User Guide
Table of contents 1 Introducing Acronis vmProtect 6.0 ............................................................................................. 5 2 Acronis vmProtect 6.0 Overview ................................................................................................ 6 2.1 3 Acronis vmProtect Features .................................................................................................. 6 How Acronis vmProtect 6.0 Works ..........................................................
6.6 7 Managing created backup task............................................................................................ 34 Restoring a Backup of Virtual Machines ................................................................................... 35 7.1 What to restore .................................................................................................................. 35 7.2 Where to restore ............................................................................................
12 Other Operations ..................................................................................................................... 64 12.1 Validating backups (Actions -> Validate).............................................................................. 64 12.1.1 What to validate ..................................................................................................................................... 64 12.2 Managing mounted VMs (View -> Mounted VMs) ...............................
1 Introducing Acronis vmProtect 6.0 Acronis believes that virtualization and transition to the cloud are not only a better way of doing computing, but also allow for achieving less downtimes and faster recoveries while reducing costs. Unfortunately, most of backup and recovery solutions are designed for physical systems and are either not good enough for virtual environments or do not allow for all of the benefits and savings that virtualization could potentially give.
2 Acronis vmProtect 6.0 Overview Acronis vmProtect 6.0 is a comprehensive backup and recovery solution designed for VMware vSphere™ environments. It enables organization to perform an agent-less backup of entire ESX or ESXi virtual machines with the ability to recover entire machines or individual files and folders. 2.1 Acronis vmProtect Features Using Acronis award-winning imaging technology, Acronis vmProtect 6.
3 How Acronis vmProtect 6.0 Works 3.1 Virtual machines backup and restore As with a physical machine, your virtual machine (or several VMs as a whole virtual infrastructure) should also be protected. Once you have installed Acronis vmProtect 6.0 agent, you can: Back up a virtual machine or multiple virtual machines residing on the server without having to install additional software on each virtual machine.
3.2.2 Single file backup scheme (Always Incremental mode) Usually, backups are kept only for a certain time period (retention time) or there is a policy to keep only the last X backups in the backup chain. Backup archives are managed on a daily, weekly, etc. basis. The main limitation of the Legacy mode backup archive is that you cannot delete a random backup from the backup chain since it may have dependencies on it from subsequent backups. This is where Always Incremental backup archive can help .
4 Installation of Acronis vmProtect 6.0 4.1 Requirements 4.1.1 Supported operating systems Acronis vmProtect supports the following operating systems: Windows XP Professional SP3 (x86, x64). Windows Vista - all editions (x86, x64). Windows Server 2008 R2 - the Standard, Enterprise, Small Business Server, Datacenter, Foundation editions. Windows Server 2003/2003 R2 - the Standard, Enterprise, Small Business Server editions (x86, x64). Windows 7 - all editions (x86, x64).
For the smooth operation of the Acronis vmProtect Web Console, you should have one of the following versions of your web browser: Mozilla Firefox 3.6 or higher. Internet Explorer 7.0 or higher. Opera 10.0 or higher. Safari 5.0 or higher. Google Chrome 10.0 or higher. 4.1.3 How to install VMware Tools Acronis vmProtect requires the installation of VMware Tools. To install the VMware Tools: Run the VMware Infrastructure/vSphere Client. Connect to the ESX server.
4.2.1 Installing Acronis vmProtect 6.0 as Virtual Appliance on an ESX(i) host Acronis vmProtect software could be installed directly on an ESX(i) host. The process of remote installation of Acronis vmProtect Virtual Appliance to an ESX(i) host is called deployment. The software for running all necessary Acronis services will be installed on a separate small virtual machine under a specially customized OS (small Linux distribution). 1.
cannot change the login for your Web Console. To change the Web Console password, go to Configure->Agent Password page (for more information refer to Managing Agent Password section (p. 81)). If there is any problem, the Virtual Appliance (parts of it which have already been deployed during the installation) will be removed from ESX(i) automatically. You will get the "Failed to install vmProtect components" page. Here, you can see the summary information on the installed and failed to install components.
