Acronis Backup Recovery Server for Linux - 11.0 User Guide

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Acronis Backup & Recovery 11 Server for Linux

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User Guide

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Table of contents

1 Introducing Acronis Backup & Recovery 11 ................................................................................ 7

1.1 What's new in Acronis Backup & Recovery 11 ....................................................................... 7

1.2 Acronis Backup & Recovery 11 components .......................................................................... 8

1.2.1 Agent for Linux.......................................................................................................................................... 8

1.2.2 Management Console .............................................................................................................................. 9

1.2.3 Bootable Media Builder ............................................................................................................................ 9

1.3 Supported file systems .......................................................................................................... 9

1.4 Technical Support ............................................................................................................... 10

2 Getting started ......................................................................................................................... 11

2.1 Using the management console .......................................................................................... 12

2.1.1 "Navigation" pane................................................................................................................................... 13

2.1.2 Main area, views and action pages......................................................................................................... 14

2.1.3 Console options ...................................................................................................................................... 17

3 Understanding Acronis Backup & Recovery 11 ......................................................................... 20

3.1 Owners and credentials ...................................................................................................... 20

3.2 User privileges on a managed machine ............................................................................... 21

3.3 Full, incremental and differential backups ........................................................................... 21

3.4 What does a disk or volume backup store? ......................................................................... 23

3.5 Backup and recovery of logical volumes and MD devices (Linux) ......................................... 23

3.5.1 Backing up logical volumes ..................................................................................................................... 23

3.5.2 Backing up MD devices ........................................................................................................................... 24

3.5.3 Backing up hardware RAID arrays (Linux) ............................................................................................... 25

3.5.4 Assembling MD devices for recovery (Linux) .......................................................................................... 25

3.5.5 Recovering MD devices and logical volumes .......................................................................................... 25

3.6 Support for SNMP ............................................................................................................... 29

4 Backup ...................................................................................................................................... 31

4.1 Back up now ....................................................................................................................... 31

4.2 Creating a backup plan........................................................................................................ 31

4.2.1 Selecting data to back up ........................................................................................................................ 33

4.2.2 Access credentials for source ................................................................................................................. 34

4.2.3 Source files exclusion .............................................................................................................................. 34

4.2.4 Access credentials for archive location ................................................................................................... 36

4.2.5 Backup schemes ..................................................................................................................................... 36

4.2.6 Backup location selection ....................................................................................................................... 46

4.2.7 Archive validation ................................................................................................................................... 48

4.2.8 Backup plan's credentials ....................................................................................................................... 48

4.2.9 Label (Preserving machine properties in a backup) ................................................................................ 49

4.2.10 Why is the program asking for the password? ....................................................................................... 50

4.3 Simplified naming of backup files ........................................................................................ 50

4.3.1 Usage examples ...................................................................................................................................... 51

4.3.2 The [DATE] variable ................................................................................................................................ 54

4.3.3 Backup splitting and simplified file naming ............................................................................................ 54

4.4 Scheduling .......................................................................................................................... 55

4.4.1 Daily schedule ......................................................................................................................................... 56

4.4.2 Weekly schedule ..................................................................................................................................... 58

4.4.3 Monthly schedule ................................................................................................................................... 60

4.4.4 Conditions ............................................................................................................................................... 62

4.5 Replication and retention of backups .................................................................................. 64

4.5.1 Supported locations ................................................................................................................................ 66

4.5.2 Setting up replication of backups ........................................................................................................... 66

4.5.3 Setting up retention of backups ............................................................................................................. 66

4.5.4 Retention rules for the Custom scheme ................................................................................................. 67

4.5.5 Replication/cleanup inactivity time ........................................................................................................ 69

4.5.6 Usage examples ...................................................................................................................................... 69

4.6 Default backup options ....................................................................................................... 70

4.6.1 Additional settings .................................................................................................................................. 72

4.6.2 Archive protection .................................................................................................................................. 73

4.6.3 Backup cataloging ................................................................................................................................... 74

4.6.4 Backup performance .............................................................................................................................. 74

4.6.5 Backup splitting....................................................................................................................................... 76

4.6.6 Compression level................................................................................................................................... 76

4.6.7 Disaster recovery plan (DRP) .................................................................................................................. 77

4.6.8 Error handling ......................................................................................................................................... 78

4.6.9 Event tracing ........................................................................................................................................... 79

4.6.10 Fast incremental/differential backup ..................................................................................................... 79

4.6.11 File-level backup snapshot...................................................................................................................... 80

4.6.12 LVM snapshotting ................................................................................................................................... 80

4.6.13 Media components................................................................................................................................. 81

4.6.14 Notifications............................................................................................................................................ 81

4.6.15 Pre/Post commands ............................................................................................................................... 83

4.6.16 Pre/Post data capture commands .......................................................................................................... 84

4.6.17 Replication/cleanup inactivity time ........................................................................................................ 86

4.6.18 Sector-by-sector backup ......................................................................................................................... 87

4.6.19 Task failure handling ............................................................................................................................... 87

4.6.20 Task start conditions ............................................................................................................................... 87

5 Recovery ................................................................................................................................... 89

5.1 Creating a recovery task ...................................................................................................... 89

5.1.1 What to recover ...................................................................................................................................... 90

5.1.2 Access credentials for location ............................................................................................................... 93

5.1.3 Access credentials for destination .......................................................................................................... 94

5.1.4 Where to recover.................................................................................................................................... 94

5.1.5 When to recover ................................................................................................................................... 101

5.1.6 Task credentials .................................................................................................................................... 101

5.2 Acronis Universal Restore ................................................................................................. 101

5.2.1 Getting Universal Restore ..................................................................................................................... 102

5.2.2 Using Universal Restore ........................................................................................................................ 102

5.3 Bootability troubleshooting .............................................................................................. 103

5.3.1 How to reactivate GRUB and change its configuration ........................................................................ 105

5.4 Default recovery options ................................................................................................... 106

5.4.1 Additional settings ................................................................................................................................ 108

5.4.2 Error handling ....................................................................................................................................... 109

5.4.3 Event tracing ......................................................................................................................................... 109

5.4.4 File-level security .................................................................................................................................. 110

5.4.5 Notifications.......................................................................................................................................... 110

5.4.6 Pre/Post commands ............................................................................................................................. 111

5.4.7 Recovery priority .................................................................................................................................. 113

6 Storing the backed up data..................................................................................................... 114

6.1 Vaults ............................................................................................................................... 114

6.1.1 Working with vaults .............................................................................................................................. 115

6.1.2 Personal vaults ...................................................................................................................................... 115

6.2 Acronis Secure Zone ......................................................................................................... 118

6.2.1 Creating Acronis Secure Zone ............................................................................................................... 118

6.2.2 Managing Acronis Secure Zone ............................................................................................................ 120

7 Operations with archives and backups ................................................................................... 122

7.1 Validating archives and backups........................................................................................ 122

7.1.1 Archive selection................................................................................................................................... 123

7.1.2 Backup selection ................................................................................................................................... 123

7.1.3 Vault selection ...................................................................................................................................... 123

7.1.4 Access credentials for source ............................................................................................................... 124

7.1.5 When to validate .................................................................................................................................. 124

7.1.6 Task credentials .................................................................................................................................... 125

7.2 Exporting archives and backups ........................................................................................ 125

7.2.1 Archive selection................................................................................................................................... 128

7.2.2 Backup selection ................................................................................................................................... 128

7.2.3 Access credentials for source ............................................................................................................... 128

7.2.4 Destination selection ............................................................................................................................ 129

7.2.5 Access credentials for destination ........................................................................................................ 130

7.3 Mounting an image ........................................................................................................... 130

7.3.1 Archive selection................................................................................................................................... 131

7.3.2 Backup selection ................................................................................................................................... 132

7.3.3 Access credentials ................................................................................................................................. 133

7.3.4 Volume selection .................................................................................................................................. 133

7.3.5 Managing mounted images .................................................................................................................. 133

7.4 Operations available in vaults ........................................................................................... 134

7.4.1 Operations with archives ...................................................................................................................... 134

7.4.2 Operations with backups ...................................................................................................................... 135

7.4.3 Converting a backup to full ................................................................................................................... 136

7.4.4 Deleting archives and backups ............................................................................................................. 136

8 Bootable media ...................................................................................................................... 138

8.1 Linux-based bootable media ............................................................................................. 139

8.1.1 Kernel parameters ................................................................................................................................ 139

8.1.2 Network settings................................................................................................................................... 141

8.1.3 Network port ........................................................................................................................................ 142

8.2 Connecting to a machine booted from media ................................................................... 142

8.3 Working under bootable media ........................................................................................ 142

8.3.1 Setting up a display mode..................................................................................................................... 143

8.3.2 Configuring iSCSI and NDAS devices ..................................................................................................... 143

8.4 List of commands and utilities available in Linux-based bootable media ............................ 144

8.5 Acronis Startup Recovery Manager ................................................................................... 145

9 Administering a managed machine ........................................................................................ 147

9.1 Backup plans and tasks ..................................................................................................... 147

9.1.1 Actions on backup plans and tasks ....................................................................................................... 147

9.1.2 States and statuses of backup plans and tasks ..................................................................................... 149

9.1.3 Export and import of backup plans ...................................................................................................... 152

9.1.4 Deploying backup plans as files ............................................................................................................ 155

9.1.5 Backup plan details ............................................................................................................................... 156

9.1.6 Task/activity details .............................................................................................................................. 157

9.2 Log.................................................................................................................................... 158

9.2.1 Actions on log entries ........................................................................................................................... 158

9.2.2 Log entry details ................................................................................................................................... 159

9.3 Alerts ................................................................................................................................ 159

9.4 Collecting system information........................................................................................... 160

9.5 Adjusting machine options ................................................................................................ 160

9.5.1 Customer Experience Program ............................................................................................................. 161

9.5.2 Alerts ..................................................................................................................................................... 161

9.5.3 E-mail notifications ............................................................................................................................... 162

9.5.4 Event tracing ......................................................................................................................................... 163

9.5.5 Log cleanup rules .................................................................................................................................. 165

10 Glossary .................................................................................................................................. 166

1 Introducing Acronis Backup & Recovery 11

1.1 What's new in Acronis Backup & Recovery 11

Acronis Backup & Recovery 11 builds on the success that Acronis Backup & Recovery 10 has established by bringing enterprise-class capabilities to the small business market at an affordable price in an easy-to-use package.

Acronis Backup & Recovery 11 continues the trend of expanding the backup and recovery capabilities in physical, virtual and cloud environments. The following is a summary of the product's new features and enhancements.

 Simplified installation

The new installer makes the installation procedure simple and clear.

 Improved usability

The redesigned product's UI lets you perform any operation easier, faster and more intuitively.

 Advanced replication and retention of backups (p. 64)

Store a backup in multiple locations (possibly off-site) for redundancy. Move or copy backups to a cheaper or off-site storage automatically. Set a replication time window if you do not want copying or moving to occur during business hours.

 Data view for vaults (p. 90)

Select data from a vault by browsing either the archives and backups (in the Archive view) or the backed up data (in the Data view).

 Alert notifications (p. 159)

A new alert system has been introduced for both local and centralized management. Select the alerts you want to observe. Set up e-mail notifications about various types of alerts.

 GPT support

Backup and recovery of disks whose partitioning scheme is GUID partition table (GPT).

 4-KB drives support (p. 98)

When recovering disks or volumes, the software automatically eliminates volume misalignment – a situation that occurs when volume clusters are not aligned with disk sectors.

 Partition (volume) alignment (p. 98)

Solid-State Drives (SSD) require a specific partition alignment for optimal performance. The required alignment is set automatically during recovery, but you can change it manually if required.

 Automatic disk/volume mapping (p. 96)

When recovering disks or volumes, the software automatically maps the selected disk/volumes to the target disks in the optimal manner.

 Applying Acronis Universal Restore without recovery (p. 102)

Using bootable media, you can apply Acronis Universal Restore to an operating system without performing the recovery.

 Linux LVM support (p. 23)

LVM structure is saved in a backup and can be recovered.

 Acronis Universal Restore for Linux systems (p. 103)

Recover Linux systems to dissimilar hardware.

 Exporting and importing backup plans (p. 152)

Export a backup plan to an .xml file and import it to a different machine.

 Deploying backup plans as files (p. 155)

Export a backup plan from one machine and deploy it as an .xml file to multiple machines.

 Disaster Recovery Plan (p. 77)

The software can generate a disaster recovery plan and send it via e-mail right after a backup creation. The plan contains step-by-step instructions on how to recover.

 Converting a backup to full (p. 136)

Convert an incremental or differential backup to a full one.

 New command line

Provides backup and recovery automation. Includes remote management.

 Automatic check for updates

The management console automatically checks for updates upon each start and provides notification once the newer version is available.

1.2 Acronis Backup & Recovery 11 components

This section contains a list of Acronis Backup & Recovery 11 components with a brief description of their functionality.

Components for a managed machine (agents)

These are applications that perform data backup, recovery and other operations on the machines managed with Acronis Backup & Recovery 11. Agents require a license to perform operations on each managed machine. Agents have multiple features, or add-ons, that enable additional functionality and so might require additional licenses.

Console

The console provides Graphical User Interface to the agents. Usage of the console is not licensed. In stand-alone editions of Acronis Backup & Recovery 11, the console is installed together with the agent and cannot be disconnected from it.

Bootable Media Builder

With Bootable Media Builder, you can create bootable media in order to use the agents and other rescue utilities in a rescue environment. In stand-alone editions of Acronis Backup & Recovery 11, Bootable Media Builder is installed together with the agent. All add-ons to the agent, if installed, will be available in a rescue environment.

1.2.1 Agent for Linux

This agent enables disk-level and file-level data protection under Linux.

Disk backup

Disk-level data protection is based on backing up either a disk or a volume file system as a whole, along with all information necessary for the operating system to boot; or all the disk sectors using the sector-by-sector approach (raw mode.) A backup that contains a copy of a disk or a volume in a

packaged form is called a disk (volume) backup or a disk (volume) image. It is possible to recover disks or volumes as a whole from such backup, as well as individual folders or files.

File backup

File-level data protection is based on backing up files and directories residing on the machine where the agent is installed or on a network share accessed using the smb or nfs protocol. Files can be recovered to their original location or to another place. It is possible to recover all files and directories that were backed up or select which of them to recover.

1.2.1.1 Universal Restore

The Universal Restore add-on enables you to use the restore to dissimilar hardware functionality on the machine where the agent is installed and create bootable media with this functionality. Universal Restore handles differences in devices that are critical for the operating system start-up, such as storage controllers, motherboard or chipset.

1.2.2 Management Console

Acronis Backup & Recovery 11 Management Console is an administrative tool for local access to Acronis Backup & Recovery 11 agent. Remote connection to the agent is not possible.

1.2.3 Bootable Media Builder

Acronis Bootable Media Builder is a dedicated tool for creating bootable media (p. 168). The media builder that installs on Linux creates bootable media based on Linux kernel.

The Universal Restore (p. 9) add-on enables you to create bootable media with the restore to dissimilar hardware functionality. Universal Restore handles differences in devices that are critical for the operating system start-up, such as storage controllers, motherboard or chipset.

1.3 Supported file systems

Acronis Backup & Recovery 11 can back up and recover the following file systems with the following limitations:

 FAT16/32  NTFS  Ext2/Ext3/Ext4  ReiserFS3 - particular files cannot be recovered from disk backups located on Acronis Backup &

Recovery 11 Storage Node

 ReiserFS4 - volume recovery without the volume resize capability; particular files cannot be

recovered from disk backups located on Acronis Backup & Recovery 11 Storage Node

 XFS - volume recovery without the volume resize capability; particular files cannot be recovered

from disk backups located on Acronis Backup & Recovery 11 Storage Node

 JFS - particular files cannot be recovered from disk backups located on Acronis Backup &

Recovery 11 Storage Node

 Linux SWAP

Acronis Backup & Recovery 11 can back up and recover corrupted or non-supported file systems using the sector-by-sector approach.

1.4 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.acronis.com/content/8128).

2 Getting started

1. Select Tools > Create bootable media in the menu.

2. Click Next in the welcome screen. Keep clicking Next until the list of components appears.

3. Proceed as described in "Linux-based bootable media" (p. 139).

Step 1. Installation

These brief installation instructions enable you to start using the product quickly. For the complete description of installation methods and procedures, please refer to the Installation documentation.

Before installation, make sure that:

 Your hardware meets the system requirements.  You have license keys for the edition of your choice.  You have the setup program. You can download it from the Acronis Web site.  Make sure that the RPM Package Manager (RPM) and the following Linux packages are installed:

gcc, kernel, kernel-headers, and kernel-devel. The names of these packages may vary depending on the Linux distribution.

To install Acronis Backup & Recovery 11

Run the AcronisBackupRecoveryServerLinux.i686 or the AcronisBackupRecoveryServerLinux.x86_64 installation file and follow the on-screen instructions.

Step 2. Running

/usr/sbin/acronis_console

For understanding of the GUI elements see "Using the management console" (p. 12).

Step 3. Bootable media

To be able to recover an operating system that fails to start, or deploy it on bare metal, create bootable media.

Step 4. Backup

Back up now (p. 31)

Click Back up now to do a one-time backup in a few simple steps. The backup process will start immediately after you perform the required steps.

To save your machine to a file:

Under Where to back up, click Location, and select the location where the backup will be saved. Click OK to confirm your selection. Click OK at the bottom of the window to start the backup.

Tip. Using the bootable media, you can do off-line ("cold") backups in the same way as in the operating system.

Create backup plan (p. 31)

Create a backup plan if you need a long-term backup strategy including backup schemes, schedules and conditions, timely deleting of backups, or moving them to different locations.

Step 5. Recovery

Recover (p. 89)

To recover data, you need to select the backed up data and the destination the data will be recovered to. As a result, a recovery task will be created.

Recovery of a disk or volume over a volume locked by the operating system requires a reboot. After the recovery is completed, the recovered operating system goes online automatically.

If the machine fails to boot or if you need to recover a system to bare metal, boot the machine using the bootable media and configure the recovery operation in the same way as the recovery task.

Step 6. Management

The Navigation pane (at the left part of the console) enables you to navigate across the product views that are used for different administering purposes.

 Use the Backup plans and tasks view to manage backup plans and tasks: run, edit, stop and

delete plans and tasks, view their states and progress.

 Use the Alerts view to rapidly identify and solve the problems.  Use the Log view to browse the operations log.  The location where you store backup archives is called a vault (p. 179). Navigate to the

Vaults (p. 114) view to obtain information about your vaults. Navigate further to the specific vault to view backups and their contents. You can also select the data to recover and perform manual operations with backups (mounting, validating, deleting).

2.1 Using the management console

As soon as the console connects to a managed machine (p. 176) or to a management server (p. 176), the respective items appear across the console's workspace (in the menu, in the main area with the Welcome screen, or in the Navigation pane) enabling you to perform agent-specific or server-specific operations.

Acronis Backup & Recovery 11 Management Console - Welcome screen

Name

Description

Navigation pane

Contains the Navigation tree and the Shortcuts bar. Lets you navigate to the different views. For details, see Navigation pane (p. 13).

Main area

Here you configure and monitor backup, recovery and other operations. The main area displays views and action pages (p. 14) depending on the items selected in the menu or Navigation tree.

Menu bar

Appears across the top of the program window. Lets you perform most of operations available in Acronis Backup & Recovery 11. The menu items change dynamically depending on the item selected in the Navigation tree and the main area.

Key elements of the console workspace

2.1.1 "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. You can choose between the Full list or the Short list of views. The Short list contains the most frequently used views from the Full list.

The Short list displays

 [Machine name]. This is the root of the tree also called a Welcome screen. It displays the

name of the machine the console is currently connected to. Use this view for quick access to the main operations, available on the managed machine.

