The good news is: It supports OSX and Linux now.

  • Windows & Linux Servers
  • Microsoft Exchange, Microsoft SQL, SharePoint & Active Directory
  • Microsoft Azure & Amazon EC2 cloud workloads

Adding a machine running Windows

Adding a machine running Linux

Adding a machine running OS X

Adding a vCenter or an ESXi host

While i am trying to find free Open Source solutions for Linux… and BareOS is complicated too but looks interesting.

Currently my only task with this expensive software is: backup Windows Server 2016 + MS SQL + VirtualBox VMs

Billions of USD by RansomeWare… wohooo! The future is here! 😀

First of all i used Acronis since Version 9…10 worked well (for Windows XP…7 onward only).

It was a good idea to have a “recovery” partition and a bootable-restore.iso-cd to boot from. (offline backup and restore)

As often – as market-players monopolize – it becomes all about “sell-sell-sell” and quality and innovation goes down – good software goes bad.

If you go web-gui only – why not include nice learning videos?

You should pay me 1Million$ just for this little innovative idea that this software is currently LACKING.

Even worse: Acronis changes it’s GUI WITH EVERY F**** VERSION!

Why?

Because they want to confuse you – or simply because they want to sell, sell, sell making customers (admins) – need to relearn – relearn – relearn (actually a reason NOT to update) “new” as better… but is it?

NO!

Now with v12 it seems Acronis COMPLETELY switched to Web-based GUI.

That would not be bad if it did not feel “sluggish” ( you CAN NOT UNINSTALL IEXPLORE so per default it will open in Internet Explorer).

By sluggish i mean – you start a backup job manually… and it seems to work… but then the next day you realize – it has not “no license asigned” – why can’t i get those errors IMMEDIATELY? 😀

Also the GUI is a little bit confusing – why do get presented a “CloudStorage login” when i click on the “Backup” button on the left?

… okay it is nice if you offer that service… but why in this confusing “in your face” manner? (and i hope it works well and is not TOO expensive… after all Acronis 12 Server Standard comes already with a hefty price tag of 1000 USD)

it is expensive… another 1000USD for ONE YEAR for 2TByte of Webspace 😀

Did Acronis switch completely from Windows-GUI to Web-GUI in V12?

Yes it seems like it.

This is an advantage when you want to have one code-base and support cross-plattform (OSX, Linux) – and also (seems to be very important nowadays) mobile and “touch friendly” – but then it still needs to be tested massively and work smooth and simple – nowadays JavaScript is simply a unreliable technology. (program inside a program inside a program inside a program… does add up a lot of programming errors :-D)

Acronis 12 Server Standard seems to support Linux LVM

Acronis 12 Server Standard seems to support Linux LVM

I am missing a lot of detail-settings from the Windows GUI.

It is COMPLETELY UNCLEAR how to schedule a backup to a USB Drive – that gets taken home (which is still considered good practice)?

ShadowProtect is a complex but still manageable Windows-only-GUI – hide technical complexity (or at least document it well) – but do not remove detailed options.

And there is also veeam is also said to be very good… but comes with the same expensive price tag of 720 USD…. will there be competition? 😀

Downloads:

Bootable Recovery CD: http://dl2.acronis.com/u/AcronisBackup12/Boot_media.iso

Links:

HELP and Documentation: http://dl.managed-protection.com/u/backup/help/12/user/en-US/index.html#36537.html

https://www.startpage.com/do/search?cmd=process_search&cat=web&query=veeam+vs+acronis&language=english&no_sugg=1&ff=&nj=0&abp=1

Release notes for Acronis Backup 12.5

Release date: May 31, 2017

Build: 7048

Overview

We are happy to introduce Acronis Backup 12.5 – world’s easiest and fastest backup solution for all your data on-premises, in remote systems, in private and public clouds, and on mobile devices. This amazing solution installs in three clicks, protects 15 platforms, encrypts in four standards, backs up and recovers 2x faster than the closest competitor, and is trusted by 500,000 businesses.