The diagram below illustrates a LAN-based and a LAN-free backup. LAN-free access to virtual machines is available if you have a fibre channel (FC) or iSCSI Storage Area Network. To completely eliminate transferring the backed up data via LAN, store the backups on a local disk of the agent's machine or on a SAN attached storage. Acronis vmProtect Windows Agent can be installed on any machine that runs Windows and meets the system requirements.
3. Select the way you want your components to be installed, i.e. specify the location where to install the software. The default destination for installing Acronis vmProtect is the C:\Program Files\Acronis folder. You can change the destination by typing in a new folder name or selecting it by browsing. If the folder does not exist, it will be automatically created in the process of installation.
Specify the location you want to extract your files to, and then click Extract. The Disk usage button shows the available space for the different volumes on your PC and helps you to choose the destination disk for the files extraction. Close the dialog when the extraction process is completed. 4.2.4 Configuring ESX(i) host connection settings For detailed information on setting and configuring your ESX(i) host connection credentials, please refer to Managing ESX hosts (p. 75) section. 4.2.
Copyright © Acronis, Inc.
5 Getting started Once you installed the Acronis vmProtect or deployed your Acronis vmProtect Virtual Appliance, you can run the Acronis vmProtect Web Console. The Web Console will be opened in the default Internet browser. Note that the Acronis vmProtect web server (installed on the Agent side) which provides the user interface uses self-signed certificates.
Login page After logging in the Acronis vmProtect you will see a welcome screen with the Dashbord's Quick Start. The three buttons of this section will give you a hint of what to start with: First of all, to be able to perform the first backup task of a Virtual Machines, you have to go to the ESX Host section (p. 75) and specify the IP address / hostname and credentials for the vCenter or individual ESX host where these machines are running.
status of your backup, restore and other tasks. It does so by using color-coding for successful and failed tasks. As the dashboard outlines all actions you can perform with Acronis vmProtect, it presents a very useful tool for a quick operational decision making. You can switch to the dashboard by clicking the main Acronis vmProtect logo in the top left corner, or by clicking the Home button in the main menu.
There are 3 main tabs in the Acronis vmProtect ribbon menu: Actions tab, View tab and Configure tab. The fourth additional Acronis tab appears dynamically depending on the current user-selected View or Configure operation. Dashboard view The Home button which always appears on the ribbon bar leads to the Dashboard view. The Dashboard configuration is described in the "Dashboard management" section (p. 18).
c. Mounted VMs view This is the link to Mounted VMs view. The Mounted virtual machines management is described in the "Managing mounted VMs" section (p. 66). d. Show logs view This is the link to the Show logs view. The Logs management is described in the "Managing logs" section" (p. 68). 3) Configure tab The third Configure tab contains the basic tools for Acronis vmProtect configuration and allows you to specify the default settings for the basic backup/restore operations as well as other settings. a.
c. View -> Mounted VMs When the Mounted VMs view is selected, the Mounted VMs tab appears in the ribbon menu. The Mounted VMs page is described in the "Managing mounted VMs" section (p. 66). d. View -> Show Logs When the Show Logs view is selected, the Logs tab appears in the ribbon menu. The Logs management page is described in the "Managing logs" section (p. 68). e. Configure -> Licenses When Configure->Licenses is selected, the Licenses tab appears in the ribbon menu.
6 Creating a Backup of Virtual Machines Click Create Backup Task in the dashboard’s Quick start or Backup in the Actions tab of the main menu to create a new backup task. The New Backup Task wizard opens in the main workspace area and asks you to provide the required information and make all necessary settings for the new create backup task. The wizard consists of the four consecutive steps which appear in the same area: What to backup. Where to backup. When to backup. How to backup.
Create Backup wizard, Step 2 “Where to backup” The Archive name field shows the name of the archive selected in the Browse pop-up. The left side of the Browse pop-up shows the list of: Online backup storages. Local folders. Network folders. FTP and SFTP servers. Recent Location. Choose one of the backup location types from the browse tree on the left side.