 Backup plans and tasks. Use this view to manage backup plans and tasks on the

managed machine: run, edit, stop and delete plans and tasks, view their progress.

 Vaults. Use this view to manage personal vaults and archives stored in there, add new

vaults, rename and delete the existing ones, validate vaults, explore backup content, perform operations on archives and backups, etc. If the machine is registered on the management server, you can browse the centralized vaults and perform operations on the archives for which you have the appropriate permissions.

 Alerts. Use this view to examine warning messages for the managed machine.

The Full list additionally displays

 Disk management. Use this view to perform operations on the machine's hard disk

drives.

 Log. Use this view to examine information on operations performed by the program on

the managed machine.

 Mounted images. This node is displayed if at least one volume is mounted. Use this view

to manage mounted images.

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. If the console and agent are installed on the same machine, the shortcut to this machine will be

added to the shortcuts bar automatically as Local machine [Machine name].

Operations with pane

How to expand/minimize panes

By default, the Navigation pane appears expanded. You might need to minimize the pane in order to free some additional workspace. To do this, click the chevron ( ). The pane will be minimized and the chevron changes its direction ( ). Click the chevron once again to expand the pane.

How to change the panes' borders

1. Point to the pane's border.

2. When the pointer becomes a double-headed arrow, drag the pointer to move the border.

2.1.2 Main area, views and action pages

The main area is a basic place where you work with the console. Here you create, edit and manage backup plans, recovery tasks and perform other operations. The main area displays different views and action pages according the items you select in the menu, or Navigation tree.

2.1.2.1 Views

Do the following

Sort items by any column

Click a column's header to sort items in ascending order.

Click it once again to sort items in descending order.

A view appears on the main area when clicking any item in the Navigation tree in the Navigation pane (p. 13).

"Log" view

Common way of working with views

Generally, every view contains a table of items, a table toolbar with buttons, and the Information panel.

 Use filtering and sorting (p. 15) capabilities to search the table for the item in question.  In the table, select the desired item.  In the information panel (collapsed by default), view the item's details. To expand the panel, click

the arrow mark ( ).

 Perform actions on the selected item. There are several ways of performing the same action on

selected items:

 By clicking the buttons on the table toolbar.  By selecting the items in the Actions menu.  By right-clicking the item and selecting the operation in the context menu.

Sorting, filtering and configuring table items

The following is a guideline to sort, filter and configure table items in any view.

Filter items by predefined column value

In a field below the corresponding column's header, select the required value from the drop-down list.

Filter items by entered value

In a field below the corresponding column's header, type a value.

As a result you will see the list of values, fully or just partly coincide with the entered value.

Filter items by a predefined parameters

Depending on the view, you can filter a table items by some predefined parameters. To do this, click the respective buttons or links at the top of the table.

For example:

 In the Log view, you can filter the event entries by clicking buttons

associated with the result: Succeeded, Succeeded with warnings, or Failed.

 The Log view has the activity start time as the default parameter, and

three predefined settings for filtering activities by this parameter (All available, For last 3 months, or For custom period) are placed at the top

of the Log view.

Show or hide table columns

By default, any table has a fixed number of columns that are shown, others are hidden. If required, you can hide the shown columns and show the hidden ones.

To show or hide columns

1. Right-click any column header to open the context menu.

2. Click the items you want to be displayed/hidden.

2.1.2.2 Action pages

An action page appears in the main area when clicking any action item in the Actions menu. It contains steps you need to perform in order to create and launch any task or a backup plan.

Action page - Create backup plan

Using controls and specifying settings

Use active controls to specify a backup plan or recovery task settings and parameters. By default, such fields as credentials, options, comments, and some others are hidden. Most settings are configured by clicking the respective Show… links. Others are selected from the drop-down list, or typed manually in the page's fields.

Action page - Controls

Acronis Backup & Recovery 11 remembers the changes you made on the action pages. For example, if you started to create a backup plan, and then for any reason switched to another view without accomplishing the plan creation, you can click the Back navigation button on the menu. Or, if you have passed several steps forward, click the Down arrow and select the page where you started the plan creation from the list. Thus, you can perform the remaining steps and accomplish the backup plan creation.

Navigation buttons

2.1.3 Console options

The console options define the way information is represented in the Graphical User Interface of Acronis Backup & Recovery 11.

To access the console options, select Options > Console options from the top menu.

2.1.3.1 Alert display options

The option specifies which alerts to show and which to hide in the Alerts view.

The preset is: All alerts.

To show (hide) alerts, select (clear) the check boxes next to the respective alert types.

2.1.3.2 Credentials cache

The option specifies whether to store the credentials entered while using the management console.

The preset is: Disabled.

If the option is disabled, access credentials for various locations that you enter during a console session are stored only until the console is closed.

If the option is enabled, the credentials are saved for use during later sessions. In Windows, the credentials are stored in the Windows Credential Manager. In Linux, the credentials are stored in a special encrypted file.

2.1.3.3 Fonts

The option defines the fonts to be used in the Graphical User Interface of Acronis Backup & Recovery

11. The Menu font setting affects the drop-down and context menus. The Application font setting affects all 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 Browse to the right.

2.1.3.4 Pop-up messages

These options are effective when the console is connected to a managed machine or to the management server.

The “Activities Need Interaction” dialog

This option defines whether to display a pop-up window when one or more activities require user interaction. This window enables you to specify your decision, such as to confirm reboot or to retry after freeing-up the disk space, on all the activities in the same place. Until at least one activity requires interaction, you can open this window at any time from the managed machine's welcome screen. Alternatively, you can review the task execution states in the Backup plans and tasks view and specify your decision on each task in the information panel.

The preset is: Enabled.

To make a selection, select or clear the The “Activities Need Interaction” dialog check box.

The “Feedback Confirmation” dialog

This option defines whether to display a pop-up window with the information about your system after an error occurs. You can send this information to Acronis technical support.

The preset is: Enabled.

To make a selection, select or clear the The “Feedback Confirmation” dialog check box.

Notify if bootable media is not created

This option defines whether to display a pop-up window when the management console is launched on a machine and no bootable media has been created on that machine.

The preset is: Enabled.

To make a selection, select or clear the Notify if bootable media is not created check box.

Notify when the management console is connected to a component of a different version

This option defines whether to display a pop-up window when a console is connected to an agent/management server and their versions differ.

The preset is: Enabled.

To make a selection, select or clear the Notify when the management console is connected to a

component of a different version check box.

About the task execution results

This option is effective only when the console is connected to a managed machine.

The option defines whether to display the pop-up messages about task run results: successful completion, failure or success with warnings. When the displaying of pop-up messages is disabled, you can review the task execution states and results in the Backup plans and tasks view.

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.

2.1.3.5 Startup page

This option defines whether to show the Welcome screen or the Dashboard view on the console connection to the management server.

The preset is: the Welcome screen.

To make a selection, select or clear the check box for Show the "Dashboard" view.

This option can also be set on the Welcome screen. If you select the check box for At startup, show the Dashboard instead of the current view on the Welcome screen, the setting mentioned above will be updated accordingly.

3 Understanding Acronis Backup & Recovery 11

This section attempts to give its readers a clear understanding of the product so that they can use the product in various circumstances without step-by-step instructions.

3.1 Owners and credentials

This section explains the concept of owner and the meaning of a backup plan's (or task's) credentials.

Plan (task) owner

A local backup plan owner is the user who created or last modified the plan.

A centralized backup plan owner is the management server administrator who created or last modified the centralized backup plan.

Tasks, belonging to a backup plan, either local or centralized, are owned by the backup plan owner.

Tasks that do not belong to a backup plan, such as the recovery task, are owned by the user who has created or last modified the task.

Managing a plan (task) owned by another user

Having Administrator privileges on the machine, a user can modify tasks and local backup plans owned by any user registered in the operating system.

When a user opens a plan or task for editing, which is owned by another user, all passwords set in the task are cleared. This prevents the "modify settings, leave passwords" trick. The program displays a warning each time you are trying to edit a plan (task) last modified by another user. On seeing the warning, you have two options:

 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.

Plan's credentials and task credentials

Any task running on a machine runs on behalf of a user. When creating a plan or a task, you have the option to explicitly specify an account under which the plan or the task will run. Your choice depends on whether the plan or task is intended for manual start or for executing on schedule.

Manual start

You can skip the Plan's (Task) credentials step. Every time you start the task, the task will run under the credentials with which you are currently logged on. Any person that has administrative privileges on the machine can also start the task. The task will run under this person's credentials.

The task will always run under the same credentials, regardless of the user who actually starts the task, if you specify the task credentials explicitly. To do so, on the plan (task) creation page:

1. In the Plan parameters (or Task parameters) section, click Show plan's credentials, comments,

label (or Show task credentials).

2. Click Plan's (Task) credentials.

3. Enter the credentials under which the plan (task) will run. Scheduled or postponed start

The plan (task) credentials are mandatory. If you skip the credentials step, you will be asked for credentials after finishing the plan (task) creation.

Why does the program compel me to specify credentials?

A scheduled or postponed task has to run anyway, regardless if any user is logged on or not (for example, the system is at the Windows "Welcome" screen) or a user other than the task owner is logged on. It is sufficient that the machine be on (that is, not in standby or hibernate) at the scheduled task start time. That's why the Acronis scheduler needs the explicitly specified credentials to be able to start the task.

3.2 User privileges on a managed machine

When managing a machine running Linux, the user has or obtains the root privileges, and so can:

 Back up and recover any data or the entire machine, having full control over all Acronis Backup &

Recovery 11 agent operations and log files on the machine.

 Manage local backup plans and tasks owned by any user registered in the operating system.

To avoid routine logging on to the system as root, the root user can log on with the ordinary user credentials and then switch user as required.

3.3 Full, incremental and differential backups

Acronis Backup & Recovery 11 provides the capability to use popular backup schemes, such as Grandfather-Father-Son and Tower of Hanoi, as well as to create custom backup schemes. All backup schemes are based on full, incremental and differential backup methods. The term "scheme" in fact denotes the algorithm of applying these methods plus the algorithm of the archive cleanup.

Comparing backup methods with each other does not make much sense because the methods work as a team in a backup scheme. Each method should play its specific role according to its advantages. A competent backup scheme will benefit from the advantages of all backup methods and lessen the

influence of all the methods’ shortcomings. For example, weekly differential backup facilitates

archive cleanup because it can be easily deleted along with the weekly set of daily incremental backups depending on it.

Backing up with the full, incremental or differential backup method results in a backup (p. 167) of the corresponding type.

Full backup

A full backup stores all data selected for backup. A full backup underlies any archive and forms the base for incremental and differential backups. An archive can contain multiple full backups or consist of only full backups. A full backup is self-sufficient - you do not need access to any other backup to recover data from a full backup.

It is widely accepted that a full backup is the slowest to do but the fastest to restore. With Acronis

Parameter

Full backup

Differential backup

Incremental backup

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.

Example: An Internet cafe, school or university lab where the administrator often undoes changes made by the students or guests but rarely updates the reference backup (in fact, after installing software updates only). The backup time is not crucial in this case and the recovery time will be minimal when recovering the systems from the full backup. The administrator can have several copies of the full backup for additional reliability.

Incremental backup

An incremental backup stores changes to the data against the latest backup. You need access to other backups from the same archive to recover data from an incremental backup.

An incremental backup is most useful when:

 you need the possibility to roll back to any one of multiple saved states  the data changes tend to be small as compared to the total data size.

It is widely accepted that incremental backups are less reliable than full ones because if one backup in the "chain" is corrupted, the next ones can no longer be used. However, storing multiple full backups is not an option when you need multiple prior versions of your data, because reliability of an oversized archive is even more questionable.

Example: Backing up a database transaction log.

Differential backup

A differential backup stores changes to the data against the latest full backup. You need access to the corresponding full backup to recover the data from a differential backup. A differential backup is most useful when:

 you are interested in saving only the most recent data state  the data changes tend to be small as compared to the total data size.

The typical conclusion is: "differential backups take longer to do and are faster to restore, while incremental ones are quicker to do and take longer to restore." In fact, there is no physical difference between an incremental backup appended to a full backup and a differential backup appended to the same full backup at the same point of time. The above mentioned difference implies creating a differential backup after (or instead of) creating multiple incremental backups.

An incremental or differential backup created after disk defragmentation might be considerably larger than usual because defragmentation changes file locations on the disk and the backup reflects these changes. It is recommended that you re-create a full backup after disk defragmentation.

The following table summarizes the advantages and shortcomings of each backup type as they appear based on common knowledge. In real life, these parameters depend on numerous factors such as the amount, speed and pattern of data changes; the nature of the data, the physical specifications of the devices, the backup/recovery options you set, to name a few. Practice is the best guide to selecting the optimal backup scheme.

Storage space

Maximal

Medium

Minimal

Creation time

Maximal

Medium

Minimal

Recovery time

Minimal

Medium

Maximal

3.4 What does a disk or volume backup store?

A disk or volume backup stores a disk or a volume file system as a whole, along with all the information necessary for the operating system to boot. It is possible to recover disks or volumes as a whole from such backup, as well as individual folders or files.

With the sector-by-sector (raw mode) option enabled, a disk backup stores all the disk sectors.

For supported file systems, with the sector-by-sector option turned off, a disk or volume backup stores only those sectors that contain data. This reduces the resulting backup size and speeds up the backup and recovery operations.

Windows

The swap file (pagefile.sys) and the file that keeps the RAM content when the machine goes into hibernation (hiberfil.sys) are not backed up. After recovery, the files will be re-created in the appropriate place with the zero size.

A volume backup stores all other files and folders of the selected volume independent of their attributes (including hidden and system files), the boot record, the file allocation table (FAT) if it exists, the root and the zero track of the hard disk with the master boot record (MBR). The boot code of GPT volumes is not backed up.

A disk backup stores all volumes of the selected disk (including hidden volumes such as the vendor's maintenance partitions) and the zero track with the master boot record.

Linux

A volume backup stores all files and folders of the selected volume independent of their attributes; a boot record and the file system super block.

A disk backup stores all disk volumes as well as the zero track with the master boot record.

3.5 Backup and recovery of logical volumes and MD

devices (Linux)

This section explains how you would back up and recover volumes managed by Linux Logical Volume Manager (LVM), called logical volumes; and multiple-disk (MD) devices, called Linux Software RAID.

To learn more about LVM please visit http://tldp.org/HOWTO/LVM-HOWTO/ or http://www.centos.org/docs/5/html/5.1/Deployment_Guide/ch-lvm.html.

3.5.1 Backing up logical volumes

Acronis Backup & Recovery 11 Agent for Linux can access, back up and recover logical volumes when running in Linux with 2.6.x kernel or a Linux-based bootable media.

Backup

In Acronis Backup & Recovery 11 GUI, logical volumes appear under Dynamic volumes at the end of the list of volumes available for backup. If you select logical volumes for backup, the logical volume

structure will be saved to the backup along with the volume contents. This structure can be automatically recreated when you recover these volumes under a Linux-based bootable media.

To back up all available disks, specify all logical volumes plus basic volumes not belonging to them. This is the default choice when you open the Create backup plan page.

Basic volumes included in logical volumes are shown in the list with None in the File system column. If you select such volumes, the program will back them up sector-by-sector. Normally this it is not required.

Recovery

When recovering logical volumes, you have two options:

 Recovering volume contents only. The type or other properties of the target volume will not

change. This option is available both in the operating system and under bootable media. This option is useful in the following cases:

 When some data on the volume was lost, but no hard disks were replaced.  When recovering a logical volume over a basic disk or volume. You can resize the resulting

volume in this case.

A system, recovered from a logical volume backup to a basic disk, cannot boot because its kernel tries to mount the root file system at the logical volume. To boot the system, change the loader configuration and /etc/fstab so that LVM is not used and reactivate your boot loader (p. 105).

 When recovering a basic or logical volume to a previously created logical volume. Such is the

case when you create the structure of logical volumes manually (p. 26) by using the lvm utility.

 Recovering both the structure of logical volumes and their contents.

Such is the case when recovering on bare metal or on a machine with different volume structure. The structure of logical volumes can be automatically created at the time of recovery (p. 26).

This option is available only under bootable media.

For detailed instructions on how to recover logical volumes, see Recovering MD devices and logical volumes (p. 25).

3.5.2 Backing up MD devices

MD devices, known as Linux Software RAID, combine several volumes and make solid block devices (/dev/md0, /dev/md1, ..., /dev/md31). The information about MD devices is stored in /etc/raidtab or in dedicated areas of those volumes.

You can back up active (mounted) MD devices in the same way as logical volumes. The MD devices appear at the end of the list of volumes available for backup. If you select MD devices for backup, the structure of the MD devices will be backed up along with their contents.

Backing up volumes included in MD devices does not make sense when an MD device is mounted, as it won’t be possible to recover them.

When recovering MD devices under bootable media, the structure of MD devices can be recreated automatically. For detailed information about recovering MD devices under bootable media, see Recovering MD devices and logical volumes (p. 25).

For information about assembling MD devices when performing recovery in Linux, see Assembling MD devices for recovery (Linux) (p. 25).

3.5.3 Backing up hardware RAID arrays (Linux)

Hardware RAID arrays under Linux combine several physical drives to create a single partitionable disk. The special file related to a hardware RAID array is usually located in /dev/ataraid. You can back up hardware RAID arrays in the same way as ordinary hard disks.

Physical drives that are part of hardware RAID arrays may be listed alongside other disks as if they had a bad partition table or no partition table at all. Backing up such disks does not make sense as it won’t be possible to recover them.

3.5.4 Assembling MD devices for recovery (Linux)

In Linux, when performing recovery from a disk backup to an existing MD device (also called Linux Software RAID), make sure that this device is assembled at the time of recovery.

If the device is not assembled, assemble it by using the mdadm utility. Here are two examples:

Example 1. The following command assembles the device /dev/md0 combined from the volumes /dev/sdb1 and /dev/sdc1:

mdadm --assemble /dev/md0 -ayes /dev/sdb1 /sdc1

Example 2. The following command assembles the device /dev/md0 combined from the disks /dev/sdb and /dev/sdc:

mdadm --assemble /dev/md0 -ayes /dev/sdb /dev/sdc

If the recovery requires the machine to be rebooted (usually, when the volumes to recover include the boot partition), follow these guidelines:

 If all parts of the MD device are volumes (a typical case, such as in the first example), make sure

that each volume type—called partition type or system ID—is Linux raid automount; the hexadecimal code of this partition type is 0xFD. This will guarantee that the device will be automatically assembled following the reboot. To view or change the partition type, use a disk partitioning utility such as fdisk.

 Otherwise (such as in the second example), perform the recovery from bootable media. No

reboot will be required in that case. In bootable media, you may need to create the MD device manually or automatically, as described in Recovering MD devices and logical volumes (p. 25).

3.5.5 Recovering MD devices and logical volumes

Recovering MD devices and/or volumes created by Logical Volume Manager (logical volumes) assumes that the corresponding volume structure will be re-created.

In Linux-based bootable media, you can create the volume structure automatically (p. 26) when recovering the volumes from:

 A backup created by Acronis Backup & Recovery 11.  A backup created by Acronis Backup & Recovery 10, provided that the volume structure

information was saved in the backup. (It is saved by default.)

In other cases, before starting the recovery, you need to create the volume structure manually (p.

26) by using the mdadm and lvm utilities.

3.5.5.1 Creating the volume structure automatically

Use the following procedure to create the volume structure in a Linux-based bootable media.

Note: If you are recovering the volumes from a backup created by Acronis Backup & Recovery 10, this procedure works only if the volume structure information was saved in the backup. (It is saved by default.)

Caution: As a result of the following procedure, the current volume structure on the machine will be replaced with the one stored in the archive. This will destroy the data that is currently stored on some or all of the machine's hard disks.

