initial seeding for vmprotect

Hi Aldous,

Currently there is no Initial Seeding for vmProtect Online. This feature is planned for future version only (likely in 9th version). As of right now it is only possible to back up to online directly without seeding the backup first. Note that you can minimize the impact on the VMs (reduce the snapshot holding time) by utilizing dual-destination feature (backup to 2nd location, where 2nd destination is online storage).

Thank you.
--
Best regards,
Vasily
Acronis vmProtect Program Manager

Hi Vasily,

Thank you for the information. I still have two more questions:

1. by any chance the "Large Scale Recovery" is available for vmprotect 8 customer?

2. When I run the "Backup Solution Wizard" from Acronis web site, I was suggested by the wizard to purchase "Acronis Backup & Recovery® Online Initial Seeding up to 2TB". Why?

Thanks,
Aldous

Hi Aldous,

1. The "Large Scale Recovery" feature always comes in pair with "Initial Seeding" one so it will also be available in vmProtect 9 (likely) version. Right now with 8th version I'm afraid there is no such option.
2. Thank you for the report - I've checked the web site and indeed there is Initial Seeding suggested erroneously which means that it's a problem with the web site logics. I have reported it to our web masters and we will correct this wizard to ensure there is no such misleading information any more.

EDIT: as far as I have checked with our web masters there will be a new version of Acronis Backup Wizard installed this Friday onto the web site where the problem should be gone.

Thank you.
--
Best regards,
Vasily
Acronis vmProtect Program Manager

So, if the Large Scale Recovery not available, the Online storages seem to be useless for disaster situation because downloading from online will be very time consuming. Do you have any ETA on Vmprotect 9? I need to think again about purchasing the online storage if the ETA is too long.

Thanks :-(

Hi Aldous,

The 9th version is currently being developed and should come this year (2013), though I cannot say the exact date at the moment it is likely to be several months from now. And again - there are no yet guarantees that we include Initial Seeding/Large Scale Recovery into this version (it's likely, but not guaranteed at the moment).

I'd used online storage only as secondary backup location, where outdated backups are stored for long-term usage. For disaster in any case it is much faster to use backup stored locally (on NAS for example). Also note that in vmProtect 8 there is an "Incremental restore" (aka "vmFlashback") feature which allows to recover only changed sectors and thus if the original VM is still present recovery of its older version even from online storage will be much faster than usual restore.

Thank you.
--
Best regards,
Vasily
Acronis vmProtect Program Manager

Hi Vasily,

Thank for the info. I hope that it will be added to your next version. :-(

The company using Online storage as off site backup. In case of a total disaster such as losing the datacenter completely, there won't be any backup available locally. Then, full restore from the backup storing off site will be the only option. That's why the Large Scale Recovery is very important. Initial seeding can be overcome by taking more time to do the first backup but recovery has no alternative (recovery time is the most important thing for a company at any time). That's why it is a concern for me. If I knew this is not available, I would have the company to select different product. Anyway, it is too late. While I'm disappointed with this, I'm still happy with the product itself with respect to the low pricing.

Aldous

Hi Vasily,

To add to Aldous Leung's comments, I too thought that vmProtect supported the Seeding and Large Scale Recovery options. I'm glad that I now know the correct information, as it would have been disasterous to find out in a recovery scenario.

The website information is very unclear on this matter - I think that something along the lines of "WARNING: Online Seeding and Large Scale Recovery are NOT available with vpProtect 8" should be on every page relating to vmProtect and Online Backup.

Again, I'm very happy with vmProtect itself, but the Online Backup service seems to have a few major flaws.

Andrew

Yes - it turns out that Acronis is quite misleading about this. We are resellers and even became confused to by the pricing sheet - to the point of selling initial seeding to a client. It makes NO SENSE to me that a company which has Initial Seeding for DESKTOP products and every imaginable other configuration can't fix this. It's disheartening to see that some of these posts are so old.

Also, be aware - YOU CANNOT run local jobs to other storage devices while trying to run your 800GB "backup to online" job! No concurrent jobs!

Hi Bob,

You are correct - Initial Seeding/Large Scale Recovery is currently only available for Acronis Backup and Recovery (ABR) product line (including destkop solution, i.e. Workstation edition). There are many reasons behind this coming mainly from difference in ABR vs vmProtect platforms (plus absence of website logics, licensing handling, absence of support for Initial Seeding archive format in vmProtect, etc. etc.).

As far as I have checked right now there are no references to these features on vmProtect-related pages on our website, but if you notice that there is still any misleading information please let me know so that we can fix that.

Also note that you cannot back up the same VM concurrently to different locations at the same time - that's why there is dual-destination feature included which allows transferring backups to online (or any other supported storage) without affecting the source VM. The 2nd destination task runs independently from the primary destination one and therefore you can back up the VM to local storage, while at the same time the recovery points will be transferred to online in background.

Thank you.
--
Best regards,
Vasily
Acronis vmProtect Program Manager

Does this count as misleading?
http://kb.acronis.com/content/36704

I followed the KB article but when I try to do a replication from live site to DR site the replication job tries to create vmname_vmreplica_1 instead of updating the vmname_replica like what is described in the KB article.

Does this count as misleading?
http://kb.acronis.com/content/36704

I followed the KB article but when I try to do a replication from live site to DR site the replication job tries to create vmname_vmreplica_1 instead of updating the vmname_replica like what is described in the KB article.

Hi 4evernoob,

This thread is dedicated to another type of "seeding" - it's about seeding of backups to online storage.

What concerns your question (about seeding of replica VMs) - most likely you have either not added the .vmx file into inventory after migration or copied not all the files. Note that it is important to copy _all_ the files from the local datastore manually over to DR site. I.e. exporting/importing replica into .ovf won't do the trick. The instructions overall in the article are correct (and I've tested them myself before publishing it, so it must work :)).

Thank you.
--
Best regards,
Vasily
Acronis vmProtect Program Manager

No what I have most likely done is followed that kb article exactly. Your reply suggest that I could not even do the very simple 6 steps. I assure you it was done the way it is layed out in the kb. Whats happening now when I start step 6 it creates a new replication vm and appends an _1 to the vmname and directory and starts a fresh replication across the wire and to add insult to injury it deletes all the files from the virtual machine I uploaded except for the test_meta.info file.

Hi,

I have just verified the steps from the article on my ESXi host and it works properly at least with 8184 build, so in general the instructions are correct ones, and there must be some specific in the way you perform the migration.

The _1 is added to replica name (vmname_vmpreplica_1 for example) under the following conditions:

1) The "vmname_vmpreplica" folder already exists on the selected target datastore
AND
2) The .vmx inside this folder does not contain "acronisTag.SourceMachine" property OR this property value (for example "522b404d-0df4-537a-5a30-6399c7c64efe") does not match the InstanceUUID value of the VM that is being replicated (the source one). Note that if the acronisTag.xxx properties are missing after you add the exported replica VM into inventory after copying it onto the target datastore, this means that most likely exporting was done improperly (via .ovf instead of simple datastore download).

In other words for proper detection of the replica (for updating it incrementally) it is crucial that the .vmx of the replica contains proper values/flags.

Another possible reason for such behavior is that you uploaded the folder containing exported replica not under the root of the datastore (into subfolder). OR the resource pool settings specified on the 3rd step of the Replication wizard do not match the actual migrated replica location on the target ESXi host (when I just tried it - I've imported the copied replica VM into the root resource pool while adding it to inventory).

Thank you.
--
Best regards,
Vasily
Acronis vmProtect Program Manager