Acronis Backup Wishlist

Where do I start!

1) Support for HP embedded Array controller B110i in bootable media. People have been requesting it since 2011!

2) For handling of RDX drives to be fixed, esp when making duplicate backups. Been asking for this since 2011 too. Keep getting promises but no action. Months ago I was promised a new build to fix this but still waiting.

3) Option to turn on real time verbose error reporting in bootable media, i.e logging of unreadable sectors as they occur and option to save log file.

4) Backup manager. Much better tools to manage cataloging and manually remove backups, i.e. use XMLlog files on each drive to manually delete backups and keep the XML files in sync.

5) Better disk cleanup handling (i.e. when deleting oldest backups to make room for a new one). Again does not work on RDX drives. This is rediculous. This is the one thing you want to do, i.e. make an off-site copy of your backup to a removable media. This has never worked properly since B&R10 and still doesn't in the latest version.

Acronis! Please start listening to your customers and partners get your act together before it is too late. You competition is increasing and I'm now hearing of lots of people getting fed up waiting, not getting adequate support and jumping ship to other products. As for Acronis TI 2013/14 words fail me. You have managed to take a world beating, well thought out, intuitive product and completely ruin it. Dreadful user interface.

You have probably detected by now that as a long time user and promoter of Acronis backup products, I am a bit frustrated with you at the moment!

Hi, Martin!

thank you for your feedback! Much appreciated!

Good Day,

Re: Acronis Backup 11.5 for PC

Could Acronis Tech Support please tell me when the ability to Clone GPT drives will be added to Acronis Backup 11.5 for PC?

The inability to Clone GPT drives is a Major weakness/deficiency in Acronis Backup 11.5 for PC.

Thank you Very Much,
George

Hello George,

Thank you for your feedback. I can't promise anything specific because this feature is a lower priority (our data shows that cloning is not something a lot of people use).

On the one hand, cloning is conceptually easy to use. On the other hand, an image backup+restore gives you the same exact result, but with a whole lot more flexibility. The backup+restore process is also what I would personally recommend.

With this in mind could you explain why you consider lack of GPT disk cloning a major deficiency? What is your usage scenario for cloning and why do you prefer it over a backup+restore operation?

Thank you!

Good Day Igor,

Here are some of the reasons why lack of GPT disk cloning is a major deficiency and weakness:

(1). Acronis Backup 11.5 for PC can Clone MBR drives, but NOT GPT drives.
=> Incomplete product that has not kept up with newer technology.

(2). Doing a Clone by first doing a Backup, and then Recovering that Backup more than doubles the time & effort needed.
Also means that have to store and document that backup => Increased work, effort and storage.

(3). I thought Acronis Backup was meant to be a complete up to date solution, but it is NOT.
Please note than even Acronis True Image 2015 can Clone GPT drives.

(4). Without the capability to Clone GPT drives, we have stopped recommending it to our clients.
As cloning is needed for "Hot Recovery" procedures.

Thank you Very Much,
George

Further to my previous post in this thread of 18th June 2014, I can confirm that support for the HP B110i RAID controller was added to the Linux boot CD in a more recent build. Thanks you for that Acronis. I had been working round it by building a WinPE based boot CD with all the HP RAID drivers added.

However, I am still waiting regarding the other issues raised the most important of which are the issues with the handling of RDX drives and backup clean-up functions.

As before, absolutely no response from Acronis on this.

Regards

Martin

Hello Martin,

I just want to reassure you that we definitely collect and take into account all the feedback provided here and elsewhere.

That said, we usually can't promise anything specific for a release or update of the product unless this feature is already finished, tested and planned to be included in the next update. Sometimes this has to do with the fact that it would be impossible to improve a certain function without redoing it from scratch (which is expensive to do in a minor update), like the current handling of RDX drives.

Even then, this is never set in stone because the decision to improve something heavily depends on the number of requests we receive from our customers.

So I would encourage anyone who has an idea or wish for an improvement to reach out to us.

Good Day Igor,

Any feedback and/or acknowledgement for my previous post?

Thank you,
George

Hi George,
thank you for your postings!
Please be sure that your feedback is registered in our Customer Listening System and will be taken into account by working on further product versions.
Best regards,

Hi,

I would like to have the option to configure which subnet/network card  the agent has to use for the backup and for the communication with the storage node.

Kind regards,

Dave

Thank you, D T! I've registered your suggestion in our internal system, so that the product managers can consider.

Hello Dave, 

This functionality is on our roadmap for a future release of Acronis Backup 12.

Thank you.

Thank you for the info and getting this functionality in a future release of Acronis Backup 12

In the case of a deduplicated storage vault along with a tape vault, the ability to "export" deduplicated backups (of server(s)) from a previous point in the past to the tape vault.

I went through an corporate audit recently and they needed a backup of two of my servers from a month ago.  In order to comply with their request, I was forced to give them a month end backup tape which included information they didn't request, and shouldn't have access.

More to the Audit point, many more of us are going through low-level and high-level audits.  It might be nice to request from the user community their experiences with audits and build disaster recovery recommendations built around how IT Professionals are Audited in today's economic environment.

BTW . .  . the Tape the corporate Auditors required me to hand over, was lost.  The traceability documentation was "conveniently" lost with it.  Guess who's at fault?

Me in $hIT

Along with DT's request . . . 

I firmly Second this off-loading of network operations to other nic(s).  This has been a feature of many of the main-stays in the industry for over a decade.

From my experience with the Acronis Products and the support options . . . there is something very important missing.

Descriptive Errors and lack of community interaction in addressing such errors.