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 automatically

1. Boot the machine from a Linux-based bootable media.

2. Click Acronis Bootable Agent. Then, click Run management console.

3. In the management console, click Recover.

Under the archive contents, Acronis Backup & Recovery 11 will display a message saying that it detected information about the volume structure.

4. Click Details in the area with that message.

5. Review the volume structure, and then click Apply RAID/LVM to create it.

3.5.5.2 Creating the volume structure manually

The following is a general procedure for recovering MD devices and logical volumes by using a Linux-based bootable media, and an example of such recovery. You can use a similar procedure in Linux.

To create the volume structure manually

1. Boot the machine from a Linux-based bootable media.

2. Click Acronis Backup & Recovery 11. Then, click Run management console.

3. On the toolbar, click Actions, and then click Start shell. Alternatively, you can press

CTRL+ALT+F2.

4. If necessary, examine the structure of volumes which are stored in the archive, by using the

acrocmd utility. Also, you can use this utility to mount one or more of these volumes as if they were regular volumes (see "Mounting backup volumes" later in this topic).

5. Create the volume structure according to that in the archive, by using the mdadm utility (for MD

devices), the lvm utility (for logical volumes), or both.

Note: Logical Volume Manager utilities such as pvcreate and vgcreate, which are normally available in Linux, are not included in the bootable media environment, so you need to use the lvm utility with a corresponding command. For example: lvm pvcreate, lvm vgcreate, and lvm lvcreate.

6. If you previously mounted the backup by using the acrocmd 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 ALT+F1.

(Do not reboot the machine at this point. Otherwise, you will have to create the volume structure again.)

8. Click Recover, then specify the path to the archive and any other required parameters, and then

click OK.

Note: This procedure will not work if you connect to Acronis Backup & Recovery 11 Bootable Agent remotely, because the command shell is not available in this case.

Example

Suppose that you previously performed a disk-level backup of a machine with the following disk configuration:

 The machine has two 1-gigabyte and two 2-gigabyte SCSI hard disks, mounted on /dev/sda,

/dev/sdb, /dev/sdc, and /dev/sdd, respectively.

 The first and second pairs of hard disks are configured as two MD devices; both are in the RAID-1

configuration, and are mounted on /dev/md0 and /dev/md1, respectively.

 A logical volume is based on the two MD devices and is mounted on

/dev/my_volgroup/my_logvol.

The following picture illustrates this configuration.

Do the following to recover data from this archive.

Step 1: Creating the volume structure

1. Boot the machine from a Linux-based bootable media.

2. In the management console, press CTRL+ALT+F2.

3. Run the following commands to create the MD devices:

mdadm --create /dev/md0 --level=1 --raid-devices=2 /dev/sd[ab] mdadm --create /dev/md1 --level=1 --raid-devices=2 /dev/sd[cd]

4. Run the following commands to create the logical volume group:

Caution: The pvcreate command destroys all data on the /dev/md0 and /dev/md1 devices.

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. Activate the volume group by running the following command:

lvm vgchange -a y my_volgroup

7. Press ALT+F1 to return to the management console.

Step 2: Starting the recovery

1. In the management console, click Recover.

2. In Archive, click Change and then specify the name of the archive.

3. In Backup, click Change and then select the backup from which you want to recover data.

4. In Data type, select Volumes.

5. In Items to recover, select the check box next to my_volgroup-my_logvol.

6. Under Where to recover, click Change, and then select the logical volume that you created in

Step 1. Click the chevron buttons to expand the list of disks.

7. Click OK to start the recovery. For a complete list of commands and utilities that you can use in the bootable media environment,

see List of commands and utilities available in Linux-based bootable media (p. 144). For detailed descriptions of the acrocmd utility, see the Acronis Backup & Recovery 11 command-line reference.

Mounting backup volumes

You may want to mount a volume stored in a disk backup, for example, to view some files in it before starting the recovery.

To mount a backup volume

1. Use the acrocmd list content command to list the disks and volumes that are stored in the

backup. For example, the following command lists the content of the latest backup of the linux_machine archive:

acrocmd list content --loc=\\server\backups --credentials=user,MyPassWd

--arc=linux_machine

The output will contain lines similar to the following:

type: disk Num Partition Flags Size Type GUID

---------- -------------------- ---------- ---------- ------------- ------

-Dyn1 my_volgroup-my_lo... 4 GB Ext 3 Dyn2 md0 2.007 GB Ext 2 Disk 1 sda 16 GB DT_FIXED 1-1 sda1 Act,Pri 203.9 MB Ext 2 1-2 sda2 Pri 11.72 GB Reiser 1-3 sda3 Pri 1.004 GB Linux swap Disk 2 sdb 8 GB DT_FIXED 2-1 sdb1 Pri 2.007 GB Ext 2 2-2 sdb2 Pri 2.007 GB None Disk 3 sdc 1 GB DT_FIXED Disk 4 sdd 8 GB DT_FIXED 4-1 sdd1 Pri 2.007 GB Ext 2 4-2 sdd2 Pri 2.007 GB None

2. Use the acrocmd mount command, specifying the volume's name in the --volume parameter.

For example:

acrocmd mount --loc=\\server\backups --arc=linux_machine --mount_point=/mnt

--volume=DYN1

This command mounts the logical volume DYN1 on the mount point /mnt.

To unmount a backup volume

 Use the acrocmd umount command, specifying the volume's mount point as a parameter. For

example:

acrocmd umount --mount_point=/mnt

3.6 Support for SNMP

SNMP objects

Acronis Backup & Recovery 11 provides the following Simple Network Management Protocol (SNMP) objects to SNMP management applications:

 Type of event

Object identifier (OID): 1.3.6.1.4.1.24769.100.200.1.0 Syntax: OctetString The value may be "Information", "Warning", 'Error" and "Unknown". "Unknown" is sent only in

the test message.

 Text description of the event

Object identifier (OID): 1.3.6.1.4.1.24769.100.200.2.0 Syntax: OctetString The value contains the text description of the event (it looks identical to messages published by

Acronis Backup & Recovery 11 in its log).

Example of varbind values:

1.3.6.1.4.1.24769.100.200.1.0:Information

1.3.6.1.4.1.24769.100.200.2.0:I0064000B

Supported operations

Acronis Backup & Recovery 11 supports only TRAP operations. It is not possible to manage Acronis Backup & Recovery 11 using GET- and SET- requests. This means that you need to use an SNMP Trap receiver to receive TRAP-messages.

About the management information base (MIB)

The MIB file acronis-abr.mib is located in the Acronis Backup & Recovery 11 installation directory. By default: %ProgramFiles%\Acronis\BackupAndRecovery in Windows and /usr/lib/Acronis/BackupAndRecovery in Linux.

This file can be read by a MIB browser or a simple text editor such as Notepad or vi.

About the test message

When configuring SNMP notifications, you can send a test message to check if your settings are correct.

The parameters of the test message are as follows:

 Type of event

OID: 1.3.6.1.4.1.24769.100.200.1.0 Value: "Unknown"

 Text description of the event

OID: 1.3.6.1.4.1.24769.100.200.2.0 Value: "?00000000"

4 Backup

4.1 Back up now

Use the Back up now feature to configure and run a one-time backup in a few simple steps. The backup process will start immediately after you perform the required steps and click OK.

For a long-time backup strategy that includes schedules and conditions, timely deleting of backups or moving them to different locations, consider creating a backup plan.

Configuring immediate backup is similar to creating a backup plan (p. 31) except for the following:

 There are no options to schedule backups and to set up retention rules.  Simplified naming of backup files (p. 50) is used, if the backup destination supports it. Otherwise,

the standard backup naming is used. The following locations do not support simplified file naming: managed vaults, tape, Acronis

Secure Zone or Acronis Online Backup Storage.

 Conversion of a disk-level backup to a virtual machine is not available as a part of the backup

operation. You can convert the resulting backup afterwards.

4.2 Creating a backup plan

Before creating your first backup plan (p. 168), please familiarize yourself with the basic concepts used in Acronis Backup & Recovery 11.

To create a backup plan, perform the following steps.

What to back up

Items to back up (p. 33)

Select the type of data to back up and specify the data items. The type of data depends on

the agents installed on the machine. Access credentials, exclusions To access these settings, click Show access credentials, exclusions. Access credentials (p. 34)

Provide credentials for the source data if the plan's account does not have access

permissions to the data. Exclusions (p. 34)

Set up exclusions for the specific types of files you do not wish to back up.

Where to back up

Location (p. 46)

Specify a path to the location where the backup archive will be stored and the archive name.

The archive name has to be unique within the location. Otherwise, backups of the newly

created backup plan will be placed to the existing archive that belongs to another backup

plan. The default archive name is Archive(N) where N is the sequence number of the archive

in the location you have selected. Backup file naming, access credentials, archive comments

To access these settings, click Show backup file naming, access credentials, archive comments. File naming (p. 50)

[Optional] Select the Name backup files using the archive name, as in Acronis True Image

Echo, rather than auto-generated names check box if you want to use simplified file naming

for the archive’s backups.

Not available when backing up to a managed vault, tape, Acronis Secure Zone or Acronis

Online Backup Storage.

Access credentials (p. 36)

[Optional] Provide credentials for the location if the plan account does not have access

permissions to the location. Archive comments

[Optional] Enter comments on the archive.

How to back up

Backup scheme (p. 36)

Specify when and how often to back up your data; define for how long to keep the created

backup archives in the selected location; set up schedule for the archive cleanup procedure

(see “Replication and retention settings” below). Use well-known optimized backup schemes,

such as Grandfather-Father-Son and Tower of Hanoi; create a custom backup scheme, or

back up data once.

Replication and retention settings (p. 64)

Not available when choosing simplified naming of backup files (p. 50).

Define whether to copy (replicate) the backups to another location, and whether to move or

delete them according to retention rules. The available settings depend on the backup

scheme. 2nd location, validation To access these settings, click Show 2nd location, validation, convert to virtual machine. 2nd location

[Optional] To set up replication of backups, select the Replicate just created backup to

another location check box. For more information about backup replication, see Setting up

replication of backups (p. 66). When to validate (p. 48)

[Optional] Depending on the selected backup scheme, define when and how often to

perform validation and whether to validate the entire archive or the latest backup in the

archive.

Plan parameters

Plan name

[Optional] Enter a unique name for the backup plan. A conscious name lets you identify the

plan among others. Backup options

[Optional] Configure parameters of the backup operation, such as pre/post backup

commands, maximum network bandwidth allocated for the backup stream or the backup

archive compression level. If you do nothing in this section, the default values (p. 70) will be

used.

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 Reset to default. 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. Therefore, in this section you

always see only the settings that differ from the default values.

To reset all the settings to the default values, click Reset to default. Plan's credentials, comments, label To access these settings, click Show plan's credentials, comments, label. Plan's credentials (p. 48)

[Optional] The backup plan will run on behalf of the user who is creating the plan. You can

change the plan's credentials if necessary. Comments

[Optional] Type a description of the backup plan. Label (p. 49)

[Optional] Type a text label for the machine you are going to back up. The label can be used

to identify the machine in various scenarios.

After you have performed all the required steps, click OK to create the backup plan.

After that, you might be prompted for the password (p. 50).

The plan you have created will be accessible for examination and managing in the Backup plans and tasks (p. 147) view.

4.2.1 Selecting data to back up

To select the data to back up

1. In the Data to back up section, select the type of data you want to be backed up. The list of

available data types depends on the agents running on the machine and the types of licenses: Disks/volumes

Available if Acronis Backup & Recovery 11 Agent for Windows or Acronis Backup & Recovery

11 Agent for Linux is installed.

Select this option to back up entire physical machine or its individual disks or volumes. To be

able to back up this data, you must have Administrator or Backup operator privileges.

A disk-level backup enables you to recover the entire system in case of severe data damage

or hardware failure. The backup procedure is faster than copying files, and may significantly

speed up the backup process when backing up large volumes of data. Folders/files

Available if Acronis Backup & Recovery 11 Agent for Windows or Acronis Backup & Recovery

11 for Linux is installed.

Select this option to back up specific files and folders.

A file-level backup is not sufficient for recovery of the operating system. Choose file backup if

you plan to keep safe only certain data (the current project, for example). This will reduce

the archive size, thus saving storage space.

In order to recover your operating system along with all the settings and applications, you

have to perform a disk backup.

2. In the tree below the Data to back up section, select the items to back up by selecting check

boxes next to the items. Selecting a check box for a machine means backing up all the machine's disks. To select individual

disks and/or volumes, expand the machine item and select check boxes next to the disks and/or volumes.

Notes for Disks/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.

 Note for Linux users: Logical volumes and MD devices are shown under Dynamic volumes.

For more information about backing up such volumes and devices, see "Backup and recovery

of logical volumes and MD devices (Linux)" (p. 23).

 Note for Linux users: We recommend that you unmount any volumes that contain

non-journaling file systems—such as the ext2 file system—before backing them up.

Otherwise, these volumes might contain corrupted files upon recovery; recovery of these

volumes with resize might fail.

3. Having specified the data to backup, click OK.

4.2.2 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 Plan parameters section.

 Use the following credentials

The program will access the source data using the credentials you specify.

Use this option if the plan's account does not have access permissions to the data.

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.

4.2.3 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.

To specify which files and folders to exclude:

Criterion

Example

Description

Windows and Linux

By name

F.log

Excludes all files named "F.log"

Excludes all folders named "F"

By mask (*)

*.log

Excludes all files with the .log extension

Excludes all files and folders with names starting with "F" (such as folders F, F1 and files F.log, F1.log)

By mask (?)

F???.log

Excludes all .log files with names consisting of four symbols and starting with "F"

Windows

By file path

C:\Finance\F.log

Excludes the file named "F.log" located in the folder C:\Finance

By folder path

C:\Finance\F\

Excludes the folder C:\Finance\F (be sure to specify the full path starting from the disk letter)

Linux

Set up any of the following parameters:

 Exclude all hidden files and folders

This option is effective only for file systems that are supported by Windows. 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

This option is effective only for file systems that are supported by Windows. 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.

You can view file or folder attributes in the file/folder properties or by using the attrib command. For more information, refer to the Help and Support Center in Windows.

 Exclude files matching the following criteria

Select this check box to skip files and folders whose names match any of the criteria — called file masks — in the list; use the Add, Edit, Remove and Remove All buttons to create the list of file masks.

You can use one or more wildcard characters * and ? in a file mask: The asterisk (*) substitutes for zero or more characters in a file name; for example, the file mask

Doc*.txt yields files such as Doc.txt and Document.txt The question mark (?) substitutes for exactly one character in a file name; for example, the file

mask Doc?.txt yields files such as Doc1.txt and Docs.txt — but not the files Doc.txt or Doc11.txt

To exclude a folder specified by a path containing the drive letter, add a backslash (\) to the folder name in the criterion; for example: C:\Finance\

Exclusion examples

By file path

/home/user/Finance/F.log

Excludes the file named "F.log" located in the folder /home/user/Finance

By folder path

/home/user/Finance/

Excludes the folder /home/user/Finance

The above settings are not effective for the files or folders that were explicitly selected for backup. For example, assume that you selected the folder MyFolder and the file MyFile.tmp outside that folder, and selected to skip all .tmp files. In this case, all .tmp files in the folder MyFolder will be skipped during the backup process, but the file MyFile.tmp will not be skipped.

4.2.4 Access credentials for archive location

Specify credentials required for access to the location where the backup archive will be stored. The user whose name is specified will be considered as the archive owner.

To specify credentials

1. Select one of the following:

 Use the plan's credentials

The program will access the source data using the credentials of the backup plan account

specified in the Plan parameters section.

 Use the following credentials

The program will access the source data using the credentials you specify.

Use this option if the plan account does not have access permissions to the location. You

might need to provide special credentials for a network share or a storage node vault.

Specify:

 User name. 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.

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.

4.2.5 Backup schemes

Choose one of the available backup schemes:

 Simple – to schedule when and how often to backup data and specify retention rules.  Run now - to perform the backup immediately right after you click the OK button.  Grandfather-Father-Son – to use the Grandfather-Father-Son backup scheme. The scheme does

not allow data to be backed up more than once a day. You set the days of week when the daily backup will be performed and select from these days the day of weekly/monthly backup. Then you set the retention periods for the daily (referred to as "sons"), weekly (referred to as "fathers") and monthly (referred to as "grandfathers") backups. The expired backups will be deleted automatically.

 Tower of Hanoi – to use the Tower of Hanoi backup scheme. This scheme allows you to schedule

when and how often to back up (sessions) and select the number of backup levels (up to 16). The data can be backed up more than once a day. By setting up the backup schedule and selecting backup levels, you automatically obtain the rollback period – the guaranteed number of sessions

that you can go back at any time. The automatic cleanup mechanism maintains the required rollback period by deleting the expired backups and keeping the most recent backups of each level.

 Custom – to create a custom scheme, where you are free to set up a backup strategy in the way

your enterprise needs it most: specify multiple schedules for different backup types, add conditions and specify the retention rules.

 Manual start – to create a backup task for manual start OR schedule one-time task execution in

the future.

 Initial seeding - to save locally a full backup whose final destination is Acronis Online Backup

Storage.

4.2.5.1 Simple scheme

With the simple backup scheme, you just schedule when and how often to back up data. Other steps are optional.

To set up the simple backup scheme, specify the appropriate settings as follows.

Schedule

Set up when and how often to back up the data. To learn more about setting up the schedule, see the Scheduling (p. 55) section.

Retention rules

Specify how long to store backups in the location and whether to move or delete them afterward. The retention rules are applied after creating a backup. The Keep backups indefinitely is set by default, which means that no backups will be deleted automatically. For more information about retention rules, see Setting up retention of backups (p. 66).

Backup type

To access this setting, click Show backup type, 2nd location, validation, convert to virtual machine.

Select the backup type.

 Full - selected by default for all backup locations (except for Acronis Online Backup Storage).  Incremental. At the first time a full backup will be created. The next backups will be

incremental. Selected as the one and only backup type for Acronis Online Backup Storage.

Note: When the Incremental backup type is selected along with retention rules, the archive will be

cleaned up using consolidation (p. 170), which is a more time-consuming and resource-intensive

operation.

4.2.5.2 Run now scheme

With the Run now scheme, the backup will be performed immediately, right after you click the OK button at the bottom of the Create Backup Plan page.

In the Backup type field, select whether you want to create a full, incremental or differential backup (p. 21).

4.2.5.3 Grandfather-Father-Son scheme

Jan 1—Jan 7

D D D D W - -

Jan 8—Jan 14

D D D D W - -

Jan 15—Jan 21

D D D D W - -

Jan 22—Jan 28

D D D D M - -

Jan 29—Feb 4

D D D D W - -

Feb 5—Feb 11

D D D D W - -

Feb 12—Feb 18

D D D D W - -

Feb 19—Feb 25

D D D D M - -

Feb 26—Mar 4

D D D D W - -

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.

At a glance

 Daily ("Son") incremental, weekly ("Father") differential, and monthly ("Grandfather") backups  Custom day for weekly and monthly backups  Custom retention periods for backups of each type

Description

Let us suppose that we want to set up a backup plan that will regularly produce a series of daily (D), weekly (W), and monthly (M) backups. Here is a natural way to do this: the following table shows a sample two-month period for such a plan.

Daily backups run every workday except Friday, which is left for weekly and monthly backups. Monthly backups run every fourth Friday, and weekly backups run on all other Fridays.

Parameters

You can set up the following parameters of a Grandfather-Father-Son (GFS) scheme.

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.

Daily: 5 days (recommended minimum)

Weekly: 7 weeks

Monthly: indefinitely

The retention period for weekly backups must exceed that for daily backups; the monthly backups' retention period must be greater than the weekly backups' retention period.