Enter your archive name value in the corresponding Archive name field below. Note that it is not recommended to have more than one backup task writing data to the same archive. The retention rules applied to the archive by different backup tasks may cause an unpredictable outcome. After you’ve selected “Where to backup”, click on Next to finish the second step and proceed to the third one. 6.
example, with the Every 2 week(s) on Mon setting, the task will be performed on Monday of every other week. In the During the day execute the task... area, select one of the following: Once at: <...> <...> From: <...> Until: <...>. or Every: For the Once at: <...> choice, set up the time at which the task will be run once. For the Every: <...> From: <...> Until: <...> choice, set up how many times the task will be run during the specified time interval.
In case of editing your existing backup task or selecting an existing archive for the backup location, this setting is not shown. 6.4.2 Retention rules Next, you should define the retention rules for backup management inside the archive. The availability of the options depends on the schedule setup in the previous step (section “When to Backup” (p. 25)) and on the selected archive format (section “Backup type” (p. 26)).
Create Backup wizard, Step 4 “How to backup”, Simple cleanup scheme, delete the outdated backups The second option allows you to clean up the archive if the number of backups exceeds <…>. Again, if you set this number at 1, then for the Always Incremental archive mode there will be a synthetic full backup created, i.e. an incremental backup which will remove the unnecessary old recovery point contents after the backup is finished.
Create Backup wizard, Step 4 “How to backup”, GFS cleanup scheme Note that retention rules are applied only before the backup task execution. The reason for this is that with the Always Incremental archive there is no need to remove recovery points after the backup because it does not free disk space. If after performing the backup there are new excessive recovery points which have to be deleted according to the set up retention rules, they will be removed only before next backup.
6.4.3 Backup validation If you would like to check the newly created backup for consistency (perform the backup validation), select the Validate after backup check box (for further information on Backup validation, please refer to section "Validating backups" (p. 64)). 6.4.4 Other settings Click More options to open the pop-up with the additional settings. These options are described in the "Options" section (p. 30). 6.4.
6.5.2 Source Files Exclusion With the source files exclusion rules you can define which data will be skipped from the source data during the backup process and thus be excluded from the list of backed up items. These can be files or folders defined by a path set up for exclusion. This option is effective for the backup of virtual machines which contain volumes of NTFS and FAT file systems only.
When a recoverable error occurs, the program re-attempts to perform the failed operation. You can set the time interval and the number of attempts. The task finishes as soon as the operation succeeds OR the specified number of attempts is reached. If you select the Re-attempt, if an error occurs check box, set up the Number of attempts and the Interval between attempts. This option is enabled by default with the following settings: Number of attempts – 5, and Interval between attempts – 30 seconds.
2) SNMP notifications This option defines whether the agent(s) operating on the managed machine have to send the logs of the backup operation events to the specified Simple Network Management Protocol (SNMP) managers. You can choose the types of events to be sent. The default setting for this option is: Disabled.
6.6 Managing created backup task When editing an existing backup task you will see all the sections (steps) of the backup wizard you completed while creating your backup task. All four steps of the wizard will appear on the screen at once. Note that when editing an existing backup task you cannot modify the archive type (Always Incremental or Legacy Mode). (For further information, please, refer to “Managing Tasks" section (p. 52)). 34 Copyright © Acronis, Inc.
7 Restoring a Backup of Virtual Machines Click on the Restore button in the Actions tab of the main menu to restore one or several backed up virtual machines. The Restore Backup wizard opens in the main workspace area and asks you to provide the required information and configure the necessary settings for the new restore task. The wizard consists of the three consecutive steps which appear in the same area: What to restore. Where to restore. How to restore.
