Acronis Backup: Backup Did Not Start

Hi Chris,

There is a known issue (internal ID: ABR-125857) that the "Backup didn't start" alert is improperly triggered under the following conditions:

• You're backing up multiple (>2) VMs in a single backup plan
• The simultaneous VM backup setting is left default (2)
• The backup of the first 2 VMs doesn't finish within some period (which varies from 10 minutes to 2 hours)

What happens is while the first 2 VMs are being backed up, the remaining ones are put into queue. If they stay in this queue for more than 2 hours then the system concludes that backup for these remaining VMs didn't start as scheduled and thus triggers the alert. The problem is that the alert doesn't take into account the fact that the VMs will be backed up once their turn comes. Note that despite the alert all the VMs should be backed up properly.

The possible workaround is to increase the simultaneous VM backup limit in the backup options (increase from default 2), or reduce the number of VMs processed within a single backup plan:

Thank you.

Thank you Vasily I will give that and try and report back the result.

Chris

This is not working for me. Acronis support team told me that will be resolved at next build. The backup starts again after 3 hours after the error and completes successfully.

New build has not released yet but trying to do some tests, I deleted and reinstalled all agents for vmware and after that procedure I noticed that backup schedules works correctly....

Same problem on my end.  Only 3 devices can be backup by the same plan.  I have tried different options with the scheduling,  but always fails.  I have a plan with 10 servers,  not feasible to have it split in 3 devices per jobs. 

Any news on a patch or new build?

7970 seems to have re-introduced this bug. It had been fixed for me in 7641, but its back again. I may just try to roll back for the time being to 7641 using a snapshot I created before upgrading. This has been quite the nuisance for one of my clients.

Same problem with my Acronis & VMware. Every VM has separate plan with 15 min step (that more than enough, because manually started backup finishes in 3-5minutes) and different names.

"The backup did not start as scheduled for an unknown reason." then after 13 hours completes successfully. I've checked system time on VMs, VMware, Acronis - time is similar.

1. Tried to disable all plans except one - nothing. Same error and 1 successful backup on next morning even plan scheduled to 5pm today

2 Tried to delete plans, delete backups, delete all vmware cluster from Acronis management, then recreate virtual appliances hosts (for 3 vmware servers in cluster), restarted backup server - the same story. After adding fresh deployed VA hosts, Acronis attached some existing plans to VMs even if it's not required.
Looks like Acronis doesn't clear all information when you delete connection to vmware.

Second problem​​, if I deleted plan, deleted backups related to this plan via Acronis Management (checked that it's permanently deleted in windows explorer), then create plan with new name and manually started vm backup - Acronis creates 2 backups in 2 different folders: with old name plan and new name plan. But old name plan is not in list of plans. How to deal with it?

HyperV and physical servers backed up normally.

Web console service: v.12.5.3255

Backup management server: v.12.5.7970

Backup management console: v.12.5.2058

@Sys Note,

From your description it looks like that the "alert" problem is not related to known bug (internal ID: ABR-125857) which I mentioned above, since your setup does not involve running multiple tasks in parallel, so the root cause must be different. Your case therefore should be investigated with help from our support team.

>> After adding fresh deployed VA hosts, Acronis attached some existing plans to VMs even if it's not required.

The plans are applied to VMs basing on their "InstanceUUID" property retrieved from vSphere, so re-installation of an agent or re-connecting it to vSphere will preserve the plans mapping - this is a normal behavior.

>> Acronis creates 2 backups in 2 different folders: with old name plan and new name plan. But old name plan is not in list of plans. How to deal with it?

This behavior is likely related to the root cause of the original alert issue. From your description it looks like there is some kind of hidden scheduled plan on the management server. This problem should also be investigated with help from our support team.

Thank you.

Hi Vasily, 
Thank you for response.
I spend whole day but found a solution:
In some steps I followed this instruction https://forum.acronis.com/forum/acronis-backup-125/how-clean-dashboard-…

1) Deleted 3 VA agents in Acronis Backup (for 3 hosts in vmware cluster)
2) Shut down and deleted VA vm's in Vmware
3) Stopped Monitoring service on server where AB running
4) Renamed folder as in instruction
5) Started monitoring service
6) Added Vmware host to AB and deployed 3 VAs on ESXi
7) Registered VAs on AB server with proper credentials
8) Created plans for every VM with different time and name
9) Changed backup settings for every created backup (Backup options->Scheduling->Start all backups exactly as scheduled). I used this option before, but with no luck, backups at that time started with delay in hours

And now it works, every vmware vm's backup started in scheduled time and AB doesn't show any other backup folder created by hidden/deleted backup plan, I'm sure steps 3-5 solved it.

Hope this temporarily solution will help to others.

Another solution related to this issue, that completely resolved it 
https://forum.acronis.com/comment/447133#comment-447133

in two words: "Check ntp settings and sync time on all Acronis agents and Vmware hosts"