We recommend setting a retention period of at least one week for daily backups.

Backup type

Specifies the types of daily, weekly and monthly backups

 Always full - all the daily, weekly and monthly backups will be always full. This is

the default selection for cases when a tape drive is selected as a backup location.

 Full/Differential/Incremental - daily backups are incremental, weekly backups

are differential, and monthly backups are full.

Advanced settings

Available only for advanced editions of Acronis Backup & Recovery 11 when creating a centralized backup plan. See the "Advanced scheduling settings" section for details.

A backup is not deleted until all backups that directly depend on it become subject to deletion as well. This is why you might see a weekly or a monthly backup remain in the archive for a few days past its expected expiration date.

If the schedule starts with a daily or a weekly backup, a full backup is created instead.

Examples

Each day of the past week, each week of the past month

Let us consider a GFS backup scheme that many may find useful.

 Back up files every day, including weekends  Be able to recover files as of any date over the past seven days  Have access to weekly backups of the past month  Keep monthly backups indefinitely.

Backup scheme parameters can then be set up as follows.

 Start backup at: 11:00 PM  Back up on: All days  Weekly/monthly: Saturday (for example)  Keep backups:

 Daily: 1 week  Weekly: 1 month  Monthly: indefinitely

As a result, an archive of daily, weekly, and monthly backups will be created. Daily backups will be available for seven days since creation. 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.

Limited storage

If you do not want to arrange a vast amount of space to store a huge archive, you may set up a GFS scheme so as to make your backups more short-lived, at the same time ensuring that your information can be recovered in case of an accidental data loss.

Suppose that you need to:

 Perform backups at the end of each working day  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: 6:00 PM  Back up on: Workdays  Weekly/monthly: Friday  Keep backups:

 Daily: 1 week  Weekly: 10 days  Monthly: 6 months

With this scheme, you will have a week to recover a previous version of a damaged file from a daily backup; as well as 10-day access to weekly backups. Each monthly full backup will be available for six months since the creation date.

Work schedule

Suppose you are a part-time financial consultant and work in a company on Tuesdays and Thursdays. On these days, you often make changes to your financial documents, statements, and update the spreadsheets etc. on your laptop. To back up this data, you may want to:

 Track changes to the financial statements, spreadsheets, etc. performed on Tuesdays and

Thursdays (daily incremental backup).

 Have a weekly summary of file changes since last month (Friday weekly differential backup).  Have a monthly full backup of your files.

Moreover, assume that you want to retain access to all backups, including the daily ones, for at least six months.

The following GFS scheme suits such purposes:

 Start backup at: 11:30 PM  Back up on: Tuesday, Thursday, Friday  Weekly/monthly: Friday  Keep backups:

 Daily: 6 months  Weekly: 6 months

 Monthly: 5 years

Parameter

Meaning

Full backup schedule

Specifies on what schedule and under which conditions to perform a full backup.

For example, the full backup can be set up to run every Sunday at 1:00 AM as soon as all users are logged off.

Incremental backup schedule

Specifies on what schedule and under which conditions to perform an incremental backup.

If the archive contains no backups at the time of the task run, a full backup is created instead of the incremental backup.

Differential backup schedule

Specifies on what schedule and under which conditions to perform a differential backup.

If the archive contains no full backups at the time of the task run, a full backup is created instead of the differential backup.

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.

No daily backups

Consider a more exotic GFS scheme:

 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.

Even though it is possible to use GFS to create such an archive, the Custom scheme is more flexible in this situation.

4.2.5.4 Custom backup scheme

At a glance

 Custom schedule and conditions for backups of each type  Custom schedule and retention rules

Parameters

Clean up archive

Specifies how to get rid of old backups: either to apply retention rules (p. 67) regularly or clean up the archive during a backup when the destination location runs out of space.

By default, the retention rules are not specified, which means older backups will not be deleted automatically.

Using retention rules

Specify the retention rules and when to apply them.

This setting is recommended for backup destinations such as shared folders or centralized vaults.

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. In this case, the software will act as follows:

 Delete the oldest full backup with all dependent incremental/differential

backups

 If there is only one full backup left and a full backup is in progress, then

delete the last full backup with all dependent incremental/differential backups

 If there is only one full backup left, and an incremental or differential backup

is in progress, an error occurs saying there is a lack of available space

This setting is recommended when backing up to a USB drive or Acronis Secure Zone. This setting is not applicable to managed vaults, FTP and SFTP servers.

This setting enables deletion of the last backup in the archive, in case your storage device cannot accommodate more than one backup. However, you might end up with no backups if the program is not able to create the new backup for some reason.

Apply retention rules

(only if the retention rules are set)

Specifies when to apply the retention rules (p. 67).

For example, the cleanup procedure can be set up to run after each backup, and also on schedule.

This option is available only if you have set at least one retention rule in Retention rules.

Cleanup schedule

(only if On schedule is selected)

Specifies a schedule for archive cleanup.

For example, the cleanup can be scheduled to start on the last day of each month.

This option is available only if you selected On schedule in Apply retention rules.

2nd location, 3rd location, and so on

Specifies where to copy or move (p. 64) the backups from the current location.

This option is available only if you selected either the Replicate just created

backup to another location check box under How to back up, or Move the oldest backups to another location in the Retention rules window.

Examples

Weekly full backup

The following scheme yields a full backup performed every Friday night.

Full backup: Schedule: Weekly, every Friday, at 10:00 PM

Here, all parameters except Schedule in Full backup are left empty. All backups in the archive are kept indefinitely (no archive cleanup is performed).

Full and incremental backup plus cleanup

With the following scheme, the archive will consist of weekly full backups and daily incremental backups. We further require that a full backup begin only after all users have logged off.

Full backup: Schedule: Weekly, every Friday, at 10:00 PM

Full backup: Conditions: User is logged off

Incremental: Schedule: Weekly, every workday, at 9:00 PM

Also, let all backups older than one year be deleted from the archive, and let the cleanup be performed upon creating 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. 67).

Monthly full, weekly differential, and daily incremental backups plus cleanup

This example demonstrates the use of all options available in the Custom scheme.

Suppose that we need a scheme that will produce monthly full backups, weekly differential backups, and daily incremental backups. Then the backup schedule can look as follows.

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. This is set up in the Conditions fields for each backup type.

Full backup: Conditions: Location available

Incremental: Conditions: User is logged off

Differential: Conditions: User is idle

As a result, a full backup—originally scheduled at 9:00 PM—may actually start later: as soon as the backup location becomes available. Likewise, backup tasks for incremental and differential backups will wait until all users are logged off and users are idle, respectively.

Finally, we create retention rules for the archive: let us retain only backups that are no older than six months, and let the cleanup be performed after each backup task and also on the last day of every month.

Retention rules: Delete backups older than 6 months

Apply the rules: After backing up, On schedule

Cleanup schedule: Monthly, on the Last day of All months, at 10:00 PM

By default, a backup is not deleted as long as it has dependent backups that must be kept. For

Schedule

Set up a daily (p. 56), weekly (p. 58), or monthly (p. 60) schedule. Setting up schedule parameters allows for the creation of simple schedules (example of a simple daily schedule: a backup task will be run every 1 day at 10 AM) as well as more complex schedules (example of a complex daily schedule: a task will be run every 3 days, starting from January 15. During the specified days the task will be repeated every 2 hours from 10 AM to 10 PM). Thus, complex schedules specify the sessions on which the scheme should run. In the discussion below, "days" can be replaced with "scheduled sessions".

Number of levels

Select from 2 to 16 backup levels. See the example stated below for details.

Roll-back period

The guaranteed number of sessions that one can go back in the archive at any time. Calculated automatically, depending on the schedule parameters and the numbers of levels you select. See the example below for details.

Backup type

Specifies what backup types the backup levels will have

 Always full - all levels of backups will be full. This is the default selection for cases

when a tape drive is selected as a backup location.

 Full/Differential/Incremental - backups of different levels will have different types:

- Last-level backups are full

- Backups of intermediate levels are differential

- First-level backups are incremental

example, if a full backup has become subject to deletion, but there are incremental or differential backups that depend on it, the deletion is postponed until all the dependent backups can be deleted as well.

For more information, see Retention rules (p. 67).

4.2.5.5 Tower of Hanoi scheme

At a glance

 Up to 16 levels of full, differential, and incremental backups  Next-level backups are twice as rare as previous-level backups  One backup of each level is stored at a time  Higher density of more recent backups

Parameters

You can set up the following parameters of a Tower of Hanoi scheme.

Example

Schedule parameters are set as follows

 Recur: Every 1 day  Frequency: Once at 6 PM

Number of levels: 4

Backup type: Full/Differential/Incremental

This is how the first 14 days (or 14 sessions) of this scheme's schedule look. Shaded numbers denote backup levels.

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9

4 1 2 1 3 1 2 1 4 1 2 1 3

Backups of different levels have different types:

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 4 1 2 1 3 1 2

Number of levels

Full backup every

On different days, can go back

Roll-back period

2 days

1 to 2 days

1 day

4 days

2 to 5 days

2 days

8 days

4 to 11 days

4 days

16 days

8 to 23 days

8 days

32 days

16 to 47 days

16 days

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9

12 4 1 2 1 3 1 2 1 4 1 2 1

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9

13 4 1 2 1 3 1 2 1 4 1 2 1

 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.

The scheme allows for efficient data storage: more backups accumulate toward the current time. Having four backups, we could recover data as of today, yesterday, half a week, or a week ago.

Roll-back period

The number of days we can go back in the archive is different on different days. The minimum number of days we are guaranteed to have is called the roll-back period.

The following table shows full backup and roll-back periods for schemes of various levels.

Adding a level doubles the full backup and roll-back periods.

To see why the number of recovery days varies, let us return to the previous example.

Here are the backups we have on day 12 (numbers in gray denote deleted backups).

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.

This gives us only a four day recovery interval, which turns out to be the worst-case scenario.

On day 14, the interval is five days. It increases on subsequent days before decreasing again, and so

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9

14 4 1 2 1 3 1 2 1 4 1 2 1 3 1

on.

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.

4.2.5.6 Manual start

With the Manual start scheme, you do not have to specify the backup schedule. You can run the backup plan from the Plans and Tasks view manually at any time afterwards.

Specify the appropriate settings as follows.

Backup type

Select the type of backup

 Full - selected by default for all backup locations (except for Acronis Online Backup Storage).  Incremental. At the first time a full backup will be created. The next backups will be

incremental. Selected as the one and only backup type for Acronis Online Backup Storage.

 Differential. At the first time a full backup will be created. The next backups will be

differential.

4.2.6 Backup location selection

Specify where the archive will be stored.

1. Selecting the destination

In the Path field, enter the full path to the destination, or select the desired destination in the location tree as described in "Selecting backup destinations" (p. 47).

2. Using the archives table

To assist you with choosing the right destination, the table displays the names of the archives contained in each location you select. While you are reviewing the location content, archives can be added, deleted or modified by another user or by the program itself according to scheduled operations. Use the Refresh button to refresh the list of archives.

3. Naming the new archive

Once you select the archive destination, the program generates a name for the new archive and displays it in the Name field. The name commonly looks like Archive(N), where N is a sequence number. The generated name is unique within the selected location. If you are satisfied with the automatically generated name, click OK. Otherwise enter another unique name.

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.

By selecting the existing archive, you are meddling in the area of another backup plan that uses the archive. This is not an issue if the other plan is discontinued. However, you should generally follow

the rule: "one backup plan - one archive". Doing the opposite will not prevent the program from

Destination

Details

Personal

To back up data to a personal vault, expand the Vaults group and click the vault. Acronis Secure Zone is considered as a personal vault available to all users that can log on the system.

Machine

Local machine

Local folders

To back up data to the local folders of the machine, expand the <Machine name> group and select the required folder.

CD, DVD, etc.

To back up data to optical media such as CD or DVD, expand the <Machine name> group, then select the required drive.

Tape device

To back up data to a locally attached tape device, expand the <Machine name> group, then click the required device.

Tape devices are available only if you have upgraded from Acronis Backup & Recovery 10. For information about using tapes, see the "Tape devices" section of the product Help.

Network folders

To back up data to the network folder, expand the Network folders group, select the required networked machine and, then click the shared folder.

If the network share requires access credentials, the program will ask for them.

Note: 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.

functioning but is not practical or efficient, except for some specific cases.

Why two or more plans should not back up to the same archive

1. Backing up different sources to the same archive makes it difficult to use archive. When it comes

to recovery, every second counts, and you might be "lost" in the archive content. Backup plans that operate with the same archive should back up the same data items (say, both

plans back up volume C.)

2. Applying multiple retention rules to an archive makes the archive content unpredictable. Since

each of the rules will be applied to the entire archive, the backups belonging to one backup plan can be easily deleted along with the backups belonging to the other. You should not expect the classic behavior of the GFS and Tower of Hanoi backup schemes.

Normally, each complex backup plan should back up to its own archive.

4.2.6.1 Selecting backup destinations

Acronis Backup & Recovery 11 lets you back up data to various physical storages.

Destination

Details

FTP, SFTP

To back up data to FTP or SFTP, type the server name or address in the Path field as follows:

ftp://ftp_server:port _number or sftp://sftp_server:port number

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. To do so, click Use anonymous access instead of entering credentials.

Note: 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.

NFS drives

To back up data to an NFS share, expand the NFS drives group and click the folder.

4.2.7 Archive validation

Set up the validation task to check if the backed up data is recoverable. If the backup could not pass the validation successfully, the validation task fails and the backup plan gets the Error status.

To set up validation, specify the following parameters

1. When to validate – select when to perform the validation. As the validation is a

resource-intensive operation, it makes sense to schedule the validation to the managed machine's off-peak period. On the other hand, if the validation is a major part of your data protection strategy and you prefer to be immediately informed whether the backed up data is not corrupted and can be successfully recovered, think of starting the validation right after backup creation.

2. What to validate – select either to validate the entire archive or the latest backup in the archive.

Validation of a file backup imitates recovery of all files from the backup to a dummy destination. Validation of a volume backup calculates a checksum for every data block saved in the backup.

Validation of the archive will validate all the archive’s backups and may take a long time and a lot

of system resources.

3. Validation schedule (appears only if you have selected the on schedule in step 1) - set the

schedule of validation. For more information see the Scheduling (p. 55) section.

4.2.8 Backup plan's credentials

Provide the credentials for the account under which the plan's tasks will run.

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

Parameter

Value

Description

acronisTag.label

A user-defined label.

The label can be set by a user when creating a backup plan.

acronisTag.hostname

Host name (FQDN)

acronisTag.os.type

Operating system

acronisTag.os.servicepack

0, 1, 2...

The version of the Service Pack installed in the system.

For Windows OS only.

acronisTag.os.sid

Machine's SID.

For example: S-1-5-21-874133492-782267321-3928949834.

For Windows OS only.

executed on schedule.

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.

To learn more about operations available depending on the user privileges, see the Users' privileges on a managed machine (p. 21) section.

4.2.9 Label (Preserving machine properties in a backup)

Any time data on a machine is backed up, information about the machine name, operating system, Windows service pack and security identifier (SID) is added to the backup, along with the user-defined text label. The label may include the department or machine owner's name or similar information that can be used as a tag or a key.

If you recover (p. 89) the machine to a VMware ESX(i) using Agent for ESX(i), or convert the backup to a ESX(i) virtual machine, these properties will be transferred to the virtual machine's configuration. You can view them in the virtual machine settings: Edit settings > Options > Advanced > General > Configuration parameters. You can select, sort and group the virtual machines with the help of these custom parameters. This can be useful in various scenarios.

Example:

Let's assume you migrate your office or datacenter to a virtual environment. By using third-party software that can access configuration parameters through VMware API, you can automatically apply security policies to each machine even before powering it on.

To add a text label to a backup:

1. On the Create backup plan (p. 31) page, click Show plan's credentials, comments, label.

2. In Label, enter the text label or select it from the drop-down menu.

Parameters specification

Values of the "acronisTag.os.type" parameter

Windows NT 4

winNTGuest

Windows 2000 Professional

win2000ProGuest

Windows 2000 Server

win2000ServGuest

Windows 2000 Advanced Server

win2000ServGuest

Windows XP All Editions

winXPProGuest

Windows XP All Editions (64 bit)

winXPPro64Guest

Windows Server 2003, All Editions

winNetStandardGuest

Windows Server 2003, All Editions (64 bit)

winNetStandard64Guest

Windows 2008

winLonghornGuest

Windows 2008 (64 bit)

winLonghorn64Guest

Windows Vista

winVistaGuest

Windows Vista (64 bit)

winVista64Guest

Windows 7

windows7Guest

Windows 7 (64 bit)

windows7_64Guest

Windows Server 2008 R2 (64 bit)

windows7Server64Guest

Linux

otherLinuxGuest

Linux (64 bit)

otherLinux64Guest

Other Operating System

otherGuest

Other Operating System (64 bit)

otherGuest64

Example

acronisTag.label = “DEPT:BUCH; COMP:SUPERSERVER; OWNER:EJONSON”

acronisTag.hostname = “superserver.corp.local”

acronisTag.os.type = “windows7Server64Guest”

acronisTag.os.servicepack = “1”

acronisTag.os.sid = “S-1-5-21-874133492-782267321-3928949834”

4.2.10 Why is the program asking for the password?

A scheduled or postponed task has to run regardless of users being logged on. In case you have not explicitly specified the credentials, under which the task(s) will run, the program proposes using your account. Enter your password, specify another account or change the scheduled start to manual.

4.3 Simplified naming of backup files

When creating a backup plan (p. 31), you can choose between standard and simplified naming of backup files.

If you select the Name backup files using the archive name... check box:

 The file name of the first (full) backup in the archive will consist of the archive name; for

example: MyData.tib. The file names of subsequent (incremental or differential) backups will have an index. For example: MyData2.tib, MyData3.tib, and so on.

This simple naming scheme enables you to create a portable image of a machine on a detachable media or move the backups to a different location by using a script.

 Before creating a new full backup, the software will delete the entire archive and start a new

one. This behavior is useful when you rotate USB hard drives and want each drive to keep a single full

backup (p. 52) or all backups created during a week (p. 53). But you might end up with no backups if a full backup to your only drive fails.

This behavior can be suppressed by adding the [Date] variable (p. 54) to the archive name.

If you do not select the Name backup files using the archive name... check box:

 Each backup will have a unique file name with the exact time stamp and the backup type. For

example: MyData_2010_03_26_17_01_38_960D.tib. This standard file naming allows for a wider range of backup destinations and backup schemes.

Restrictions

When using simplified file naming, the following functionality is not available:

 Setting up full, incremental and differential backups within a single backup plan. You need to

create separate backup plans for each type of backup

 Backup to a managed vault, tape, Acronis Secure Zone or Acronis Online Backup Storage  Setting up retention rules  Setting up regular conversion of backups to a virtual machine

Tip. The FAT16, FAT32, and NTFS file systems do not allow the following characters in the file name: backslash (\), slash (/), colon (:), asterisk (*), question mark (?), quotation mark ("), less than sign (<), greater than sign (>), and pipe (|).

4.3.1 Usage examples

This section provides examples of how you can use simplified file naming.

4.3.1.1 Example 1. Daily backup replacing the old one

Consider the following scenario:

 You want to perform a daily full backup of your machine.  You want to store the backup locally in the file MyMachine.tib.  You want each new backup to replace the old one.

In this scenario, create a backup plan with a daily schedule. When creating the backup plan, specify MyMachine as the archive name, select the Name backup files using the archive name... check box, and select Full as the backup type.

Result. The archive consists of a single file: MyMachine.tib. This file is deleted before creating a new backup.

4.3.1.2 Example 2. Daily full backups with a date stamp

Consider the following scenario:

 You want to perform a daily full backup of your machine.  You want to move older backups to a remote location by using a script.