Acronis Backup 12.5 is available in two editions: Acronis Backup 12.5 Standard and Acronis Backup 12.5 Advanced.

What’s new in Acronis Backup 12.5

  • Unique! Acronis Active Protection to proactively detect and protect systems from ransomware attacks.
  • Centralized backup policies, static and dynamic groupings, and the ability to manage, delegate, and establish roles for multiple administrators – all to support larger environments and greater volumes of data.
  • Customizable dashboards and advanced reporting for quick insights into your entire IT infrastructure.
  • Unique! Backup of XenServer, Linux KVM, Red Hat Enterprise, Virtualization, and Oracle VM Server for complete protection of any virtual environment.
  • Support for tape drives, autoloaders, and tape libraries for off-site storage to ensure compliance with company regulations.
  • Off-host backup management operations, including staging (moving), replication (copying), validation, and retention (cleanup) of backups.
  • Unified, web-based, touch-friendly, centralized management console to reduce management complexity.
  • Unique! Protection for VMware vSphere ESX(i) and Microsoft Hyper-V hosts and VMs for complete protection of any virtual workload.
  • VMware VM replication with WAN optimization for faster disaster recovery
  • Unique! Acronis Instant Restore (Run Backup as a VM) and vmFlashback for VMware & Hyper-V to reduce recovery time objectives (RTOs).
  • SAN storage snapshots support for VMware backups to reduce ESXi resource utilization.
  • Remote and automated bootable media for significant reduction of the RTO of remote systems and data centers.

Fixed issues

This section describes issues that have been fixed in Acronis Backup 12.5, as compared to Acronis Backup 12 Update 3.

Common

  • [ABR-108446] After upgrading from Acronis Backup 11.5/11.7, the backup plans that replicate backups to two or more locations fail. The problem does not affect backup plans with one additional backup location defined (second destination).
  • [ABR-110899, ABR-108804] Starting a trial is not possible when backing up SQL Server databases.
  • [ABR-110713] Low performance when copying files from a .tib file that is opened via the Windows Explorer shell extension.
  • [ABR-108066] Recovery of physical machine to virtual (P2V) performed by Agent for VMware or Agent for Hyper-V completes successfully, but the activity contains the warning “Failed to get the object’s property ‘ManagedHost’.”
  • [ABR-107545] The message about missing licenses remains on the backup plan creation panel even after adding valid licenses.
  • [ABR-88247] Search by device name on the Activities tab is case-sensitive.

Virtualization

  • [ABR-111052] Backing up a VMware vSphere 6.5 virtual machine with an NVMe controller fails. The following error appears: “You do not have access rights to this file.”
  • [ABR-117801] After recovering a virtual machine with the PVRDMA network adapter to a new virtual machine, the recovered virtual machine has the VMXNET3 network adapter.
  • [ABR-119508] After replicating to an existing encrypted virtual machine, the replicated virtual machine cannot be powered on. The following error appears: “Module ‘Nvman’ power on failed.”
  • [ABR-119529] VMware vSphere 6.5 virtual machines that reside on VMFS 6.0 datastores cannot be backed up by using the SAN transport mode.
  • [ABR-104133] Email notification options are missing when creating a VM replication plan.
  • [ABR-90170] Backup activities may not be shown when you select a virtual machine and click Activities.

Application support

  • [ABR-104004] A contact name is shown twice in “Business address”, when browsing Exchange mailbox items in a database backup.
  • [ABR-102816] Acronis Management Server consumes excessive amount of RAM during recovery of large number of Exchange mailboxes (200+).

Known issues

This section describes issues that are currently known and provides solutions to avoid the issues where possible.

Installation and upgrade

IMPORTANT:
Acronis Backup 12.5 can upgrade Acronis Backup 11.5, 11.7, and 12. If you start the Acronis Backup 12.5 setup program on a machine running Acronis Backup 12 Beta, you will be prompted to uninstall the Beta product to continue installation. For more information about the upgrade procedure, refer to the following Acronis Knowledge Base article: https://kb.acronis.com/content/59801

  • [ABR-131502] Backup to a managed location fails after upgrade from Acronis Backup 11.7 if the archive is encrypted.

