files to back up selection rules Define file selection rules, according to which the files and (or) folders will be backed up on the machines the policy will be applied to. To define file selection rules In the first line, select the rule from the list, or type it manually. To add another rule, click the next empty line, and select the rule from the list, or type it manually.
All files on all volumes on [All Files] a machine Points to all files on all volumes of the machine. All user profiles existing on a machine Points to the folder where all user profiles are located (typically, C:\Documents and Settings in Windows XP, and C:\Users in Windows Vista). [All Profiles Folder] Linux To include In the Files and folders column, type or select: Text file file.txt on the volume /dev/hda3 mounted on /home/usr/docs /dev/hda3/file.
Exclude all hidden files and folders Select this check box to skip files and folders with the Hidden attribute. If a folder is Hidden, all of its contents — including files that are not Hidden — will be excluded. Exclude all system files and folders Select this check box to skip files and folders with the System attribute. If a folder is System, all of its contents — including files that are not System — will be excluded.
Enter the full path to the folder in the Path field. This path will be created on each machine the policy will be applied to. Store each machine's archive in the machine's Acronis Secure Zone Acronis Secure Zone has to be created on each machine the policy will be applied to. For information on how to create Acronis Secure Zone, see the Creating Acronis Secure Zone (p. 232) section. 2. Naming the archives Data from each machine will be backed up to a separate archive. Specify names for the archives.
Password. The password for the account. 2. Click OK. Warning: 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. 7.3.7 Backup scheme selection Choose one of the available backup schemes: Back up now – to create a backup task for manual start and run the task immediately after its creation.
The task will be started manually Select this check box, if you do not need to put the backup task on a schedule and wish to start it manually afterwards. Simple scheme With the simple backup scheme you just schedule when and how often to back up data and set the retention rule. At the first time a full backup will be created. The next backups will be incremental. To set up the simple backup scheme, specify the appropriate settings as follows.
Start backup at: Specifies when to start a backup. The default value is 12:00 PM. Back up on: Specifies the days on which to perform a backup. The default value is Workdays. Weekly/Monthly: Specifies which of the days selected in the Back up on field you want to reserve for weekly and monthly backups. A monthly backup will be performed every fourth such day. The default value is Friday. Keep backups: Specifies how long you want the backups to be stored in the archive.
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. For instance, a daily backup of Sunday, January 1, will be available through next Sunday, January 8; the first weekly backup, the one of Saturday, January 7, will be stored on the system until February 7. Monthly backups will never be deleted.
Keep backups: Daily: 6 months Weekly: 6 months Monthly: 5 years 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.
levels you select. See the example below for details. Example Schedule parameters are set as follows 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 4 2 1 3 2 4 1 5 3 6 1 7 2 8 1 9 4 10 1 11 2 12 1 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.
When there is insufficient space while backing up 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. 37). 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.
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. 353) 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.
Agent (Acronis Backup & Recovery 10 Agent) An application that performs data backup and recovery and enables other management operations on the machine (p. 356), such as task management and operations with hard disks. The type of data that can be backed up depends on the agent type. Acronis Backup & Recovery 10 includes the agents for backing up disks and files and the agents for backing up virtual machines residing on virtualization servers. Agent-side cleanup Cleanup (p. 351) performed by an agent (p.
Backup options Configuration parameters of a backup operation (p. 348), 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. 349). 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. 348) (the backup archive name and location) the backup scheme (p.
5. On each machine, the agent installed on the machine creates a backup plan (p. 349) using other rules specified by the policy. Such backup plan is called a centralized plan (p. 351). 6. On each machine, the agent installed on the machine creates a set of centralized tasks (p. 351) that will carry out the plan. Backup scheme A part of the backup plan (p. 349) that includes the backup schedule and [optionally] the retention rules and the cleanup (p. 351) schedule. For example: perform full backup (p.
built-in group except for deleting the machine from the management server. Virtual machines are deleted as a result of their host server deletion. A backup policy (p. 349) can be applied to a built-in group. C Centralized backup plan A backup plan (p. 349) that appears on the managed machine (p. 356) as a result of deploying a backup policy (p. 349) from the management server (p. 357). Such plan can be modified only by editing the backup policy.