In this scenario, create a backup plan with a daily schedule. When creating the backup plan, specify MyMachine-[DATE] as the archive name, select the Name backup files using the archive name... check box, and select Full as the backup type.

Result:

 The backups of January 1, 2011, January 2, 2011, and so on, are stored respectively as

MyMachine-1.1.2011.tib, MyMachine-1.2.2011.tib, and so on.

 Your script can move older backups based on the date stamp.

See also “The *Date+ variable” (p. 54).

4.3.1.3 Example 3. Hourly backups within a day

Consider the following scenario:

 You want to perform hourly backups of your server's critical files every day.  You want the first backup of each day to be full and to run at midnight; and the subsequent

backups of the day to be differential and to run at 01:00, 02:00, and so on.

 You want to keep older backups in the archive.

In this scenario, create a backup plan with a daily schedule. When creating the backup plan, specify ServerFiles([Date]) as the archive name, select the Name backup files using the archive name... check box, specify Differential as the backup type, and schedule the backups to run every hour from midnight.

Result:

 The 24 backups of January 1, 2011, will be stored as ServerFiles(1.1.2011).tib,

ServerFiles(1.1.2011)2.tib, and so on up to ServerFiles(1.1.2011)24.tib.

 The following day, the backups will start with the full backup ServerFiles(1.2.2011).tib.

See also "The [Date] variable" (p. 54).

4.3.1.4 Example 4. Daily full backups with daily drive swaps

Consider the following scenario:

 You want to perform daily full backups of your machine to the file MyMachine.tib on an external

hard disk drive.

 You have two such drives. Either of them has the drive letter D when attached to the machine.  You want to swap the drives before each backup, so that one drive contains today’s backup and

the other drive yesterday’s backup.

 You want each new backup to replace the backup on the currently attached drive.

In this scenario, create a backup plan with a daily schedule. When creating the backup plan, specify

MyMachine as the archive name and D:\ as the archive location, select the Name backup files using the archive name... check box, and select Full as the backup type.

Result. Each hard disk drive will contain one full backup. While one drive is attached to the machine,

you can keep the other drive off-site for extra data protection.

4.3.1.5 Example 5. Daily backups with weekly drive swaps

Consider the following scenario:

 You want to perform daily backups of your machine: a full backup each Monday and incremental

backups on Tuesday through Sunday.

 You want to back up to the archive MyMachine on an external hard disk drive.  You have two such drives. Either of them has drive letter D in the operating system when

attached to the machine.

 You want to swap the drives each Monday, so that one drive contains backups of the current

week (Monday through Sunday), and the other drive those of the previous week.

In this scenario, you need to create two backup plans as follows: a) When creating the first backup plan, specify MyMachine as the archive name and D:\ as the

archive location, select the Name backup files using the archive name... check box, select Full as the backup type, and schedule the backups to run every week on Monday.

b) When creating the second backup plan, specify the same settings as in the first backup plan, but

select Incremental as the backup type and schedule the backups to run every week on Tuesday through Sunday.

Result:

 Before creating a Monday backup (by the first backup plan), all backups will be deleted from the

currently attached drive.

 While one drive is attached to the machine, you can keep the other drive off-site for extra data

protection.

4.3.1.6 Example 6. Backups within working hours

Consider the following scenario:

 You want to back up your server’s critical files every day.  You want the first backup of each day to be full and to run at 01:00 AM.  You want the backups during working hours to be differential and to run every hour from

8:00 AM through 5:00 PM.

 You want to include a creation date in the name of each backup file.

In this scenario, you need to create two backup plans as follows:

a) When creating the first backup plan, specify ServerFiles([DATE]) as the archive name, select the

Name backup files using the archive name... check box, select Full as the backup type, and

schedule the backups to run every day at 01:00:00 AM.

b) When creating the second backup plan, specify the same settings as in the first backup plan, but

select Differential as the backup type and schedule the backups as follows:

 Run the task: Daily  Every: 1 Hour(s)  From: 08:00:00 AM  Until: 05:01:00 PM

Result:

 The full backup of January 31, 2011, will be stored as ServerFiles(1.31.2011).tib.

 The 10 differential backups of January 31, 2011, will be stored as ServerFiles(1.31.2011)2.tib,

ServerFiles(1.31.2011)3.tib, and so on up to ServerFiles(1.31.2011)11.tib.

 The following day, February 1, the backups will start with the full backup

ServerFiles(2.1.2011).tib. The differential backups will start with ServerFiles(2.1.2011)2.tib.

See also “The *Date+ variable” (p. 54).

4.3.2 The [DATE] variable

If you specify the [DATE] variable in the archive name, the file name of each backup will include that backup’s creation date.

When using this variable, the first backup of a new day will be a full backup. Before creating the next full backup, the software deletes all backups taken earlier that day. Backups taken before that day are kept. This means you can store multiple full backups with or without incremental ones, but no more than one full backup per day. You can sort the backups by date, copy, move, delete the backups manually or by using a script.

The date format is m.d.yyyy. For example, it is 1.31.2011 for January 31, 2011. (Note absence of leading zeros.)

You can place this variable anywhere in the archive name. You can use both lowercase and uppercase letters in this variable.

Examples

Example 1. Suppose that you perform incremental backups twice a day (at midnight and noon) for

two days, starting on January 31, 2011. If the archive name is MyArchive-[DATE]-, here is the list of backup files after day two:

MyArchive-1.31.2011-.tib (full, created on January 31 at midnight) MyArchive-1.31.2011-2.tib (incremental, created on January 31 at noon) MyArchive-2.1.2011-.tib (full, created on February 1 at midnight) MyArchive-2.1.2011-2.tib (incremental, created on February 1 at noon)

Example 2. Suppose that you perform full backups, with the same schedule and archive name as in

the previous example. Then, the list of backup files after day two is the following:

MyArchive-1.31.2011-.tib (full, created on January 31 at noon) MyArchive-2.1.2011-.tib (full, created on February 1 at noon)

This is because the full backups created at midnight were replaced by new full backups of the same day.

4.3.3 Backup splitting and simplified file naming

When a backup is split according to backup splitting (p. 76) settings, the same indexing is used to also name parts of the backup. The file name for the next backup will have the next available index.

For example, suppose that the first backup of the archive MyData has been split in two parts. Then, the file names for this backup are MyData1.tib and MyData2.tib. The second backup (supposing that it is not split) will be named MyData3.tib.

4.4 Scheduling

Events

Time: Daily, Weekly, Monthly

Time passed since the last successful backup has completed

(specify the length of time)

System startup

Condition: run the task only if

Location's host is available

The task run time is within the specified time interval

The specified period of time has passed since the last successful backup completed

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 scheduling is available when creating a backup plan (p. 31) with any of the following backup schemes: Simple, Custom or Tower of Hanoi. The schedule also can be set for validation tasks (p.

122).

The scheduler uses local time of the machine the backup plan exists on. Before creating a schedule, be sure the machine’s date and time settings are correct.

Schedule

To define when a task has to be executed, you need to specify an event or multiple events. The task will be launched as soon as any of the events occurs. The table below lists the events available under Linux operating system.

Condition

For backup operations only, you can specify a condition or multiple conditions in addition to the events. Once any of the events occurs, the scheduler checks the condition and runs the task if the condition is met. With multiple conditions, all of them must be met simultaneously to enable task execution. The table below lists the conditions available under Linux operating system.

The scheduler behavior, in case the event occurs but the condition (or any of multiple conditions) is not met is defined by the Task start conditions (p. 87) backup option.

What-ifs

 What if an event occurs (and a condition, if any, is met) while the previous task run has not

completed? The event will be ignored.

 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

Every: <...> day(s)

Set up the certain number of days you want the task to be run. For example, if you set Every 2 day(s), the task will be started on every other day.

Once at: <...>

Set up the time at which the task will be run once.

Every: <...>

From: <...> Until: <...>

Set up how many times the task will be restarted during the specified time interval. For example, setting the task frequency to Every 1 hour From 10:00:00 AM until 10:00:00 PM allows the task to run 12 times: from 10 AM to 10 PM during one day.

From: <...>

Set up a date when this schedule will be enabled (an effective date). If this check box is cleared, the task will be started on the nearest day and time you have specified above.

To: <...>

Set up a date when this schedule will be disabled. If this check box is cleared, the task will be run for an indefinite number of days.

the task manually. To automatically handle this situation, you can set the time interval after which the task will run regardless of the condition.

4.4.1 Daily schedule

Daily schedule is effective in Windows and Linux operating systems.

To specify a daily schedule

In the Schedule area, select the appropriate parameter as follows:

In the During the day execute the task... area, select one of the following:

In the Effective... area, set the following settings:

Advanced scheduling settings are available only for machines registered on Acronis Backup & Recovery 11 Management Server. To specify these settings, click Change in the Advanced settings area.

All the settings you made are displayed in the Result field at the bottom of the window.

Examples

"Simple" daily schedule

Run the task every day at 6PM.

The schedule's parameters are thus set up as follows.

1. Every: 1 day(s).

2. Once at: 06:00:00 PM.

3. Effective:

From: not set. The task will be started on the current day, if it has been created before 6PM. If you have created the task after 6 PM, the task will be started for the first time on the next day at 6 PM.

To: not set. The task will be performed for an indefinite number of days.

"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.

The schedule's parameters are thus set up as follows.

1. Every: 1 day(s).

2. Every: 3 hours

From: 12:00:00 AM (midnight) Until: 09:00:00 PM - thus, the task will be performed 8 times a day with a 3 hour time interval. After the last daily recurrence at 9 PM, the next day comes and the task starts over again from midnight.

3. Effective:

From: 09/15/2009. If September 15, 2009 is the current date of the task's creation and, say, 01:15 PM is the task's creation time, the task will be started when the nearest time interval comes: at 03:00 PM in our example.

To: 12/15/2009. On this date the task will be performed for the last time, but the task itself is still available in the Tasks view.

Several daily schedules for one task

There are some cases when you might need the task to be run several times a day, or even several times a day with different time intervals. For such cases, consider adding several schedules to a single task.

For example, suppose that the task has to be run every 3rd day, starting from 09/20/2009, five times a day:

 first at 8 AM  second at 12 PM (noon)  third at 3 PM  fourth at 5 PM  fifth at 7 PM

The obvious way is to add five simple schedules. If you spend one minute for examination, you can think out a more optimal way. As you can see, the time interval between the first and the second task's recurrences is 4 hours, and between the third, fourth and fifth is 2 hours. In this case, the optimal way is to add two schedules to the task.

First daily schedule

1. Every: 3 day(s).

2. Every: 4 hours.

From: 08:00:00 AM Until: 12:00:00 PM.

3. Effective:

From: 09/20/2009. To: not set.

Second daily schedule

1. Every: 3 day(s).

2. Every: 2 hour(s).

From: 03:00:00 PM Until: 07:00:00 PM.

3. Effective:

From: 09/20/2009.

Every: <...> week(s) on: <...>

Specify a certain number of weeks and the days of the week you want the task to be run. For example, with the Every 2 week(s) on Mon setting, the task will be performed on Monday of every other week.

Once at: <...>

Set up the time at which the task will be run once.

Every: <...>

From: <...> Until: <...>

Set up how many times the task will be run during the specified time interval. For example, setting the task frequency to Every 1 hour From 10:00:00 AM until 10:00:00 PM allows the task to be run 12 times from 10 AM to 10 PM during one day.

From: <...>

Set up a date when this schedule will be enabled (an effective date). If this check box is cleared, the task will be started on the nearest day and time you have specified above.

To: <...>

Set up a date when this schedule will be disabled. If this check box is cleared, the task will be run for an indefinite number of weeks.

To: not set.

4.4.2 Weekly schedule

Weekly schedule is effective in Windows and Linux operating systems.

To specify a weekly schedule

In the Schedule area, select the appropriate parameter as follows:

In the During the day execute the task... area, select one of the following:

In the Effective... area, set the following settings:

Advanced scheduling settings are available only for machines registered on Acronis Backup & Recovery 11 Management Server. To specify these settings, click Change in the Advanced settings area.

All the settings you made are displayed in the Result field at the bottom of the window.

Examples

"One day in the week" schedule

Run the task every Friday at 10PM, starting from a certain date (say 05/14/2009) and ending after six months.

The schedule's parameters are thus set up as follows.

1. Every: 1 week(s) on: Fri.

2. Once at: 10:00:00 PM.

3. Effective:

From: 05/13/2009. The task will be started on the nearest Friday at 10 PM. To: 11/13/2009. The task will be performed for the last time on this date, but the task itself will

still be available in the Tasks view after this date. (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. For more details, see the Full and incremental backups plus cleanup example in the Custom backup scheme (p. 41) section.

"Workdays" schedule

Run the task every week on workdays: from Monday through Friday. During a workday, the task starts only once at 9 PM.

The schedule's parameters are thus set up as follows.

1. Every: 1 week(s) on: <Workdays> - selecting the <Workdays> check box automatically selects the

corresponding check boxes (Mon, Tue, Wed, Thu, and Fri), and leaves the remaining ones unchanged.

2. Once at: 09:00:00 PM.

3. Effective:

From: empty. If you have created the task, say on Monday at 11:30 AM, the task will be started on the same day at 9 PM. If the task was created, say on Friday after 9 PM, then it will be started for the first time on the nearest workday (Monday in our example) at 9 PM.

End date: empty. The task will be restarted for an indefinite number of weeks.

This schedule is widely used when creating a custom backup scheme. The "Workdays"-like schedule is added to the incremental backups, while the full backup is scheduled to be performed one day in the week. For more details, see the Full and incremental backups plus cleanup example in the Custom backup scheme (p. 41) section.

Several weekly schedules for one task

In the case when the task needs to be run on different days of the weeks with different time intervals, consider adding a dedicated schedule to every desired day of the week, or to several days.

For example, you need the task to be run with the following schedule:

 Monday: twice at 12 PM (noon) and 9 PM  Tuesday: every 3 hours from 9 AM till 9 PM  Wednesday: every 3 hours from 9 AM till 9 PM  Thursday: every 3 hours from 9 AM till 9 PM  Friday: twice at 12 PM and 9 PM (i.e. same as on Monday)  Saturday: once at 9 PM  Sunday: once at 9 PM

Combining the identical times, the following three schedules can be added to the task:

First schedule

1. Every: 1 week(s) on: Mon, Fri.

2. Every: 9 hours

From: 12:00:00 PM Until: 09:00:00 PM.

3. Effective:

From: not set. To: not set.

Second schedule

1. Every 1 week(s) on: Tue, Wed, Thu.

Months: <...>

Select a certain month(s) you want to run the task in.

Days: <...>

Select specific days of the month to run the task on. You can also select the last day of the month, irrespective of its actual date.

On: <...> <...>

Select specific days of the weeks to run the task on. Once at: <...>

Set up the time at which the task will be run once.

Every: <...>

From: <...> Until: <...>

From: <...>

Set up a date when this schedule will be enabled (an effective date). If this check box is cleared, the task will be started on the nearest day and time you have specified above.

To: <...>

Set up a date when this schedule will be disabled. If this check box is cleared, the task will be run for an indefinite number of months.

2. Every 3 hours

From 09:00:00 AM until 09:00:00 PM.

3. Effective:

From: not set. To: not set.

Third schedule

1. Every: 1 week(s) on: Sat, Sun.

2. Once at: 09:00:00 PM.

3. Effective:

From: not set. To: not set.

4.4.3 Monthly schedule

Monthly schedule is effective in Windows and Linux operating systems.

To specify a monthly schedule

In the Schedule area, select the appropriate parameter as follows:

In the During the day execute the task... area, select one of the following:

In the Effective... area, set the following settings:

Advanced scheduling settings are available only for machines registered on Acronis Backup & Recovery 11 Management Server. To specify these settings, click Change in the Advanced settings area.

All the settings you made are displayed in the Result field at the bottom of the window.

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. Months: <All months>.

2. Days: Last. The task will run on the last day of every month despite its actual date.

3. Once at: 10:00:00 PM.

4. Effective:

From: empty. To: empty.

This schedule is widely used when creating a custom backup scheme. The "Last day of every month" schedule is added to the full backups, while the differential backups are scheduled to be performed once a week and incremental on workdays. For more details, see the Monthly full, weekly differential, and daily incremental backups plus cleanup example in the Custom backup scheme (p.

41) section.

"Season" schedule

Run the task on all workdays during the northern autumn seasons of 2009 and 2010. During a workday, the task is performed every 6 hours from 12 AM (midnight) till 6 PM.

The schedule's parameters are set up as follows.

1. Months: September, October, November.

2. On: <all> <workdays>.

3. Every: 6 hours.

From: 12:00:00 AM Until: 06:00:00 PM.

4. Effective:

From: 08/30/2009. Actually the task will be started on the first workday of September. By setting up this date we just define that the task must be started in 2009.

To: 12/01/2010. Actually the task will end on the last workday of November. By setting up this date we just define that the task must be discontinued in 2010, after autumn ends in the northern hemisphere.

Several monthly schedules for one task

In the case when the task needs to be run on different days or weeks with different time intervals depending on the month, consider adding a dedicated schedule to every desired month or several months.

Suppose that the task goes into effect on 11/01/2009.

 During northern winter, the task runs once at 10PM on every workday.  During northern spring and autumn, the task runs every 12 hours on all workdays.  During northern summer, the task runs every first and fifteenth of every month at 10 PM.

Thus, the following three schedules are added to the task.

First schedule

1. Months: December, January, February.

2. On: <All> <All workdays>

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: <All> <All workdays>.

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. Months: June, July, August.

2. Days: 1, 15.

3. Once at: 10:00:00 PM.

4. Effective:

From: 11/01/2009. To: not set.

4.4.4 Conditions

Conditions add more flexibility to the scheduler, enabling to execute backup tasks with respect to certain conditions. Once a specified event occurs (see the "Scheduling (p. 55)" section for the list of available events), the scheduler checks the specified condition and executes the task if the condition is met.

The scheduler behavior in case the event occurs but the condition (or any of multiple conditions) is not met, is defined by the Task start conditions (p. 87) backup option. There, you can specify how important the conditions are for the backup strategy:

 conditions are obligatory - put the backup task run on hold until all the conditions are met.  conditions are preferable, but a backup task run has higher priority - put the task on hold for the

specified time interval. If the time interval lapses and the conditions are still not met, run the task anyway. With this setting, the program will automatically handle the situation when the conditions are not met for too long and further delaying the backup is undesirable.

 backup task start time matters - skip the backup task if the conditions are not met at the time

when the task should be started. Skipping the task run makes sense when you need to back up data strictly at the specified time, especially if the events are relatively often.

Conditions are available only when the custom backup scheme (p. 41) is used. You can set conditions for full, incremental and differential backup separately.

Adding multiple conditions

Multiple conditions must be met simultaneously to enable task execution.

4.4.4.1 Location's host is available

Applies to: Windows, Linux

"Location's host is available" means that the machine hosting the destination for storing archives on a networked drive is available.

Example:

Backing up data to the networked location is performed on workdays at 9:00 PM. If the location's host is not available at that moment (for instance, due to maintenance work), skip the backup and wait for the next workday to start the task. It is assumed that the backup task should not be started at all rather than failed.

 Event: Weekly, Every 1 week(s) on <workdays>; Once at 09:00:00 PM.  Condition: Location's host is available  Task start conditions: Skip the task execution.

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.

4.4.4.2 Fits time interval

Applies to: Windows, Linux

Restricts a backup task's start time to a specified interval.

Example

A company uses different locations on the same network-attached storage for backing up users data and servers. The workday starts at 8AM and ends at 5 PM. Users' data should be backed up as soon as the users log off, but not earlier than 4:30 PM and not later than 10 PM. Every day at 11 PM the company's servers are backed up. So, all the users' data should be preferably backed up before this time, in order to free network bandwidth. By specifying the upper limit as 10 PM, it is supposed that the backing up of users' data does not take more than one hour. If a user is still logged on within the specified time interval, or logs off at any other time – do not back up the users' data, i.e. skip task execution.