In the Select Recovery Point pop-up you can see the list of all recovery points available for this virtual machine and select the recovery point to be restored. The list includes the name of the archive which includes this recovery point and its creation time. After you selected “What to restore”, click Next to finish the first step of the wizard and continue further on. 7.
current location of the virtual machine. For example, at the moment of creating the recovery point the VM was in vApp1, but later it has migrated to vApp2. Then this VM will be restored to vApp2 overwriting the existing VM. Once the ESX host is defined, the list of available resource pools and datastores is build up automatically where you can define the exact location for the restored virtual machine(s).
Note that in this case the datastore selection will be unavailable (since it is already defined by the target VM being overwritten), however, you can change the resource pool location for this VM by choosing corresponding item in the Resource Pool selection.
Create restore task wizard, Step 3 “How to restore” To complete the wizard and create the restore backup task you must set up the task name and define how to run it. Note that [ ] { } ; , . symbols are not allowed for the task name. When you click on Run Now button the task will be immediately executed with the specified parameters. You could see the task progress bar in the Tasks view and in the Dashboard view. This is your choice if you want to execute this task just once.
7.4.1 Notifications 1) E-mail notifications This option allows setting up the e-mail notifications about the basic events during your restore task, such as successful completion, restore failure or need for user interaction. The default setting for this option is disabled. Select the Send e-mail notifications check box to enable notifications.
Community – type the name of the SNMP community to which both the host running the SNMP management application and the sending machine belong. The typical community is "public"; Click Send test message to make sure all your settings are correct. Do not send SNMP notifications – to disable sending the events log of the restore operations to SNMP managers. 7.4.2 Error Handling These options enable you to specify how to handle errors that might occur during the restore operation.
7.4.4 Additional Settings Use FTP in active mode It is possible to use FTP active mode for FTP authentication and data transfer. The default setting for Use FTP in active mode is disabled. Enable this option if your FTP server supports active mode and you want this mode to be used for file transfers. After you finished with all the settings, click OK to close the pop-up and apply them for the current restore task only. 7.
8 File Recovery Sometimes there is a need to recover just a single file or just a few files from a backup archive without restoring the whole virtual machine. The File Recovery feature allows browsing the archive and restoring the selected files for the pre-defined version of this archive (recovery point).
File Recovery wizard, Step 1 “What to recover” There are two ways of selecting locations in the browsing window. First, you can select just a location. In this case, you will see the whole tree-list (under the selected locations) of all the virtual machines and all their archives stored in the selected location. Second, you can select both a location and an archive, in which case you will see just the contents of this archive.
8.2 Explore Recovery Point In the second step of the File Recovery wizard you have to choose which files or folders to restore. Here you can see the selected VM recovery point contents with a Windows Explorer-like directory browser. In the browsing tree on the left side you can expand the volumes and folders and browse/select the contents of each volume/folder you want to recover on the right side.
you can select the destination for saving the selected backup files. All files and folders you selected will be downloaded there as a single .zip archive. 46 Copyright © Acronis, Inc.
9 Running VM from Backup Click Run VM from Backup in the Home tab of the main menu to mount certain backed up virtual machine without restoring it. The Run VM from Backup wizard opens in the main workspace area and asks you to provide the required information and configure the necessary settings for the Run VM from Backup task. The wizard consists of the three steps: What VM to run. Where to run the VM. Additional settings.
Click Browse to select the location and/or archive. In the pop-up window with the browsing options, you can define the path and/or the archive name. Here you can also see the locations which were used before under Recent Locations item. Note that for Run Vm from Backup locations, you can only select Network folders or Local folders. Other locations, such as Online backup storage or FTP/sFTP servers, are not available here. There are two ways of selecting locations in the browsing window.
Run VM from Backup wizard, Step 2 “Where to run the VM” First of all, with the Select Location drop-down list you should define the ESX host where you want to mount the selected VMs on. The list shows only those ESX hosts which are managed by Acronis vmProtect Agent. If the ESX host you need is not in this list, then make sure it is added in the Configure->ESX hosts view.