Cleanup consists in applying to an archive the retention rules set by the backup plan (p. 349) 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. For more information please refer to Retention rules (p. 37). Console (Acronis Backup & Recovery 10 Management Console) A tool for remote or local access to Acronis agents (p.
operations are configured on the management server (p. 357) and propagated by the server to the managed machines). The direct management operations include: creating and managing local backup plans (p. 356) creating and managing local tasks (p. 356), such as recovery tasks creating and managing personal vaults (p. 357) and archives stored there viewing the state, progress and properties of the centralized tasks (p.
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. In addition to MBR or GPT, each dynamic disk has a hidden database where the LDM stores the dynamic volumes' configuration.
Dynamic volume Any volume located on dynamic disks (p. 353), or more precisely, on a disk group (p. 353). Dynamic volumes can span multiple disks. Dynamic volumes are usually configured depending on the desired goal: to increase the volume size (a spanned volume) to reduce the access time (a striped volume) to achieve fault tolerance by introducing redundancy (mirrored and RAID-5 volumes.) E Encrypted archive A backup archive (p. 348) encrypted according to the Advanced Encryption Standard (AES).
G GFS (Grandfather-Father-Son) A popular backup scheme (p. 350) aimed to maintain the optimal balance between a backup archive (p. 348) size and the number of recovery points (p. 357) available from the archive. GFS enables recovering with daily resolution for the last several days, weekly resolution for the last several weeks and monthly resolution for any time in the past. For more information please refer to GFS backup scheme (p. 31). I Image The same as Disk backup (p. 353).
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. 358) and storage node-side validation (p. 359) for each archive stored in the managed vault. An administrator can specify additional operations that the storage node will perform (deduplication (p. 352), encryption).
R Recovery point Date and time to which the backed up data can be reverted to. Registered machine A machine (p. 356) managed by a management server (p. 357). A machine can be registered on only one management server at a time. A machine becomes registered as a result of the registration (p. 358) procedure. Registration A procedure that adds a managed machine (p. 356) to a management server (p. 357). Registration sets up a trust relationship between the agent (p.
Since the cleanup schedule exists on the machine (p. 356) the agent (p. 347) resides on, and therefore uses the machine’s time and events, the agent has to initiate the storage node-side cleanup every time the scheduled time or event comes. To do so, the agent must be online. The following table summarizes the cleanup types used in Acronis Backup & Recovery 10.
the image being recovered is located in Acronis Secure Zone (p. 347) or when using Acronis Active Restore (p. 347), because these features are primarily meant for instant data recovery on the same machine. Universal Restore is not available when recovering Linux. Unmanaged vault Any vault (p. 360) that is not a managed vault (p. 356). V Validation An operation that checks the possibility of data recovery from a backup (p. 348).
Windows Server 2003 with Service Pack 1 (PE 1.6) Windows Vista (PE 2.0) Windows Vista SP1 and Windows Server 2008 (PE 2.1). WinPE is commonly used by OEMs and corporations for deployment, test, diagnostic and system repair purposes. A machine can be booted into WinPE via PXE, CD-ROM, USB flash drive or hard disk. The Acronis Plug-in for WinPE (p. 347) enables running the Acronis Backup & Recovery 10 Agent (p. 347) in the preinstallation environment. Copyright © Acronis, Inc.