 Event: When logging off, The following user: Any user.  Condition: Fits the time interval, from 04:30:00 PM until 10:00:00 PM.  Task start conditions: Skip the task execution.

As a result,

(1) if the user logs off between 04:30:00 PM and 10:00:00 PM, the backup task will start immediately following the logging off.

(2) if the user logs off at any other time, the task will be skipped.

What if...

What if a task is scheduled to be executed at a certain time and this time is outside the specified time interval?

For example:

 Event: Daily, Every 1 day(s); Once at 03:00:00 PM.  Condition: Fits time interval, from 06:00:00 PM until 11:59:59 PM.

In this case, whether and when the task will run depends on the task start conditions:

 If the task start conditions are Skip the task execution, the task will never run.  If the task start conditions are Wait until the conditions are met and the Run the task anyway

after check box is cleared, the task (scheduled to run at 3:00 PM) will start at 6:00 PM—the time when the condition is met.

 If the task start conditions are Wait until the conditions are met and the Run the task anyway

after check box is selected with, say, the 1 Hour waiting time, the task (scheduled to run at

3:00 PM) will start at 4:00 PM—the time when the waiting period ends.

4.4.4.3 Time since last backup

Applies to: Windows, Linux

Enables to put a backup task run on hold until the specified time interval since the last successful backup completion passes.

Example:

Run the backup task at system startup, but only if more than 12 hours have passed since the last successful backup.

 Event: At startup, Start the task on machine startup.  Condition: Time since last backup, Time since the last backup: 12 hour(s).  Task start conditions: Wait until the conditions are met.

As a result,

(1) if the machine is restarted before 12 hours pass since the completion of the latest successful backup, the scheduler will wait until 12 hours pass, and then will start the task.

(2) if the machine is restarted after 12 hours have passed since the completion of the latest successful backup, the backup task will start immediately.

(3) if the machine is never restarted, the task will never start. You can start the backup manually, if need be, in the Backup plans and tasks view.

4.5 Replication and retention of backups

When creating a backup plan (p. 31), you specify the primary location for the backups. In addition, you can do the following:

 Replicate (copy) each backup to a second location immediately after creation.  Retain the backups according to the retention rules you specify, and then either move them to a

second location or delete them.

Similarly, you can copy or move backups from a second location to a third location and so on. Up to

Backup scheme

Can copy backups

Can move backups

Can delete backups

Run now (p. 37)

Yes

Manual start (p. 46)

Yes

Simple (p. 37)

Yes

Grandfather-Father-Son (GFS) (p. 38)

Yes

Tower of Hanoi (p. 44)

Yes

Custom (p. 41)

Yes

Initial seeding

five consecutive locations are supported (including the primary one).

Note: The replication feature replaces and enhances the Dual destination option, which was available in Acronis Backup & Recovery 10.

Example. You back up your machine to a local folder. The backup is immediately copied to a network folder. In the original local folder, the backup is stored for just one month.

The following picture illustrates this example.

Usage scenarios

 Reliable disaster recovery (p. 69)

Store your backups both on-site (for immediate recovery) and off-site (to secure the backups from local storage failure or a natural disaster).

 Keeping only the latest recovery points (p. 70)

Delete older backups from a fast storage according to retention rules, in order to not overuse expensive storage space.

 Reduced costs of storing the backed up data

Store your backups on a fast storage for as long as a need to access them is likely. Then, move them to a lower-cost storage to keep them there for a longer term. This enables you to meet legal requirements on data retention.

Replication and retention in backup schemes

The following table shows availability of replication and retention rules in various backup schemes.

Notes:

 Setting up both copying and moving backups from the same location is not possible.  With simplified naming of backup files (p. 50), neither replication nor use of retention rules is

available.

4.5.1 Supported locations

You can copy or move a backup from any of these locations:

 A local folder on a fixed or removable drive  A network folder  An FTP or SFTP server  Acronis Secure Zone

You can copy or move a backup to any of these locations:

 A local folder on a fixed or removable drive  A network folder  An FTP or SFTP server

Backups that were copied or moved to the next location do not depend on the backups remaining in the original location and vice versa. You can recover data from any backup without access to other locations.

Restrictions

 Copying or moving backups to and from optical discs (CD, DVD, Blu-ray discs) is not supported.  You cannot specify the same location more than once. For example, you cannot move a backup

from one folder to another and then back to the original folder.

4.5.2 Setting up replication of backups

Setting up replication of backups is available when creating a backup plan (p. 31).

 To set up replication from the primary location, select the Replicate just created backup to

another location check box.

 To set up replication from the second or a further location, select the Replicate backups to

another location as soon as they appear in this location check box.

Next, select the location where to replicate the backups. A backup is replicated to the next location as soon as it appears in the previous location.

If allowed by the backup scheme, you can also specify when to automatically delete the backups from each of the locations.

4.5.3 Setting up retention of backups

You can set retention rules for backups when creating a backup plan (p. 31). The available retention rules depend on the chosen backup scheme.

Applying retention rules can be restricted by the Replication/cleanup inactivity time (p. 69) option.

Simple scheme

Each backup is retained until its age exceeds a limit you specify. Then, it is either deleted or moved.

To set up deleting the backups:

 In Retention rules, select Delete backups older than…, and then specify the retention period.

To set up moving the backups:

 In Retention rules, select Move backups older than…, specify the retention period. Under Where

to replicate/move backups, specify the location.

The retention rules are applied after creating a backup. For the second and next locations, creating a backup means copying or moving a backup there from the previous location.

Grandfather-Father-Son (GFS) scheme

Backups of each type (daily, weekly, and monthly) are retained for the periods you specify in Keep backups, and then deleted.

The retention rules are applied after creating a backup. They are applied sequentially in the primary, the second and all next locations.

Tower of Hanoi scheme

Each backup is retained based on its level (p. 44), and then deleted. You specify the number of levels in Number of levels.

The retention rules are applied after creating a backup. They are applied sequentially in the primary, the second and all next locations.

Custom scheme

Each backup is retained until the rules you specify are met. Then, it is either deleted or moved.

To set up deleting the backups:

 In Clean up archive, select Using retention rules. In the Retention Rules window (p. 67), specify

the rules and select If the specified conditions are met: Delete the oldest backups.

 In Apply retention rules, specify when to apply the rules.

To set up moving the backups:

 In Clean up archive, select Using retention rules. In the Retention Rules window (p. 67), specify

the rules and select If the specified conditions are met: Move the oldest backups to another location. Click OK and then specify the location under Where to replicate/move backups.

 In Apply retention rules, specify when to apply the rules.

You can choose to apply the retention rules before creating a backup, after creating a backup, on a schedule, or combine these options. For the second and next locations, creating a backup means copying or moving a backup there from the previous location.

4.5.4 Retention rules for the Custom scheme

In the Retention Rules window, you can select how long to store backups in the location and whether to move or delete them afterward.

The rules will be applied to all the backups taken on the specific machine and put in this specific

location by this specific backup plan. In Acronis Backup & Recovery 11, such set of backups is called an archive.

To set up retention rules for backups:

1. Specify one of the following (options (a) and (b) are mutually exclusive):

a. Backups older than... and/or Archive size greater than....

A backup will be stored until the specified condition (or both of the conditions) are met.

Example: Backups older than 5 days Archive size greater than 100 GB

With these settings, a backup will be stored until it is older than five days and the size of the archive containing it exceeds 100 GB.

b. Number of backups in the archive exceeds...

If the number of backups exceeds the specified value, one or more of the oldest backups will be moved or deleted. The minimal setting is 1.

2. Select whether to delete the backups or to move them to another location if the specified

conditions are met. You will be able to specify the location where to move the backups and set up retention rules for

that location after you click OK.

Deleting the last backup in the archive

The retention rules are effective if the archive contains more than one backup. This means that the last backup in the archive will be kept, even if a retention rule violation is detected. Please do not try to delete the only backup you have by applying the retention rules before backup. This will not work. Use the alternative setting Clean up archive > When there is insufficient space while backing up (p.

41) if you accept the risk of losing the last backup.

Deleting or moving backups with dependencies

To access this setting, click Show advanced settings in the Retention Rules window.

Retention rules presume deleting or moving some backups while retaining the others. What if the archive contains incremental and differential backups that depend on each other and on the full backups they are based on? You cannot, say, delete an outdated full backup and keep its incremental “children”.

When deletion or movement of a backup affects other backups, one of the following rules is applied:

 Retain the backup until all dependent backups become subject to deletion (movement)

The outdated backup will be kept until all backups that depend on it also become outdated. Then, all the chain will be deleted at once during the regular cleanup. If you chose moving outdated backups to the next location, the backup will be copied there without delay. Only its deletion from the current location is postponed.

This mode helps to avoid the potentially time-consuming consolidation but requires extra space for storing backups whose deletion is postponed. The archive size and/or the backup age or number can exceed the values you specify.

 Consolidate these backups

The software will consolidate the backup that is subject to deletion or movement, with the next dependent backup. For example, the retention rules require to delete a full backup but to retain the next incremental one. The backups will be combined into a single full backup which will be dated with the incremental backup date. When an incremental or differential backup from the middle of the chain is deleted, the resulting backup type will be incremental.

This mode ensures that after each cleanup the archive size and the age or number of backups are within the bounds you specify. The consolidation, however, may take a lot of time and system

resources. You still need some extra space in the vault for temporary files created during consolidation.

What you need to know about consolidation 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.

4.5.5 Replication/cleanup inactivity time

This option is effective only if you set up replication or retention rules (p. 64) for the backups.

This option defines a time period when starting replication or applying retention rules is not allowed. The operations will be performed when the inactivity time ends, if the machine is powered on at that moment. The operations that had started before the inactivity time began continue without interruption.

The inactivity time affects all locations, including the primary one.

The preset is: Disabled.

To specify the inactivity time, select the Do not start replication/cleanup within the following time check box, and then select the days and the time period during the day.

Usage example

You may want to use this option to separate the backup process from replication or cleanup. For example, suppose that you back up machines locally during the day and replicate the backups to a network folder. Make the inactivity time contain the working hours. Replication will be performed after the working hours, when network load is lower.

4.5.6 Usage examples

This section provides examples of how you can replicate backups and set up retention rules for them.

4.5.6.1 Example 1. Replicating backups to a network folder

Consider the following scenario:

 You want to perform a full backup of your machine manually.  You want to store the backups in Acronis Secure Zone (p. 118) on the machine.  You want to store a copy of the backups in a network folder.

In this scenario, create a backup plan with the Manual start scheme. When creating the backup plan, specify Acronis Secure Zone in the Path field, select Full in the Backup type field, select the Replicate

just created backup to another location check box, and then specify the network folder in the 2nd location field.

Result:

 You can recover the machine’s volumes or files from a readily available local backup, which is

stored in a dedicated area of the hard disk.

 You can recover the machine from the network folder if the machine’s hard disk drive fails.

4.5.6.2 Example 2. Limiting the age and total size of stored backups

Agent for Linux

Bootable media

(Linux-based or PE-based)

Disk backup

File backup

Disk backup

File backup

Consider the following scenario:

 You want to perform a weekly full backup of your machine.  You want to keep all backups that are younger than a month.  You want to keep even older backups, as long as the total size of all backups stays below 200 GB.

In this scenario, create a backup plan with the Custom scheme. When creating the backup plan, specify a weekly schedule for the full backup. In Clean up archive, select Using retention rules.

Click Retention rules, select the Backups older than and the Archive size greater than check boxes, and specify respectively 1 month and 200 GB. In If the specified conditions are met, select Delete the oldest backups.

Click OK. In Apply retention rules, select the After backup check box.

Result:

 Backups that are younger than one month are kept, regardless of their total size.  Backups that are older than one month are kept only if the total size of all backups (older plus

younger) does not exceed 200 GB. Otherwise, the software deletes some or all of the older backups, starting from the oldest one.

4.6 Default backup options

Each Acronis agent has its own default backup options. Once an agent is installed, the default options have pre-defined values, which are referred to as presets in the documentation. When creating a backup plan, you can either use a default option, or override the default option with the custom value that will be specific for this plan only.

You can also customize a default option itself by changing its value against the pre-defined one. The new value will be used by default in all backup plans you will create later on this machine.

To view and change the default backup options, connect the console to the managed machine and then select Options > Default backup and recovery options > Default backup options from the top menu.

Availability of the backup options

The set of available backup options depends on:

 The environment the agent operates in (Linux, bootable media)  The type of the data being backed up (disk, file)  The backup destination (networked location or local disk)  The backup scheme (manual start or using the scheduler)

The following table summarizes the availability of the backup options.

Agent for Linux

Bootable media

(Linux-based or PE-based)

Disk backup

File backup

Disk backup

File backup

Additional settings (p. 72):

Ask for the first media while backing up to removable media

Dest:

removable

media

Dest:

removable

media

Dest:

removable

media

Dest:

removable

media

Use FTP in Active mode

Dest: FTP

server

Dest: FTP

server

Dest: FTP

server

Dest: FTP

server

Reset archive bit

- - -

Restart the machine automatically after backup is finished

- - +

Archive protection (p. 73)

(password + encryption)

+ + +

Backup cataloging (p. 74)

+ + -

Backup performance:

Backup priority (p. 75)

+ + -

HDD writing speed (p. 75)

Dest: HDD

Network connection speed (p. 75)

Dest:

network

Dest:

network

Dest:

network

Dest:

network

Backup splitting (p. 76)

+ + +

Compression level (p. 76)

+ + +

Disaster recovery plan (p. 77)

+ + -

Error handling (p. 78):

Do not show messages and dialogs while processing (silent mode)

+ + +

Re-attempt if an error occurs

+ + +

Ignore bad sectors

+ + +

Event tracing:

SNMP (p. 79)

+ + -

Fast incremental/differential backup (p. 79)

+ - +

File-level backup snapshot (p. 80)

- + -

LVM snapshotting (p. 80)

+ - -

Agent for Linux

Bootable media

(Linux-based or PE-based)

Disk backup

File backup

Disk backup

File backup

Media components (p. 81)

Dest:

removable

media

Dest:

removable

media

Notifications:

E-mail (p. 81)

+ + -

Win Pop-up (p. 82)

+ + -

Pre/Post backup commands (p. 83)

+ + PE only

PE only

Pre/Post data capture commands (p. 84)

+ + -

Replication/cleanup inactivity time (p. 69)

+ + -

Sector-by-sector backup (p.

87)

+ - +

Task failure handling (p. 87)

+ + -

Task start conditions (p. 87)

+ + -

4.6.1 Additional settings

Specify the additional settings for the backup operation by selecting or clearing the following check boxes.

Ask for the first media while backing up to removable media

This option is effective only when backing up to removable media.

The option defines whether to display the Insert First Media prompt when backing up to removable media.

The preset is: Enabled.

When the option is enabled, backing up to removable media may be not possible if the user is away, because the program will wait for someone to press OK in the prompt box. Hence, you should disable the prompt when scheduling a backup to removable media. Then, if the removable media is available (for example, a DVD is inserted), the task can run unattended.

Reset archive bit

The option is effective only for file-level backup in Windows operating systems and in bootable media.

The preset is: Disabled.

In Windows operating systems, each file has the File is ready for archiving attribute, available by selecting File -> Properties -> General -> Advanced -> Archive and Index attributes. This attribute, also known as the archive bit, is set by the operating system each time the file is changed and can be reset by backup applications each time they include the file in a backup. The archive bit value is used by various applications such as databases.

When the Reset archive bit check box is selected, Acronis Backup & Recovery 11 will reset the archive bits of all files being backed up. Acronis Backup & Recovery 11 itself does not use the archive bit value. When performing incremental or differential backup, it determines whether a file has changed by the file size and the date/time when the file was last saved.

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 11 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.

Use FTP in Active mode

The preset is: Disabled.

Enable this option if the FTP server supports active mode and you want this mode to be used for file transfers.

4.6.2 Archive protection

This option is effective for Windows and Linux operating systems and bootable media.

This option is effective for both disk-level and file-level backup.

This option defines whether the archive will be protected with a password and whether the archive’s

content will be encrypted.

This option is not available when the archive already contains backups. For example, this option may not be available:

 When you specify an already existing archive as the destination of the backup plan.  When you edit a backup plan that has already resulted in a backup.

The preset is: Disabled.

To protect the archive from unauthorized access

1. Select the Set password for the archive check box.

2. In the Enter the password field, type a password.

3. In the Confirm the password field, re-type the password.

4. Select one of the following:

 Do not encrypt – the archive will be protected with the password only

 AES 128 – the archive will be encrypted using the Advanced Encryption Standard (AES)

algorithm with a 128-bit key

 AES 192 – the archive will be encrypted using the AES algorithm with a 192-bit key  AES 256 – the archive will be encrypted using the AES algorithm with a 256-bit key.

5. Click OK.

The AES cryptographic algorithm operates in the Cipher-block chaining (CBC) mode and uses a randomly generated key with a user-defined size of 128, 192 or 256 bits. The larger the key size, the longer it will take for the program to encrypt the archive and the more secure your data will be.

The encryption key is then encrypted with AES-256 using a SHA-256 hash of the password as a key. The password itself is not stored anywhere on the disk or in the backup file; the password hash is used for verification purposes. With this two-level security, the backup data is protected from any unauthorized access, but recovering a lost password is not possible.

4.6.3 Backup cataloging

Cataloging a backup adds the contents of the backup to the data catalog. Using the data catalog, you can easily find the required version of data and select it for recovery.

The Backup cataloging option defines whether the backups will be cataloged automatically as soon as they are created.

The preset is: Enabled.

After the cataloging has been completed, the catalog will show all data contained in the just created backup, namely:

 For a disk-level backup - disks, volumes, files and folders.  For a file-level backup - files and folders.

You may want to disable the automatic cataloging if it tends to affect the performance of the managed machine, or your backup window is too narrow. If the Backup cataloging option is disabled, the following data will be displayed in the catalog:

 For a disk-level backup - only disks and volumes.  For a file-level backup - nothing.

To add the full content of already existing backups to the catalog, you can start the cataloging manually when appropriate.

For more information about using data catalog, see the Data catalog (p. 92) section.

4.6.4 Backup performance

Use this group of options to specify the amount of network and system resources to allocate to the backup process.

Backup performance options might have a more or less noticeable effect on the speed of the backup process. This depends on the overall system configuration and the physical characteristics of devices the backup is being performed from or to.

4.6.4.1 Backup priority

This option is effective for both Windows and Linux operating systems.

The priority of a process running in a system determines the amount of CPU and system resources allocated to that process. Decreasing the backup priority will free more resources for other applications. Increasing the backup priority might speed up the backup process by requesting the operating system to allocate more resources like the CPU to the backup application. However, the resulting effect will depend on the overall CPU usage and other factors like disk in/out speed or network traffic.

The preset is: Low.

To specify the backup process priority

Select one of the following:

 Low – to minimize resources taken by the backup process, leaving more resources to other

processes running on the machine

 Normal – to run the backup process with normal speed, allocating resources on a par with other

processes

 High – to maximize the backup process speed by taking resources from other processes.

4.6.4.2 HDD writing speed

This option is effective for Windows and Linux operating systems and bootable media.

This option is available when an internal (fixed) hard disk of the machine being backed up is selected as the backup destination

Backing up to a fixed hard disk (for example, to Acronis Secure Zone) may slow performance of the operating system and applications because of the large amounts of data that needs to be written to the disk. You can limit the hard disk usage by the backup process to the desired level.

The preset is: Maximum.