Please, specify the postfix for the mounted virtual machine name in the Mounted VM name postfix field. This is necessary since running two virtual machines with the same name on one ESX host is not possible, especially when there is the original VM already running on it. The mounted VM will be named using the following convention: “*Original_VM_name+_mount”. Where “Original_VM_name” is the original name of the mounted virtual machine and “_mount” is the postfix you can change.
network. Theerefore, for safe operation, it’s advisable to power on the mounted virtual machine manually after taking the necessary precautions. Select the Connect to network check box when mounting a failed VM which is no longer present in the network. If you are mounting a VM for testing purposes (to ensure some data consistency inside) while the original VM is currently running, keep this check box cleared.
10 Managing Tasks Click Tasks in the View tab of the main menu to open the Tasks page (View->Tasks), where you can see the details and perform the operations with your tasks. Note that the Tasks page allows performing the basic operations with the existing tasks only, and doesn’t let you create new tasks (for creating a new Backup/Restore/Validation task you have to go to the Home tab of the main tool bar). The Tasks page consists of the two main sections: the Tasks list and Task details.
Note that you can only view task logs (see "Viewing task logs" section (p. 53)) and Cancel (see "Stopping a task" section (p. 53)) in the active running task. Other control buttons – Run, Edit and Delete – are disabled. In order to edit or delete the active task, you have to stop it first. 10.2 Cancelling a task You can cancel the selected active task by clicking the Cancel button in the top ribbon menu. You’ll be asked to confirm the operation.
varying information depending on the task type – backup, restore or validation. The sections below describe the tabs contents for the backup task. 10.6.1 Summary tab The Summary tab gives overview details of the current selected task.
10.6.2 Source tab The Source tab presents the tree of ESX hosts+vApps/VMs included into the backup task. The tree is build up dynamically. If there was an entire ESX host selected for backup, then this tree will be shown for the current state of the machines (the same list) same as in VMWare IC. To the right of the ESX host there should be a mark that the entire group is being backed up ("All virtual machines" mark).
10.6.4 Options tab The Options tab shows the settings of the current selected task. This tab shows only the options which differ from default ones. If all task options are default, then this tab just states “Default options” without listing any specific values.
11 Managing Recovery Points Click the Recovery Points button in the View tab of the main menu to open the Recovery Points page. The Recovery Points view of Acronis vmProtect provides you with an interface to manage the recovery points available for the virtual machines in your environment or the points in time which you can go back to for each virtual machine. Upon the successful execution of each backup task, a new recovery point is created and the recovery points list is updated automatically.
Managing recovery points, no locations available 11.1 Adding a backup location Optionally, you can add or remove the backup locations right from the Locations list. Click the Add New button on the top to open the Add Location pop-up. Note that the remove operation will not physically remove the archives from the location, but will just delete the location from the Acronis vmProtect configuration.
You can select the desired location by expanding the appropriate folder group and choosing it in the folder tree or by entering the full path to the location in the Location field. Choose one of the backup location types from the browse tree on the left side. If the selected location (Online backup storage, Network folders or FTP/SFTP servers) requires an authentication, you will first see the dialogue for submitting your credentials in the right pane.
Managing recovery points, password-protected location Only one virtual machine can be selected in this list at a time. The details window (the right section) for the selected virtual machine contains 2 tabs as explained below – the Recovery Points list and the Recovery Points details. 11.
11.4 Summary tab You can see the summary information on the selected recovery point by switching to the Summary tab. This tab shows the following information: VM Comments (taken from VMWare vSphere client Summary tab for the selected VM). Guest OS (taken from VMWare vSphere client Summary tab for the selected VM). VM version (taken from VMWare vSphere client Summary tab for the selected VM). Provisioned Storage (taken from VMWare vSphere client Summary tab for the selected VM).
11.5.3 File recovery Click the File recovery button in the ribbon menu to perform the Guest File Download operation by running the File Recovery wizard. The wizard will be pre-filled with the selected recovery point settings described in the "File recovery" section (p. 43). 11.5.4 Validate Click the Validation button in the ribbon menu to perform the Backup Validation by running the new validation task.