    Solution: Delete the managed location on the Backups tab and re-add the location.

  • [ABR-131343] After upgrading from Acronis Backup 11.5/11.7, the user cannot open or mount an archive file in Windows Explorer.
  • [ABR-131165] Simultaneous upgrade of multiple Virtual Appliances in the backup console from version 11.5/11.7 to version 12.5 may hang.

    Solution: update Virtual Appliances one by one.

  • [ABR-130913] After upgrading from Acronis Backup 11.5/11.7, the default e-mail notification settings are not preserved.

    Solution: Open the backup console at Settings > System settings > Email server and configure email notification settings.

  • [ABR-130739] After upgrading from Acronis Backup 11.5/11.7 Advanced, dynamic groups of machines created according to the Organizational unit criterion are converted into static groups. Resources are not added to such groups. These groups appear under Devices > Machines with agents.
  • [ABR-130409] A machine may not appear on the Devices tab after Acronis Backup agent installation if the Acronis Backup Management Server host name cannot be resolved to IP from the machine where the agent is installed. The following error message appears in the installation log: “Could not resolve host: [HOSTNAME]; Host not found”.

    Solution: Ensure that the management server is accessible by its host name from the machine with the agent.

  • [ABR-130294] Updating or upgrading Agent for VMware (Virtual Appliance) that was encrypted by using vSphere 6.5 encryption fails. The following error appears: “An encrypted virtual disk device requires an encrypted virtual machine.”

    Solution: Decrypt the appliance before update or upgrade.

  • [ABR-122292] Recovering from Microsoft Exchange CDP archives that were created by Acronis Backup 11.5 / 11.7 fails. The following error appears: “The operation is not supported.”
  • [ABR-118182] In some cases, installation may hang at 96% for an period of time up to 10-20 minutes because of the Microsoft.VC90.CRT runtime package installation. The main symptom is the Windows Modules Installer (TiWorker.exe) process constantly consuming CPU resources.

Common

  • [ABR-131366] If a backup file is stored on a FAT32 volume, the backup file size is not reduced after executing retention rules.
  • [ABR-131204] When backing up to a USB flash drive on a machine running Mac OS X and by using the Version 12 backup format, the backup operation may fail.. The following error appears: “Enumerator returned empty archive.”

    Solution: Re-create the backup plan, with the Backup options > Backup format option set to Version 11.

  • [ABR-130709] If Acronis Backup Management Server host name cannot be resolved to IP from the machine where the agent is installed, backup plan execution may fail. The following error appears: “Cannot check the license due to a connection issue with the management server.”

    Solution: Ensure that the management server is accessible by its host name from the machine with the agent.

  • [ABR-130477] Backing up to Acronis Cloud Storage fails and does not re-try properly when the computer loses connection to a selected Wi-Fi network and connects to a different Wi-Fi network.

    Solution: Restart the backup plan for the specific machine.

  • [ABR-130115] Conversion of a BIOS-based operating system to UEFI is not performed when using the backup console to recover a machine to dissimilar hardware.

    Solution: Recover the BIOS-based operating system to UEFI under Acronis Backup bootable media.

  • [ABR-128477] Backup to a network share by using the Version 12 backup format may fail with the “Input/output error” error message, if the connection to the share is lost and then is restored during the operation.

    Solution: Re-create the backup plan, with the Backup options > Backup format option set to Version 11.

  • [ABR-128209] After unmounting a volume mounted from a backup in the read/write mode, a new recovery point is added, even if the mounted volume was not modified. The root cause is that Windows automatically discovers newly appeared volumes and applies metadata changes to them, which forces Acronis Backup 12.5 to preserve these changes in a new recovery point during unmounting.
  • [ABR-127363] The cleanup rule By total size of backups is not available in the backup console if the backup destination is Acronis Cloud Storage.
  • [ABR-126042] The backup validation activity shows an incorrect progress indicator.
  • [ABR-125700] Enabling an SSL-secured connection to the backup console as described in https://kb.acronis.com/content/58130 does not work.
  • [ABR-124845] Although it is possible to set a backup schedule by events and conditions in a backup plan applied to machines running OS X, Agent for Mac does not perform backup according to such schedule.
  • [ABR-121569] The backup splitting option is not applied when the backup format is set to Version 12.