To set the desired HDD writing speed for backup

Do any of the following:

 Click Writing speed stated as a percentage of the maximum speed of the destination hard disk,

and then drag the slider or select a percentage in the box

 Click Writing speed stated in kilobytes per second, and then enter the writing speed in kilobytes

per second.

4.6.4.3 Network connection speed

This option is effective for Windows and Linux operating systems and bootable media.

This option is available when a location on the network (network share, managed vault or an FTP/SFTP server) is selected as the backup destination.

The option defines the amount of network connection bandwidth allocated for transferring the backup data.

By default the speed is set to maximum, i.e. the software uses all the network bandwidth it can get when transferring the backup data. Use this option to reserve a part of the network bandwidth to other network activities.

The preset is: Maximum.

To set the network connection speed for backup

Do any of the following:

 Click Transferring speed stated as a percentage of the estimated maximum speed of the

network connection, and then drag the slider or type a percentage in the box

 Click Transferring speed stated in kilobytes per second, and then enter the bandwidth limit for

transferring backup data in kilobytes per second.

4.6.5 Backup splitting

This option is effective for Windows and Linux operating systems and bootable media.

The option defines how a backup can be split.

The preset is: Automatic.

The following settings are available.

Automatic

With this setting, Acronis Backup & Recovery 11 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.

If the destination disk runs out of free space while creating the backup, the task enters the Need interaction state. You have the ability to free additional space and retry the operation. If you do so, the resulting backup will be split into the parts created before and after the retry.

 When backing up to removable media (CD, DVD or a tape device locally attached to the

managed machine): The task will enter the Need interaction state and ask for a new media when the previous one is

full.

Fixed size

Enter the desired file size or select it from the drop-down list. The backup will then be split into multiple files of the specified size. This comes in handy when creating a backup that you plan to burn to multiple CDs or DVDs later on. You might also want to split the backup destined to an FTP server, since data recovery directly from an FTP server requires the backup to be split into files no more than 2GB in size.

4.6.6 Compression level

This option is effective for Windows and Linux operating systems and bootable media.

The option defines the level of compression applied to the data being backed up.

The preset is: Normal.

The optimal data compression level depends on the type of data being backed up. For example, even maximum compression will not significantly reduce the archive size if the archive contains essentially 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. You may want to select maximum compression when backing up to removable media to reduce the number of blank disks required.

4.6.7 Disaster recovery plan (DRP)

This option is effective for Windows and Linux but is not applicable to bootable media.

Disaster recovery plan (DRP) contains a list of backed up data items and detailed instructions that guide a user through a process of recovering these items from a backup.

If the Disaster recovery plan (DRP) option is enabled, a DRP is created and sent by e-mail to the specified list of users after the first successful backup performed by the backup plan. The DRP will be created and sent again after the first successful backup in the following cases:

 The backup plan has been edited so that the DRP parameters changed.  The backup contains new data items or does not contain items previously backed up. (This does

not apply to such data items as files or folders.)

If multiple machines are protected by a backup plan, then a separate DRP is sent for each machine.

DRP and post-backup commands

Note that the DRP will not automatically change if post-backup commands in your backup plan copy or move the backups from the original location. The DRP points only to the locations specified in the backup plan.

Adding information to a DRP template

You can append additional information to a DRP template if you are well familiar with XML and HTML. The default paths to the DRP template are:

 %ProgramFiles%\Acronis\BackupAndRecovery\drp.xsl - in 32-bit Windows  %ProgramFiles(x86)%\Acronis\BackupAndRecovery\drp.xsl - in 64-bit Windows  /usr/lib/Acronis/BackupAndRecovery/drp.xsl - in Linux

To set up sending DRPs:

1. Select the Send disaster recovery plan check box.

2. Enter the e-mail address in the E-mail Address field. You can enter several e-mail addresses in a

semicolon-delimited format.

3. [Optional] Change the default value of the Subject field, if necessary.

If you back up multiple machines with one centralized backup plan and want each machine user to receive a separate DRP e-mail about his/her machine only:

a. Use the %MachineName% variable to show the name of the certain machine in the e-mail

subject.

b. Set up your mail server or client to filter or forward e-mails using the Subject field.

4. Enter the parameters of access to the SMTP server. For more detailed information, see E-mail

notifications (p. 110).

5. [Optional] Click Send test e-mail message to check if the settings are correct.

4.6.8 Error handling

These options are effective for Windows and Linux operating systems and bootable media.

These options enable you to specify how to handle errors that might occur during backup.

Do not show messages and dialogs while processing (silent mode)

The preset is: Disabled.

With the silent mode enabled, the program will automatically handle situations requiring user interaction (except for handling bad sectors, which is defined as a separate option). If an operation cannot continue without user interaction, it will fail. Details of the operation, including errors, if any, can be found in the operation log.

Re-attempt, if an error occurs

The preset is: Enabled. Number of attempts: 30. Interval between attempts: 30 seconds.

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. The attempts will be stopped as soon as the connection is resumed OR the specified number of attempts is performed, depending on which comes first.

Ignore bad sectors

The preset is: Disabled.

When the option is disabled, the program will display a pop-up window each time it comes across a bad sector and ask for a user decision as to whether to continue or stop the backup procedure. In order to back up the valid information on a rapidly dying disk, enable ignoring bad sectors. The rest of the data will be backed up and you will be able to mount the resulting disk backup and extract valid files to another disk.

4.6.9 Event tracing

It is possible to send log events of the backup operations, performed on the managed machine, to the specified SNMP managers.

4.6.9.1 SNMP notifications

This option is effective for both Windows and Linux operating systems.

This option is not available when operating under the bootable media.

The option defines whether the agent(s) operating on the managed machine have to send the log events of the backup operations to the specified Simple Network Management Protocol (SNMP) managers. You can choose the types of events to be sent.

For detailed information about using SNMP with Acronis Backup & Recovery 11, please see "Support for SNMP (p. 29)".

The preset is: Use the setting set in the Machine options.

To select whether to send the backup operations events to the SNMP managers:

Choose one of the following:

 Use the setting set in the Machine options – to use the setting specified for the machine. For

more information refer to Machine options.

 Send SNMP notifications individually for backup operation events – to send the events of the

backup operations to the specified SNMP managers.

 Types of events to send – choose the types of events to be sent: All events, Errors and

warnings, or Errors only.

 Server name/IP – type the name or IP address of the host running the SNMP management

application, the messages will be sent to.

 Community – type the name of the SNMP community to which both the host running the

SNMP management application and the sending machine belong. The typical community is "public".

Click Send test message to check if the settings are correct.

 Do not send SNMP notifications – to disable sending the log events of the backup operations to

SNMP managers.

4.6.10 Fast incremental/differential backup

The option is effective in Windows and Linux operating systems and bootable media.

This option is effective for incremental and differential disk-level backup.

This option defines whether a file change is detected using the file size and time stamp or by comparing the file contents to those stored in the archive.

The preset is: Enabled.

Incremental or differential backup captures only data changes. To speed up the backup process, the program determines whether a file has changed or not by the file size and the date/time when the file was last modified. Disabling this feature will make the program compare the entire file contents to those stored in the archive.

4.6.11 File-level backup snapshot

This option is effective only for file-level backup in Windows and Linux operating systems.

This option defines whether to back up files one by one or by taking an instant data snapshot.

Note: Files that are stored on network shares are always backed up one by one.

The preset is: Create snapshot if it is possible.

Select one of the following:

 Always create a snapshot

The snapshot enables backing up of all files including files opened for exclusive access. The files will be backed up at the same point in time. Choose this setting only if these factors are critical, that is, backing up files without a snapshot does not make sense. To use a snapshot, the backup plan has to run under the account with the Administrator or Backup Operator privileges. If a snapshot cannot be taken, the backup will fail.

 Create a snapshot if it is possible

Back up files directly if taking a snapshot is not possible.

 Do not create a snapshot

Always back up files directly. Administrator or Backup Operator privileges are not required. Trying to back up files that are opened for exclusive access will result in a read error. Files in the backup may be not time-consistent.

4.6.12 LVM snapshotting

This option is effective only for Linux operating systems when you back up volumes managed by Linux Logical Volume Manager (LVM). Such volumes are also called logical volumes.

This option defines how to take and to work with a snapshot of a logical volume. Use of snapshots ensures a time-consistent backup of volumes whose data may change during the backup process.

The preset is: Acronis Backup & Recovery 11

Tip: We recommend changing the preset only if you are experiencing problems with backing up logical volumes.

The possible settings are the following:

Acronis Backup & Recovery 11

Acronis Backup & Recovery 11 will use its own mechanism to take the snapshot and to work with it during backup.

Logical volume manager

Acronis Backup & Recovery 11 will use Linux Logical Volume Manager to take the snapshot and to work with it during backup. This way, backing up the volume may be less efficient than when using Acronis’s mechanism.

If the logical volume manager cannot take the snapshot, Acronis Backup & Recovery 11 works as if the Acronis Backup & Recovery 11 setting were selected.

If working with the snapshot fails after taking it, no alternative snapshot is taken. This applies to either setting.

4.6.13 Media components

This option is effective for both Windows and Linux operating systems, when the backup destination is removable media.

When backing up to removable media, you can make this media work as regular Linux-based bootable media (p. 168) by writing additional components to it. As a result, you will not need a separate rescue disc.

The preset is: No bootable components.

Choose one of the following components you want to put on the bootable media:

 Acronis Bootable Agent is a bootable rescue utility (based on Linux kernel) that includes most of

the functionality of the Acronis Backup & Recovery 11 agent. Put this component on the media if you want more functionality during recovery. You will be able to configure the recovery operation in the same way as under regular bootable media; use Active Restore or Universal Restore. If the media is being created in Windows, the disk management functionality will also be available.

 Acronis Bootable Agent and One-Click Restore. The One-Click Restore is the minimal addition to

a disk backup stored on removable media, allowing for easy recovery from this backup. If you boot a machine from the media and click Run Acronis One-click Restore, the disk will be immediately recovered from the backup contained on the same media.

Caution: Because the one-click approach does not presume user selections, such as selecting volumes to recover, Acronis One-Click Restore always recovers the entire disk. If your disk contains several volumes and you are planning to use Acronis One-Click Restore, include all the volumes in the backup. Any volumes missing from the backup will be lost.

4.6.14 Notifications

Acronis Backup & Recovery 11 provides the ability of notifying users about backup completion through e-mail or the messaging service.

4.6.14.1 E-mail

This option is effective for Windows and Linux operating systems.

This option is not available when operating under the bootable media.

The option enables you to receive e-mail notifications about the backup task's successful completion, failure or need for interaction along with the full log of the task.

The preset is: Disabled.

To configure e-mail notification

1. Select the Send e-mail notifications check box to activate notifications.

2. Under Send e-mail notifications, select the appropriate check boxes as follows:

 When backup completes successfully – to send notification when the backup task has

completed successfully

 When backup fails – to send a notification when the backup task has failed  When user interaction is required – to send to send notification during the operation when

user interaction is required.

3. For the e-mail message to include the log entries related to the backup, select the Add full log to

the notification check box.

4. 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.

5. In the Subject field, type the notification subject or leave the default value.

6. In the SMTP server field, enter the name of the SMTP server.

7. In the Port field– set the port of the SMTP server. By default, the port is set to 25.

8. In the User name field, enter the user name.

9. In the Password field, enter the password.

10. Click Additional e-mail parameters... to configure the additional e-mail parameters as follows: a. From - type the e-mail address of the user from whom the message will be sent. If you leave

this field empty, messages will be constructed as if they are from the destination address.

b. Use encryption – you can opt for encrypted connection to the mail server. SSL and TLS

encryption types are available for selection.

c. Some Internet service providers require authentication on the incoming mail server before

being allowed to send something. If this is your case, select the Log on to incoming mail server check box to enable a POP server and to set up its settings:

 Incoming mail server (POP) – enter the name of the POP server.  Port – set the port of the POP server. By default, the port is set to 110.  User name – enter the user name.  Password – enter the password.

d. Click OK.

11. Click Send test e-mail message to check if the settings are correct.

4.6.14.2 Messenger service (WinPopup)

This option is effective for Windows and Linux operating systems on the sending machine and only for Windows on the receiving machine.

This option is not available when operating under bootable media.

The option enables you to receive WinPopup notifications about the backup task's successful completion, failure or need for interaction.

The preset is: Disabled. Before configuring WinPopup notifications, make sure the Messenger service is started on both the machine executing the task and the machine that will receive messages.

The Messenger service is not started by default in the Microsoft Windows Server 2003 family. Change the service Startup mode to Automatic and start the service.

To configure WinPopup notifications:

1. Select the Send WinPopup notifications check box.

2. In the Machine name field, enter the name of the machine to which notifications will be sent.

Multiple names are not supported.

Under Send notifications, select the appropriate check boxes as follows:

 When backup completes successfully – to send notification when the backup operation is

completed successfully

 When backup fails – to send notification when the backup operation is failed

Pre-backup

command

Backup

Post-backup

command

Check box

Selection

Fail the task if the command execution fails*

Selected

Cleared

Selected

Cleared

Do not back up until the

Selected

Cleared

 When user interaction is required – to send notification during the operation when user

interaction is required.

Click Send test WinPopup message to check if the settings are correct.

4.6.15 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.

Examples of how you can use the pre/post commands:

 Delete some temporary files from the disk before starting backup  Configure a third-party antivirus product to be started each time before the backup starts  Copy an archive to another location after the backup ends.

The program does not support interactive commands, i.e. commands that require user input (for example, "pause").

To specify pre/post commands

1. Enable pre/post commands execution by checking the following options:

 Execute before the backup  Execute after the backup

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.

4.6.15.1 Pre-backup command

To specify a command/batch file to be executed before the backup process starts

1. In the Command field, type a command or browse to a batch file. The program does not support

interactive commands, i.e. commands that require user input (for example, "pause".)

2. In the Working directory field, specify a path to a directory where the command/batch file will

be executed.

3. In the Arguments field specify the command’s execution arguments, if required.

4. 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.

command execution is complete

Result

Preset

Perform the backup only after the command is successfully executed. Fail the task if the command execution fails.

Perform the backup after the command is executed despite execution failure or success.

N/A

Perform the backup concurrently with the command execution and irrespective of the command execution result.

* A command is considered failed if its exit code is not equal to zero.

<--------------- Backup --------------->

Pre-backup

command

Pre-data

capture

command

Data

capture

Post-data

capture

command

Post-backup

command

4.6.15.2 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. In the Working directory field, specify a path to a directory where the command/batch file will

be executed.

3. In the Arguments field, specify the command execution arguments, if required.

4. Select the Fail the task if the command execution fails check box if successful execution of the

command is critical for you. The command is considered failed if its exit code is not equal to zero. If the command execution fails, the program will remove the resulting TIB file and temporary files if possible, and the task run result will be set to Failed.

When the check box is not selected, the command execution result does not affect the task execution failure or success. You can track the command execution result by exploring the log or the errors and warnings displayed in the Log view.

5. Click Test Command to check if the command is correct.

4.6.16 Pre/Post data capture commands

This option is effective for both Windows and Linux operating systems.

The option enables you to define the commands to be automatically executed before and after data capture (that is, taking the data snapshot). Data capture is performed by Acronis Backup & Recovery 11 at the beginning of the backup procedure.

The following scheme illustrates when the pre/post data capture commands are executed.

If the Volume Shadow Copy Service option is enabled, the commands' execution and the Microsoft VSS actions will be sequenced as follows:

"Before data capture” commands -> VSS Suspend -> Data capture -> VSS Resume -> "After data capture" commands.

Using the pre/post data capture commands, you can suspend and resume a database or application

Check box

Selection

Fail the backup task if the command execution fails*

Selected

Cleared

Selected

Cleared

Do not perform the data capture until the command execution is complete

Selected

Cleared

Result

Preset

Perform the data capture only after the command is successfully executed. Fail the task if the command execution fails.

Perform the data capture after the command is executed despite execution failure or success.

N/A

Perform the data capture concurrently with the command and irrespective of the command execution result.

that is not compatible with VSS. As opposed to the Pre/Post commands (p. 83), the pre/post data capture commands will be executed before and after the data capture process. This takes seconds. The entire backup procedure may take much longer, depending on the amount of data to be backed up. Therefore, the database or application idle time will be minimal.

To specify pre/post data capture commands

1. Enable pre/post data capture commands execution by checking the following options:

 Execute before the data capture  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.

4.6.16.1 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. In the Working directory field, specify a path to a directory where the command/batch file will

be executed.

3. In the Arguments field specify the command’s execution arguments, if required.

4. 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.

* A command is considered failed if its exit code is not equal to zero.

4.6.16.2 Post-data capture command

Check box

Selection

Fail the task if the command execution fails*

Selected

Cleared

Selected

Cleared

Do not back up until the command execution is complete

Selected

Cleared

Result

Preset

Continue the backup only after the command is successfully executed. Delete the TIB file and temporary files and fail the task if the command execution fails.

Continue the backup after the command is executed despite command execution failure or success.

N/A

Continue the backup concurrently with the command execution and irrespective of the command execution result.

To specify a command/batch file to be executed after 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. In the Working directory field, specify a path to a directory where the command/batch file will

be executed.

3. In the Arguments field specify the command’s execution arguments, if required.

4. 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.

* A command is considered failed if its exit code is not equal to zero.

4.6.17 Replication/cleanup inactivity time

This option is effective only if you set up replication or retention rules (p. 64) for the backups.

The inactivity time affects all locations, including the primary one.

The preset is: Disabled.

To specify the inactivity time, select the Do not start replication/cleanup within the following time check box, and then select the days and the time period during the day.

Usage example

4.6.18 Sector-by-sector backup

The option is effective only for disk-level backup.

To create an exact copy of a disk or volume on a physical level, select the Back up sector-by-sector check box. The resulting backup will be equal in size to the disk being backed up (if the Compression level (p. 76) option is set to None). Use the sector-by-sector backup for backing up drives with unrecognized or unsupported file systems and other proprietary data formats.

4.6.19 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.

The preset is not to restart a failed task.

The program will try to execute the failed task again if you select the Restart a failed task check box and specify the number of attempts and the time interval between the attempts. The program stops trying as soon as an attempt completes successfully OR the specified number of attempts is performed, depending on which comes first.

If the task fails because of a mistake in the backup plan, you can edit the plan while the task is in the Idle state. While the task is running, you have to stop it prior to editing the backup plan.

4.6.20 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. For more information on conditions please see Scheduling (p. 55) and Conditions (p. 62).

The preset is: Wait until the conditions are met.

Wait until the conditions are met

With this setting, the scheduler starts monitoring the conditions and launches the task as soon as the conditions are met. If the conditions are never met, the task will never start.

To handle the situation when the conditions are not met for too long and further delaying the backup is becoming risky, you can set the time interval after which the task will run irrespective of the condition. Select the Run the task anyway after check box and specify the time interval. The task will start as soon as the conditions are met OR the maximum time delay lapses, depending on which comes first.

Time diagram: Wait until conditions are 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.

5 Recovery

When it comes to data recovery, first consider the most functional method: connect the console to the managed machine running the operating system and create the recovery task.

If the 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. 168) or using Acronis Startup Recovery Manager. Then, create a recovery task.

For detailed information about recovering Linux Software RAID devices and volumes created by Logical Volume Manager (LVM), see "Recovering MD devices and logical volumes" (p. 25).

5.1 Creating a recovery task

To create a recovery task, perform the following steps

What to recover

Select data (p. 90)

Select data to recover.

Access credentials (p. 93)

[Optional] Provide credentials for the archive location if the task account does not have the right to access it. To access this option, click Show access credentials.

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. 94) Volumes (p. 96) Files (p. 99)

Access credentials (p. 94)

[Optional] Provide credentials for the destination if the task credentials do not enable recovery of the selected data. To access this option, select the Advanced view check box.