Note, that in a Legacy Mode archive (p. 7) some recovery points may have dependencies. This means that deleting a single recovery point is impossible. In this case, the entire chain of recovery points which depend on the selected one will be designated for deletion. The recovery points which belong to the Always Incremental archive (p. 8) can be deleted without any constraints and you will see the single recovery point in the deletion list.
12 Other Operations 12.1 Validating backups (Actions -> Validate) Validating backups is an operation that checks the possibility of data recovery from a backup. Note that while successful validation means high probability of successful recovery, it does not check all factors that influence the recovery process. If you back up the operating system, only a test recovery to a new virtual machine can guarantee success of the recovery.
Validate backup task. What to validate. Location. Archive – Validating an archive will check the integrity of all backups (recovery points) inside the specified archive. In general, this procedure will be faster than validating the whole location. However, it is slower than validating a specific recovery points inside this archive.
In the Selected Virtual Machines section you can see a list of the selected virtual machines with their available recovery points, i.e. point in time which contains a particular machine state. The recovery point can be selected by clicking on it. To complete the validation task creation wizard, you must set the task name. Note that [ ] { } ; , . symbols are not allowed for the task name. Validate backup task. What to validate. Recovery point.
12.2.1 Mounted VMs list The Mounted VMs view provides an overview on the virtual machines which are currently mounted or running from backup on an ESX host. Mounted VMs view At first, when you don’t have any virtual machines running, the Mounted VMs list is empty. After you performed Run VM from backup operation (see "Running VM from backup" section (p. 47)), this Mounted VMs view will automatically open where you could see the machine you’ve just run.
The first Summary tab presents overview details of the currently selected virtual machine. Here is an example of the possible contents of the Summary tab: Start Time/Date: 20:11 11/05/2011 The Source tab presents the tree of mounted ESX hosts+vApps/VMs. Here is an example of the Source tab contents: Location: \\Backups\ Archive: Archive_name ESX Host 1 (10.250.40.30) “All Virtual Machines”: Small_vm The Target tab presents the information on the location where the selected VM runs.
Logs list The logs list contains the Date/Time, Task name and Message columns. You can sort the logs list by clicking the column header. For switching between the ascending and descending sort order click the column header one more time. Also, you can filter the log events using several filters located above the list: Event flags (Success, Warning or Error). Date/Time. Task Name. Click the log event in the list to see the detailed message for this log in the right window.
Log cleanup rules dialog Select the check box in order to enable this Log cleanup rules option. Then, define the maximum size of the agent log folder (for example, in Windows XP/2003 Server %ALLUSERSPROFILE%\Application Data\Acronis\AVMP6\MMS\LogEvents). Along with the Maximum log size value, you can set up the amount of log entries you want to keep. The default values for Log cleanup rules settings are: Maximum log size: 50Mb. Log size to keep after cleanup: 95%.
warning message in order to confirm the delete logs operation. Upon your confirmation, all logs will be cleared. Clear log dialog 12.3.4 Save logs to file Click the Save to File button in the ribbon bar to save the filtered log entries from the logs list. This operation allows you to get the .zip file with the selected logs and save it to your local PC. You may need to perform Save logs to file operation for troubleshooting the problems you might encounter.
The licensing scheme in vmProtect implies that each CPU on the managed ESX host/cluster consumes a license. At the first run of Acronis vmProtect there are no licenses bound to any ESX hosts/clusters. Here, you can add a new license as described below. The imported (added) serial numbers may contain a number of licenses inside. The right section on the Licenses page shows the serial numbers list, the number of licenses, as well as their import date and expiration date.
Managing licenses page, Add license dialog Upon adding new licenses you will get the following message indicating the number of licenses added. 73 Copyright © Acronis, Inc.