    Solution: Re-create the backup plan, with the Backup options > Backup format option set to Version 11.

  • [ABR-121236] Exporting multiple plans from the Plans tab does not work.

    Solution: Export plans one by one.

  • [ABR-111624] When creating bootable media in OS X 10.8-10.10, Acronis components fail to start. The following error appears: “Code signature invalid.”
  • [ABR-109012] After deleting resources like virtual machines or mailboxes, a backup plan applied to these resources continue to run and finish with the following warning: “GXT: The item provider has skipped the report of an item with key.”

    Solution: Edit the backup plan from the Plans tab and remove the deleted resources from it.

  • [ABR-104297] When opening the backup console in the Edge browser on a machine running Windows 10, the following error message may appear: “Can’t reach this page.” This error message appears when the URL contains the host name of the machine running the management server.

    Solution: Instead of the management server host name, use its IP address or “localhost” (if the management server is installed on the same machine).

  • [ABR-68302] The backup replication progress is not properly displayed in the Status column on the Devices tab for the machine that performs the task.

Roles and units management

  • [ABR-124308] When installing a backup agent or Acronis Storage Node, the list of units is not sorted on the Select unit dialog.

Dashboard, reports and alerting

  • [ABR-131473] All storage-related widgets show incorrect information about backup locations managed by Acronis Storage Node: the values of the Backups and Other files fields are swapped with each other.
  • [ABR-122810] Alerts generated upon plan execution failure are not displayed on the Alerts tab for plans other than backup plans. The issue affects separate Validation, Backup replication and Conversion to VM plans.
  • [ABR-121244] When a virtual machine backup fails and then completes successfully on subsequent run, the Activity failed alert is preserved and is not canceled automatically. This issue affects only backup plans that include more than one virtual machine.

Active Protection

  • [ABR-129451] An Active Protection plan applied to an empty static group is not applied to machines that are added to this group later.

    Solution: Select the static group, revoke the Active Protection plan, and then apply the plan again.

Acronis Notary (ASign)

  • [ABR-129554] Files from encrypted backups located in Acronis Cloud Storage cannot be signed with the Sign this file version command.

Acronis Storage Node and data catalog

IMPORTANT:
Installation notes: Agent for Windows is always installed with Acronis Storage Node. The agent is required to browse the location contents.

  • [ABR-129426] Windows User Account Control (UAC) must be disabled on a machine where Acronis Storage Node is running. With UAC enabled, backups to the storage node fail. The following error appears: “Failed to establish connection using the specified credentials. If you are trying to connect to a managed machine, use the credentials of an ‘Acronis Remote Users’ security group member. To connect to a management server installed locally, use the credentials of an ‘Acronis Centralized Admins’ security group member. For remote connection to a management server, use the credentials of an account that is a member of both these security groups.”

    Solution: Disable Windows User Account Control by setting the EnableLUA registry value setting to 0 in the following registry key: HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Policies\System, and rebooting the machine.

  • [ABR-128626] Data catalog cannot be enabled for managed locations created on tape devices.
  • [ABR-124502; ABR-125876] Backup to a managed location fails if the backup agent is unable to resolve the DNS name of the machine where the storage node is installed. The following error is displayed: “The credentials for ‘bsp://ASN/LocationName’ are incorrect.” The following error may also appear on during the backup plan creation: “Could not resolve host: Name or service not known.”

    Solution: Ensure proper name resolution of the machine with the storage node from backup agents, by configuring the DNS server settings.