Action pages • 12, 13, 15 Index A A policy on a machine or a group • 54 Actions on a tape library vault • 130 Actions on backup plans and tasks • 173, 176 Actions on backup policies • 276, 278 About Windows loaders • 222 Actions on centralized vaults • 52, 119, 120, 121 Access credentials • 229, 230 Actions on groups • 282, 295 Access credentials for archive location • 188, 194 Actions on log entries • 184, 185, 312, 313 Access credentials for destination • 207, 217, 233, 237 Actions on personal v
Archive validation • 188, 203, 358 At Windows Event Log event • 164 Attaching a managed vault • 122, 126 B Backup selection • 225, 227, 229, 230, 233, 235 Backup splitting • 87, 100 Basic concepts • 8, 24, 49, 187 Basic disk cloning • 260, 261 Back up later scheme • 195, 349 Basic precautions • 258 Back up now scheme • 195, 348 Bootability troubleshooting • 220 Backing up dynamic volumes (Windows) • 40, 206 Bootable agent • 45, 241, 360, 363 Backing up to tape library • 131 Bootable media • 9, 20,
Communication between Acronis Backup & Recovery 10 components • 70 Components for centralized management • 17 Customer Experience Program • 86 D Daily schedule • 157, 199, 307, 353 Compression level • 87, 95 Dashboard • 170, 172, 274 Conditions • 103, 166 Data type • 206, 209 Configuring Acronis Backup & Recovery 10 components • 321 Decreasing Acronis Secure Zone • 240 Configuring communication settings • 70, 71, 74 Configuring iSCSI and NDAS devices • 251 Deduplicating vault • 365 Deduplication •
Domain access credentials • 81, 298 Full backup • 361, 363, 365, 368 Drivers for Universal Restore • 244, 247 Full, incremental and differential backups • 24, 28, 195, 348 Dual destination • 44, 87, 102 Dynamic disk • 40, 360, 366, 367, 368 G Dynamic group • 364, 367 Getting started • 8 Dynamic volume • 40, 363, 368 Getting started with a tape library • 129 E GFS (Grandfather-Father-Son) • 363, 369, 372 Editing custom groups • 296, 298 E-mail • 88, 97, 110, 113 Encrypted archive • 368 Encrypted
Introducing Acronis® Backup & Recovery™ 10 • 7 Inventory • 128, 132, 148 Items to back up • 187, 190, 337, 340 K Kernel parameters • 243, 244 Management Server • 8, 17 Management server (Acronis Backup & Recovery 10 Management Server) • 10, 19, 49, 78, 362, 363, 364, 365, 366, 367, 370, 371 Management server administrator rights • 68 Management server options • 79 L Managing a tape library • 123, 132 Labeling • 132, 133 Managing Acronis Secure Zone • 239 License Server • 20 Managing mounted images •
Organizational unit criterion • 81, 297 Overview • 61, 108, 119, 123, 126, 306 Overwriting • 216 Owners and credentials • 30, 149, 208, 226, 234, 316 P Parameters set through administrative template • 322 Parameters set through GUI • 336 Privileges for centralized management • 65 Privileges for local connection • 66 Privileges for remote connection in Windows • 66 Proprietary Acronis technologies • 44 Protecting the servers • 52 Protecting the virtual machines • 53 Protecting the workstations • 53 PXE and
Rights for Acronis services • 69, 339 RSM Media Pools • 127, 128 Run backup plan • 177, 181, 291 Running Acronis Disk Director Lite • 259 S Scheduling • 103, 156, 195, 204, 228, 349, 359 Secure communication • 70 Storage node (Acronis Backup & Recovery 10 Storage Node) • 18, 50, 364, 365, 368, 369, 370, 371, 372 Storage node details • 306, 307, 308 Storage nodes • 305 Storage node-side cleanup • 19, 119, 305, 370, 371 Storage node-side validation • 19, 119, 305, 370, 371, 372 Select destination disks • 2
Time since last backup • 169 Vault • 24, 45, 239, 368, 370, 373 Time-based alerts • 78 Vault database path • 123, 124 ToH Example 1 • 143, 144, 147 Vault encryption • 123, 124 ToH Example 2 • 143, 145 Vault path • 123, 124, 125 ToH Example 3 • 143, 146 Vaults • 40, 118, 225, 239, 307 Tower of Hanoi • 363, 372 Views • 14 Tower of Hanoi backup scheme • 35, 127, 135, 372 Virtual machine • 363, 373 Tower of Hanoi scheme • 199, 353 Virtual machine settings • 211, 212, 215, 219 Types of connection
Working with the • 119, 120, 150, 274 370 Copyright © Acronis, Inc.