Managing licenses page, “Successfully added” message 12.4.2 Adding license failure Adding a license may fail due to the following reasons: The license is already imported. The license is incorrect. There could also be other problems. If you are sure that your license is a correct one but it still fails to be added, please contact Acronis support (p. 84). 12.4.3 Removing license/ESX host Choose one of the ESX hosts/Clusters in the list and click the Remove button.
Managing licenses page, “Remove license” confirmation dialog 12.5 Managing ESX hosts (Configure -> ESX hosts) Click ESX hosts in the Configure tab of the Acronis vmProtect main ribbon menu to open the ESX hosts page. 12.5.1 ESX hosts list The Hosts view provides an overview and management interface for the ESX hosts/vCenters registered in the vmProtect Agent settings. The ribbon buttons allow you to add other ESX hosts to the list or remove them.
Configuring ESX Hosts page, Hosts list Adding an ESX host/vCenter will not bind the licenses to it automatically. It will be bound only when you execute a backup/restore task with a virtual machine running on this host. After you add an ESX host/vCenter you will be able to perform backup/recovery tasks with the virtual machines running on this ESX host/vCenter. Removing an ESX host/vCenter will result in the disappearance of all tasks applied to virtual machines running on this ESX host/vCenter.
Managing ESX hosts page, Add Host/vCenter dialog 12.5.3 Adding an ESX host which is a part of vCenter When you directly add an ESX host which is a part of vCenter instead of adding the vCenter itself, the main concern is that Acronis vmProtect Agent will not be able to track the changes made to the ESX host on behalf of the vCenter. This may cause unpredictable results.
domain\username format. You can check the connection with the Test connection button to ensure that the provided credentials are correct. Click OK to add your ESX host/vCenter. Managing ESX Hosts page, Enter credentials dialog 12.5.5 Removing ESX host Removing an ESX host from Acronis vmProtect configuration may be required if you no longer want to perform backup/recovery operations over the virtual machines running on this ESX host. The licenses assigned to this host will not be removed automatically.
Managing ESX hosts page, Remove host dialog 12.6 Managing settings 12.6.1 Managing Online Backup Proxy Click Online Backup Proxy in the Configure tab of the Acronis vmProtect main ribbon menu to open the Online Backup Proxy settings page. Online backup proxy settings are effective only for backup to and recovery from the Acronis Online Backup Storage over the Internet. This option defines whether the Acronis agent will connect to the Internet through a proxy server.
Managing settings, Online backup proxy To set up proxy server settings: Select the Use a proxy server check box. In Address, specify the network name or IP address of the proxy server, for example: proxy.example.com or 192.168.0.1 In Port, specify the port number of the proxy server, for example: 80 If the proxy server requires authentication, specify the credentials in User name and Password fields. To test the proxy server settings, click Test connection. To apply the settings, click Save.
Google Chrome. In Options, click Under the Hood. Under Network, click Change proxy settings. 12.6.2 Managing Agent Password Click the Agent Password button in the Configure tab of the Acronis vmProtect main ribbon menu to change your User password. Here you can change the password for the user of Acronis vmProtect Agent. The username (login) cannot be changed.
13 Best Practices In this section we will give a few examples of some operations with Acronis vmProtect. After you installed your Acronis vmProtect Agent you have to connect to it with your access credentials. 1. Add ESX host First of all, to be able to perform backup and other operations, you have to specify the IP address/hostname and credentials for your vCenter or individual ESX host where your virtual machines are running.
In order to do that, you have to run the Restore backup task wizard which will guide you through all the steps of the restore process. Click Restore in the Home tab of the main menu. Then go through the wizard. The detailed information can be found in the "Restoring a backup of virtual machines" section (p. 35). On the first step of the wizard select a backed up virtual machine. On the step 2 select the desired new location where you would like to restore your machine.
14 Support 14.1 Technical Support Maintenance and Support Program If you need assistance with your Acronis product, please go to http://www.acronis.com/support/ Product Updates You can download the latest updates for all your registered Acronis software products from our website at any time after logging into your Account (https://www.acronis.com/my) and registering the product. See Registering Acronis Products at the Website (http://kb.acronis.com/content/4834) and Acronis Website User Guide (http://kb.