When to recover

Recover (p. 101)

Select when to start recovery. The task can start immediately after its creation, be scheduled for a specified date and time in the future or simply saved for manual execution.

Task parameters

Task name

[Optional] Enter a unique name for the recovery task. A conscious name lets you quickly identify the task among the others.

Recovery options

[Optional] Customize the recovery operation by configuring the recovery options, such as pre/post recovery commands, recovery priority, error handling or notification options. If you do nothing in this section, the default values (p. 106) will be used.

After any of the settings are 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. Therefore, in this section you always see only the settings that differ from the default values.

Clicking Reset to default resets all the settings to default values.

Task credentials

[Optional] The task will run on behalf of the user who is creating the task. You can change the task account credentials if necessary. To access this option, click Show task credentials.

[Optional] Acronis Universal Restore

Applies to: system disk or volume recovery

Universal Restore (p. 102)

Use Acronis Universal Restore when you need to recover and boot up an operating system on dissimilar hardware.

After you complete all the required steps, click OK to create the commit creating of the recovery task.

5.1.1 What to recover

1. Specifying the archive location

In the Data path field, specify the archive location path or click Browse and select the required location as described in "Selecting archive location" (p. 91).

In the advanced editions of Acronis Backup & Recovery 11, you can select either to specify the archive location path as described above, or use the centralized data catalog.

2. Selecting data

The backed up data can be selected using the Data view tab, or the Archive view tab. The Data view tab displays all the backed up data by versions (the date and time of backup creation) within the selected archive location. The Archive view tab displays the backed up data by the archives.

Note: File-level recovery with Agent for ESX(i) or Agent for Hyper-V is not possible.

Selecting data using the Data view

Since the Data view tab shares the same functionality with the data catalog, selecting data on the Data view tab is performed in the same way as in the catalog. For more information about selecting

data, see "Data catalog" (p. 92).

Selecting data using the Archive view

1. Expand the required archive and select one of the successive backups by its creation date and

time. Thus, you can revert the disk data to a certain moment in time. If the list of archives is too long, you can filter the archives by selecting only the required type of

archives to display. To do this, select the required archive type in the Show list.

2. For disk or volume backups only: in the Backup contents, select the type of data to display from

the drop-down box:

 Disks - to recover disks as a whole (with all their volumes).  Volumes - to recover individual basic and/or dynamic volumes.

 Files - to recover individual files and folders.

Location

Details

Personal

If the archive is stored in a personal vault, expand the Personal group and click the required vault.

Centralized

If the archive is stored in a centralized vault, expand the Centralized group and click the appropriate vault.

Machine name

This is the local machine name.

Local folders

If the archive is stored in a local folder on the machine, expand the <Machine name> group and select the required folder.

CD, DVD, etc.

If the archive is stored on optical media such as CD or DVD, expand the <Machine name> group, then select the required drive. First insert the last DVD. Then insert the discs in order starting from the first one when the program prompts.

Tape device

If the archive is stored on a locally attached tape device, expand the Tape drives group, then click the required device.

Tape devices are available only if you have upgraded from Acronis Backup & Recovery 10. For information about using tapes, see the "Tape devices" section of the product Help.

Network folders

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: 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.

3. In the Backup contents, select the check boxes for the items you need to recover.

4. Click OK.

Selecting MBR When recovering a system volume, you will usually select the disk's MBR if:

 The operating system cannot boot.  The disk is new and does not have MBR.  You are recovering custom or non-Windows boot loaders (such as LILO and GRUB).  The disk geometry is different to that stored in the backup.

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 11 recovers Track 0,

which does not affect the target disk’s partition table and partition layout. Acronis Backup &

Recovery 11 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.

5.1.1.1 Selecting archive location

Location

Details

FTP, SFTP

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. 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. This means that the user name and password can be intercepted by an eavesdropper using a packet sniffer.

NFS drives

If the archive is stored on an NFS share, expand the NFS drives group and click the folder.

5.1.1.2 Data catalog

Data catalog lets you easily find the required version of data and select it for recovery. On a managed machine, the data catalog functionality is available through the Data view tab for any vault accessible from this machine. On the management server, the catalog functionality is available through both Data view and the centralized Data catalog. The centralized data catalog displays in a single place all the data stored in the centralized managed vaults.

Selecting the backed up data for recovery

1. Do any of the following:

 To access the Data view tab, connect the console to a machine or to the management server,

navigate to Vaults view, and click the required vault.

 To access the Data catalog, connect the console to the management server and select Data

catalog in the Navigation tree.

2. In the Show field, select the type of data to display:

 Select Machines/disks/volumes to browse and search for entire disks and volumes in

disk-level backups.

 Select Folders/files to browse and search for files and folders in both file-level and disk-level

backups.

3. In the Display data backed up for field, specify the time period for which the backed up data will

be displayed.

4. Do any of the following:

 Select the data to recover in the catalog tree, or in the table to the right of the catalog tree.  In the search string, type the information that helps to identify the required data items (this

can be a machine name, a file or folder name, or a disk label) and then click Search. You can

use the asterisks (*) and question marks (?) wildcards. As a result, in the Search window, you will see the list of backed up data items whose names

fully or partially coincide with the entered value. If the list of matches is too long, you can refine the search criteria by specifying the date or time range of backup creation, and the size range of backed up items. When the required data is found, select it, and click OK to return to the Data catalog/Data view.

5. Use the Versions list to select the point of time to revert the data to. By default, the data will be

reverted to latest point of time available for the time period selected in step 3.

6. Having selected the required data, click Recover and configure the parameters of the recovery

operation.

What if the data does not appear in the catalog or data view

The probable reasons of the issue are as follows.

Wrong time period is set

The required data was not backed up during the time period set by the Display data backed up for control.

Solution: Try to increase the time period.

Cataloging is turned off

If the data is displayed partially or is not displayed at all, most likely the backup cataloging option (p.

74) was disabled during backup.

Solutions:

 Run the cataloging manually by clicking Catalog now. For the Data catalog, all backups stored in

the managed vaults will be cataloged. For the Data view, only the backups stored on the selected vault will be cataloged. The backups that have already been cataloged, will not be cataloged again.

 Since cataloging a large number of backed up data may take a long time, you may prefer to use

the Archive view of the respective vault. For more information about using the Archive view, see "Browsing the vault contents and data selection" in the Working with vaults (p. 115) section.

The data is not supported by the catalog

The following data cannot be displayed in the catalog or data view:

 Data from the encrypted and password-protected archives.  Data backed up to removable media, such as CD, DVD, BD, Iomega REV.  Data backed up to Acronis Online Backup Storage.  Data backed up using Acronis True Image Echo or earlier product versions.  Data backed up using the simplified backup naming.

Solution: To be able to browse such data, use the Archive view tab of the respective vault.

The data is not included in the centralized catalog

Data from personal vaults (p. 115) is not displayed in the centralized catalog.

Solution: To be able to browse such data, connect directly to a machine, select the required personal vault and then select Data view.

5.1.2 Access credentials for location

Specify the credentials required for access to the location where the backup is stored.

To specify credentials

1. Select one of the following:

 Use the task credentials

The software will access the location using the credentials of the task account specified in the Task parameters section.

 Use the following credentials

The software will access the location using the credentials you specify. Use this option if the task account does not have access permissions to the location. You might need to provide special credentials for a network share or a storage node vault.

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.

5.1.3 Access credentials for destination

To specify credentials

1. Select one of the following:

 Use the task credentials

The program will access the destination using the credentials of the task account specified in the Task parameters section.

 Use the following credentials

The program will access the destination using the credentials you specify. Use this option if the task account does not have access permissions to the destination.

Specify:

 User name. When entering the name of an Active Directory user account, be sure to also

specify the domain name (DOMAIN\Username or Username@domain).

 Password. The password for the account.

2. Click OK.

5.1.4 Where to recover

Specify the destination the selected data will be recovered to.

5.1.4.1 Selecting target disks

Available disk or volume destinations depend on the agents operating on the machine.

Recover to:

Physical machine

Available when the Acronis Backup & Recovery 11 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.

Disks/volumes

Map automatically

Acronis Backup & Recovery 11 attempts to map the selected disks to the target disks as described in the "How the automatic mapping works" (p. 96) section. If you are unsatisfied with the mapping result, you can re-map disks manually. To do this, you have to unmap the disks in a reverse order; that is, the last mapped disk should be unmapped first. Then, map the disks manually as described below.

Disk #:

Disk # (MODEL) (p. 95)

Select the destination disk for each of the source disks. NT signature (p. 95) Select the way the recovered disk's signature will be handled. The disk signature is used by

Windows and the Linux kernel version 2.6 and later.

Disk destination

To specify a destination disk:

1. Select a disk where you want the selected disk to recover to. The destination disk's space should

be at least the same size as the uncompressed image data.

2. Click OK.

All the data stored on the target disk will be replaced by the backed up data, so be careful and watch out for non-backed-up data that you might need.

NT signature

The NT signature is a record that is kept in the MBR. It uniquely identifies the disk for the operating system.

When recovering a disk containing a system volume, you can choose what to do with the NT signature of the target disk. Specify any of the following parameters:

 Select automatically

The software will keep the NT signature of the target disk if it is the same as the NT signature stored in the backup. (In other words, if you recover the disk to the same disk that was backed up.) Otherwise, the software will generate a new NT signature for the target disk.

This is the default selection recommended in most cases. Use the following settings only if you absolutely need to.

 Create new

Acronis Backup & Recovery 11 will generate a new NT signature for the target hard disk.

 Recover from backup

Acronis Backup & Recovery 11 will replace the NT signature of the target hard disk with one from the disk backup.

Note: You should be absolutely sure that none of the existing disks on this machine has the same NT signature. Otherwise, the operating system runs from the first disk at the startup; discovers the same signature on the second one, automatically generates a new unique NT signature and assigns it to the second disk. As a result, all the volumes on the second disk will lose their letters, all paths will be invalid on the disk, and programs won't find their files. The operating system on that disk will be unbootable.

Recovering the disk signature may be desirable due to the following reasons:

 Acronis Backup & Recovery 11 schedules tasks using the signature of the source hard disk. If

you recover the same disk signature, you don't need to re-create or edit the tasks created previously.

 Some installed applications use disk signature for licensing and other purposes.

 Keep existing

The program will leave the NT signature of the target hard disk untouched.

How the automatic mapping works

Acronis Backup & Recovery 11 automatically maps the disks or volumes to the target disks only if the system bootability can be preserved. Otherwise, the automatic mapping is canceled and you have to map the disks or volumes manually.

Also, you have to map the volumes manually if they are Linux logical volumes, or Linux software RAID (MD devices). For more information on recovering logical volumes and MD devices, see Recovering MD devices and logical volumes (p. 25).

The automatic mapping is performed as follows.

1. If the disk or volume is recovered to its original location, the mapping process reproduces the

original disk/volume layout.

The original location for a disk or volume means exactly the same disk or volume that has been backed up. A volume will not be considered original if its size, location or other physical parameters have been changed after backup. Changing the volume letter or label does not prevent the software from recognizing the volume.

2. If the disk or volume is recovered to a different location:

 When recovering disks: The software checks the target disks for size and volumes. A target

disk must contain no volumes and its size must be large enough to place the disk being recovered. Not initialized target disks will be initialized automatically.

If the required disks cannot be found, you have to map the disks manually.

 When recovering volumes: The software checks the target disks for unallocated space.

If there is enough unallocated space, the volumes will be recovered "as is". If unallocated space on the target disks is less than the size of the volumes being recovered,

the volumes will be proportionally shrunk (by decreasing their free space) in order to fit the unallocated space. If the shrunk volumes still cannot fit the unallocated space, you have to map the volumes manually.

5.1.4.2 Selecting target volumes

Available volume destinations depend on the agents operating on the machine.

Recover to:

Physical machine

Available when the Acronis Backup & Recovery 11 Agent for Windows or Agent for Linux is installed.

The selected volumes will be recovered to the physical disks of the machine the console is connected to. On selecting this, you proceed to the regular volume mapping procedure described below.

Disks/volumes

Map automatically

Acronis Backup & Recovery 11 attempts to map the selected volumes to the target disks as described in the "How the automatic mapping works" (p. 96) section. If you are unsatisfied with the mapping result, you can re-map volumes manually. To do this, you have to unmap the volumes in a reverse order; that is, the last mapped volume should be unmapped first. Then, map the volumes manually as described below.

Recover [Disk #] MBR to: [If the Master Boot Record is selected for recovery]

Disk # (p. 97)

Choose the disk to recover the Master Boot Record to. NT signature: (p. 95) Select the way the disk's signature contained in the MBR will be handled. The disk signature is

used by Windows and the Linux kernel version 2.6 and later.

Recover [Volume] [Letter] to:

Disk # /Volume

Sequentially map each of the source volumes to a volume or an unallocated space on the destination disk.

Size: (p. 98) [Optional] Change the recovered volume size, location and other properties.

MBR destination

To specify a destination disk:

1. Select the disk to recover the MBR to.

2. Click OK.

Volume destination

To specify a target volume or unallocated space

1. Select a volume or unallocated space where you want the selected volume to be recovered to.

The destination volume/unallocated space should be at least the same size as the uncompressed image data.

2. Click OK.

All the data stored on the target volume will be replaced by the backed up data, so be careful and watch out for non-backed-up data that you might need.

When using bootable media

Disk letters seen under Windows-style bootable media might differ from the way Windows identifies drives. For example, the D: drive in the rescue utility might correspond to the E: drive in Windows.

Be careful! To be on the safe side, it is advisable to assign unique names to the volumes.

The Linux-style bootable media shows local disks and volumes as unmounted (sda1, sda2...).

Changing volume properties

Size and location

When recovering a volume to a basic MBR disk, you can resize and relocate the volume by dragging it or its borders with a mouse or by entering corresponding values in the appropriate fields. Using this feature, you can redistribute the disk space between the volumes being recovered. In this case, you will have to recover the volume to be reduced first.

Note: Volumes backed up using the sector-by-sector option cannot be resized.

Tip: A volume cannot be resized when being recovered from a backup split into multiple removable media. To be

able to resize the volume, copy all parts of the backup to a single location on a hard disk.

Type

A basic MBR disk can contain up to four primary volumes or up to three primary volumes and multiple logical drives. By default, the program selects the original volume's type. You can change this setting, if required.

 Primary. Information about primary volumes is contained in the MBR partition table. Most

operating systems can boot only from the primary volume of the first hard disk, but the number of primary volumes is limited.

If you are going to recover a system volume to a basic MBR disk, select the Active check box. Active volume is used for loading an operating system. Choosing active for a volume without an installed operating system could prevent the machine from booting. You cannot set a logical drive or dynamic volume active.

 Logical. Information about logical volumes is located not in the MBR, but in the extended

partition table. The number of logical volumes on a disk is unlimited. A logical volume cannot be set as active. If you recover a system volume to another hard disk with its own volumes and operating system, you will most likely need only the data. In this case, you can recover the volume as logical to access the data only.

File system

By default, the recovered volume will have the same file system as the original volume has. You can change the volume's file system during recovery, if required.

Acronis Backup & Recovery 11 can make the following file system conversions: FAT 16 -> FAT 32 and Ext2 -> Ext3. For volumes with other native file systems, this option is not available.

Assume you are going to recover a volume from an old, low-capacity FAT16 disk to a newer disk. FAT16 would not be effective and might even be impossible to set on the high-capacity hard disk. That's because FAT16 supports volumes up to 4 GB, so you will not be able to recover a 4 GB FAT16 volume to a volume that exceeds that limit, without changing the file system. It would make sense here to change the file system from FAT16 to FAT32.

Older operating systems (MS-DOS, Windows 95 and Windows NT 3.x, 4.x) do not support FAT32 and will not be operable after you recover a volume and change its file system. These can be normally recovered on a FAT16 volume only.

Volume (partition) alignment

Acronis Backup & Recovery 11 automatically eliminates volume misalignment – a situation, when volume clusters are not aligned with disk sectors. The misalignment occurs when recovering volumes

created with the Cylinder/Head/Sector (CHS) addressing scheme to ahard disk drive (HDD) or solid-state drive (SSD) drive that has a 4-KB sector size. The CHS addressing scheme is used, for example, in all Windows operating systems earlier than Windows Vista.

If volumes are misaligned, the cluster overlaps more physical sectors than it would have occupied if aligned. As a result, more physical sectors need to be erased and rewritten each time the data changes. The redundant read/write operations noticeably slow down the disk speed and overall system performance. SSD drive misalignment decreases not only system performance, but drive lifetime. Since SSD memory cells are designed for a certain amount of read/write operations, redundant read/write operations lead to early degradation of the SSD drive.

When recovering dynamic volumes and logical volumes created in Linux with Logical Volume Manager (LVM), the appropriate alignment is set up automatically.

When recovering basic MBR and GPT volumes, you can select the alignment method manually if the automatic alignment does not satisfy you for some reason. The following options are available:

 Select automatically - (Default) recommended. The software will automatically set the

appropriate alignment based on the source and target disk/volume properties. Use the following options only if you absolutely need to.

 CHS (63 sectors) - select this option if the recovered volume will be used under Microsoft

Windows XP and Windows Server 2003 (or earlier) on disks having 512 bytes per physical sector.

 VMWare VMFS (64 KB) - select this option when recovering the volume as a VMware Virtual

Machine File System partition.

 Vista alignment (1 MB) - select this option if the recovered volume will be used under

Windows operating systems starting from Windows Vista, or when recovering volumes to an HDD or SSD drive that has a 4-KB sector size.

 Custom - Specify the volume alignment manually. It is recommended that the value be a

multiple of the physical sector size.

5.1.4.3 Selecting target location for files and folders

Where to recover

Destination

Select a location to recover the backed up files to:

 Original location

Files and folders will be recovered to the same path(s) as they are in the backup. For example, if you have backed up all files and folders in C:\Documents\Finance\Reports\, the files will be recovered to the same path. If the folder does not exist, it will be created automatically.

 New location

Files will be recovered to the location that you specify in the tree. The files and folders will be recovered without recreating a full path, unless you clear the Recover without full path check box.

Recovery agent

Select Acronis Agent that will perform file recovery. The agent selection is available only when the software cannot detect the agent on the machine the files will be recovered to.

Overwriting

Criterion

Example

Description

Windows and Linux

By name

F.log

Excludes all files named "F.log"

Excludes all folders named "F"

By mask (*)

*.log

Excludes all files with the .log extension

Excludes all files and folders with names starting with "F" (such as folders F, F1 and files F.log, F1.log)

By mask (?)

F???.log

Excludes all .log files with names consisting of four symbols and starting with "F"

Windows

By file path

Finance\F.log

Excludes files named "F.log" from all folders with the name "Finance"

By folder path

Finance\F\ or Finance\F

Excludes folders named "F" from all folders with the name "Finance"

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.

If you allow files to be overwritten, you still have an option to prevent overwriting of specific files by excluding them from the recovery operation.

Recovery exclusions (p. 100)

Specify files and folders you do not wish to be recovered.

Recovery exclusions

Set up exclusions for the specific files you do not wish to recover.

Use the Add, Edit, Remove and Remove All buttons to create the list of file masks. Files whose names match any of the masks will be skipped during recovery.

You can use one or more wildcard characters * and ? in a file mask:

 The asterisk (*) substitutes for zero or more characters in a file name; for example, the file mask

Doc*.txt yields files such as Doc.txt and Document.txt

 The question mark (?) substitutes for exactly one character in a file name; for example, the file

mask Doc?.txt yields files such as Doc1.txt and Docs.txt — but not the files Doc.txt or Doc11.txt

Exclusion examples

Acronis Backup Recovery Server for Linux - 11.0 User Guide

Specifications and Main Features

Frequently Asked Questions

User Manual