Virtualization

  • [ABR-130030] Conversion of a backup into a Hyper-V virtual machine fails if the backup is created by using direct volumes selection. The following error appears: “No free space.”

    Solution: Instead of separate disks or volumes, select the entire machine for backup.

  • [ABR-129688] An ESXi virtual machine converted from a backup of a Linux machine created by Agent for Linux may not start on an ESXi host due to an incorrect “Guest OS” property set to “Other Linux (32-bit)”.

    Solution: Edit the virtual machine settings via the vSphere client and adjust the Guest Operating System property to match the recovered system guest OS.

  • [ABR-126058] ESXi host devices cannot be added to a group: the Add to group command is unavailable.
  • [ABR-125939] After Agent for Hyper-V is installed, virtual machines from the Hyper-V host may appear on the Devices tab in the backup console with a 10-minute delay.
  • [ABR-125426] Canceling a running activity, like a virtual machine recovery, validation plan execution, or replication plan execution may fail. The following error appears: “An activity with ID = ‘[ID]’ cannot be found.”
  • [ABR-123601] After migrating a virtual machine within the vSphere vCenter environment, the machine remains bound to Agent for VMware running on the source ESXi host instead of becoming bound to the agent on the target ESXi host, even if automatic binding is enabled for this virtual machine.
  • [ABR-121704] The backup percentage status in the Status column on the Devices tab may show invalid percentage (>100%) when backing up more than one virtual machine in a single backup plan and when the backup is performed by Agent for VMware (Windows).
  • [ABR-120840] ESXi host configuration backups ignore the GFS and Custom backup schemes selected in the backup plan. As a result, full backups are created instead of incremental and differential ones.
  • [ABR-118715] VMware vSphere virtual machine backup may fail if names of the ESXi hosts registered in vCenter cannot be resolved to IP addresses by Acronis Backup agent (Virtual Appliance or Windows agent), even if the vCenter host name can be resolved properly. The following error appears: “You do not have access rights to this file.”

    Solution: Configure network settings at the Acronis Backup agent, by configuring the DNS or modifying the /etc/hosts file, to allow name resolution to work properly. To verify if the ESXi host can be resolved, run the following command on the machine with the backup agent: ping <ESXi host name>.

  • [ABR-111468] Duplicate recovery points are shown for a Hyper-V virtual machine that was migrated within a Hyper-V cluster.

    Solution: Refresh the list of recovery points for this machine.

  • [ABR-104538] It is not possible to use Agent for VMware (Windows) if Acronis Backup Management Server is installed on a machine running Linux.

    Solution: Either install Acronis Backup Management Server on a machine running Windows or use Agent for VMware (Virtual Appliance).

  • [ABR-96496] Acronis Backup Agent for VMware (Windows) disables Windows NFS server functions when installed on Windows Server 2012, due to the ports conflict.

    Solution: Deploy Agent for VMware (Virtual Appliance) to the target ESX host or install Agent for VMware (Windows) on another machine with the NFS server functionality disabled.

Tape management

  • [ABR-129546] Recovery points in tape-based locations do not appear for the protected machines on the Recovery tab in the Devices list) if the tape database was lost and a rescan operation was performed.

    Solution: Browse the backups on tapes by using the Backups tab of the backup console interface.

  • [ABR-128092] The error message “Input/output error” is unclear in the following situation: a backup to tapes fails because there are no tapes in the Free tapes pool and the Backup options > Backup format option is set to Version 12.
  • [ABR-123328] The backup option Use a separate tape set for each: Backup type is not activated by default during the backup plan creation, if the user first chooses the GFS backup scheme, and then selects the tape destination.

    Solution: Enable this option manually in Backup options.

Application support

  • [ABR-129938] Acronis Managed Machine service may not stop properly on a machine running Microsoft Exchange.
  • [ABR-122309; ABR-127970] The information about application items is missing from the data catalog.
  • [ABR-120853] Recovering Microsoft Exchange 2007 mailboxes fails if the target Microsoft Exchange version is 2010 or higher. The following error appears: “An invalid type of the target URI.”

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