15 Glossary A Agent (Acronis vmProtect Agent) An application that performs backup and recovery of the virtual machines and enables other management operations on the VMWare ESX/ESXi infrastructure such as task management and operations with available backups, machines, etc. Acronis vmProtect includes the Agent for backing up virtual machines residing on a VMWare ESX/ESXi virtualization server which the Agent is connected to. There could be several ESX/ESXi hosts or a vCenter managed by one Agent.
B Backup The result of a single backup operation (p. 86) as a single recovery point (p. 92) inside archive (p. 86). Physically, it is a file that contains a copy of the backed up data (virtual machine volumes) from specific date and time for a specific virtual machine. Backup files created by Acronis vmProtect have a TIB extension. One backup file may include useful data from multiple machines plus necessary metadata inside. Backup archive (Archive) A set of backups (p.
Backup task (Task) A set of rules that specify how the given virtual machine or a set of virtual machines will be protected. A backup task specifies: What data to back up (i.e. which machines to back up). Where to store the backup archive (the backup archive name and location). The backup scheme, including the backup schedule and [optionally] the retention rules. [Optionally] the archive validation rules. The backup options.
C CBT (Changed Block Tracking) A feature of VMWare ESX which allows to identify which blocks of the virtual disks have changed and to transfer only those blocks during the backup/replication process. For example when using CBT technology, the incremental backup speed can increase up to 20 times. Cleanup Deleting backups (p. 85) from a backup archive (p. 86) in order to get rid of outdated backups or prevent the archive from exceeding the desired size.
Deduplication in Acronis vmProtect is managing data within only one backup archive. For example if the backups are saved into 2 different archives (even if they are in the same location) then there will be no relations between these archives and they may contain duplicated data. Differential backup A differential backup stores changes to the data against the latest full backup (p. 91). You need access to the corresponding full backup to recover the data from a differential backup.
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.
To reduce the access time (a striped volume). To achieve fault tolerance by introducing redundancy (mirrored and RAID-5 volumes). When backing up virtual machines which contain dynamic disks inside, Acronis vmProtect backs up the logical dynamic volumes instead of the entire dynamic disks structure. E Encrypted archive A backup archive (p. 86) encrypted according to the Advanced Encryption Standard (AES). When the encryption option and a password for the archive are set in the backup options (p.
I Incremental backup A backup (p. 85) that stores changes to the data against the latest backup. You need access to other backups from the same archive (p. 85) to restore data from an incremental backup. L Legacy mode Archive See Backup archive (p. 86). M Machine (Virtual machine) A virtual computer uniquely identified by an operating system installation. Media builder A dedicated tool for creating bootable media (p. 87). P P2V Migration of physical machine to virtual environment.
Registered machine A virtual machine managed by Acronis vmProtect Agent. All virtual machines which reside on the registered ESX/ESXi host or vCenter are automatically registered and can be managed by Acronis vmProtect Agent. Replication A process of replicating the virtual machine to new location (new datastore and/or resource pool). As the result of this process there will be a duplicate virtual machine created which is running independently from the original one.
U Universal Restore (Acronis Universal Restore) The Acronis proprietary technology that helps boot up Windows on dissimilar hardware or a virtual machine. The Universal Restore handles differences in devices that are critical for the operating system start-up, such as storage controllers, motherboard or chipset. In Acronis vmProtect the Universal Restore technology is primarily used for P2V (p. 92) migration scenarios. Universal Restore is not available when recovering Linux.
vCenter VMware vCenter Server, formerly VMware VirtualCenter, centrally manages VMware vSphere environments allowing IT administrators dramatically improved control over the virtual environment compared to other management platforms. See more details at http://www.vmware.com/products/vcenter-server/. In terms of Acronis vmProtect product the “vCenter” item is considered to be a container for the ESX virtual infrastructure including datacenters, ESX hosts, etc.