The user community has a great deal of experience to offer.  And the users within the community know their environments better than anyone else.  It is nice to have Acronis Support Technicians "fix" our issues for us, but Acronis support is not always timely. . . as I am one Network Admin for multiple sites in the Western Hemisphere running Acronis Disaster Recovery Advanced 11.7, I have little time to wait for issues to get resolved.  I run through all the trouble-shooting steps, myself, before I call Support.

More generic error codes with a trouble-shooting process tree would be a great place to start. I would go even further and create forum post of issues as they arise, and the process followed to come to a successful resolution.  I have not seen much of this in the forums.  I often see a comment of how support was contacted following an issue. .  then nothing more.

The KB articles I follow are what the Support Technicians seem to follow, but I don't necessarily know what errors, or no errors (in many of my cases) mean.  I also don't have an easy way to know where to look in the logs for such results for the function I am trying to track.

One of my many roles in my IT career has been one of Disaster Recovery Planning.  My DR plans are based history, criminality and culpability.  As such, I review not only events my company has bumped into, but my colleagues and those in forums.

With Descriptive Errors there is less down time of the application, less likelihood of lost data.  Many of us have chosen the Acronis Product based upon a solid history.  Enabling the user community to do the initial steps of the trouble-shooting process will greatly increase the stability of Acronis Products.  It will also increase the knowledge base of the Acronis Support Technicians.

In boot cd, the default choice is "boot OS". It's generally a safe thing, but it would be better if during CD creation it was possible to tune it.

It would be good if it's possible to choose the default behaviour of the CD we are creating.

Please kindly let me inquire about about these two improvements suggested above quite some time ago :)

2) For handling of RDX drives to be fixed, esp when making duplicate backups. Been asking for this since 2011 too. Keep getting promises but no action. Months ago I was promised a new build to fix this but still waiting.

[...]

5) Better disk cleanup handling (i.e. when deleting oldest backups to make room for a new one). Again does not work on RDX drives. This is rediculous. This is the one thing you want to do, i.e. make an off-site copy of your backup to a removable media. This has never worked properly since B&R10 and still doesn't in the latest version.

Is backing up to removable RDX drives and cleaning old backups on the
removable cartridges supposed to be working 100% by now ?

Right now, we are using Acronis Backup 12.5 Update 2 HF2.

Just curious, because I was under the impression that there are still some
hiccups when performing cleanup operations.

So, are there still any known bugs / lacking features in 2018 concerning
removable (RDX) drives?
 

Thanks :)

I have several wishes :

1) Wake-On Lan
Please bring this feature back.
Honestly spoken I cannot understand the product management to remove this feature.

2) Commands after backup - execution vene in case of errors
The "command after backup" is NOT (!!) executed if a backup fails.
This become critical if teh "command before backup" is used to lock a database.....
In this case the database stays locked and the next working day is a big surprise for me as admin as all users call me "the system does not work...".
So it would be very helpful if I can decide whether I want to execute a command even in case uf failure.

3) Command "really at the end"
It would be great to have a command that is executed after all steps that are contained in a plan.
The problem for me is, that the "command after backup" is executed right in the moment when the backup is done.
All replication and validation steps come afterwards....
So how can I shutdown the machine?
If I define a timeout and the plan is not finished....hmmm the backup fails....so this is no option as I cannot predict the necessary time precisely (it depends on how many backups are running, the speed of the off-site connection ...)
If there is a way to detect the end of the plan execution please give me a hint.

4) Differences to default settings
Version 11.7 showed the differrences between the curtrent plan settings an the default settings.
This was very helpful and now is gone in 12.5.

5) Folder in storage location backup name
It would be helpful if I could specify a folder ina plan where the archive is stored.

6) Dashboard cleanup
Currently the dashboard seems to act like "data in and never forget"....
In my dashboard there are plans that exists no more....backups that have been removed since weeks....wrong sizes of backups.
Please give the user a method to rebuild the database or remove outdated entries.

Regards

Sven

1) Access to a web API so we can query, create, execute and delete machines, activities, etc. No acrocmd, no crazy python scripts, just a simple web API that can do things like add/delete a machine, run a backup job, convert a backup to VM etc. I know the web API already exists as it seems ABR uses it internally. Just clean it up and make it available to customers.

2) Recovery to VM a) ability to choose which acronis virtual appliance will be used to perform the conversion b) allow resizing of destination disks c) allow VMWare storage cluster to be targeted vs individual datastores for new VM creation in recovery.

3) More description and admin visibility into storage nodes w/deduplication. I have no idea which PCs/files are driving up my storage blob constantly higher and why. If I knew a little more, I could police the PCs backing up to keep the storage size smaller.

Thanks

- Change SID Option for Remote Restore via Recovery Media using the Backup Management Console

Many Thanks

-- Please more and better INFORMATION in tasks/process of acronis 12.5

The task/process information in backup 11.7 was much better then today in 12.5
- Backup resolving process >activity: backup deleted   >>which of my tousand backupfiles? which server? which backup? which date?
- cataloging process >activity: data cataloging x% >> how many was allready done, how many are still open? which backup/file is cataloging at the moment?
general, much, much, much more useful information.

--function to delete old acronis license, not only import

--function to abort hanging backup job, that realy work

--possibility to insert software timeout manualy  >backup task, backup client. At the moment it's possible to edit the .config files on acronis, but it will be overwritten by update.

thanks Acronis!
that one of my wishes came true :-)   -> the wishlist

Hello OHG Administrator,

Thank you for the posting!

I am really sorry that we were not able to get this feature in our earlier updates of Acronis Backup 12/12.5. The good news is that support of removable devices has already been added to our roadmap, the feature number is ABR-116690. This is also one of the most common feature requests, however I do not have any ETA from the team behind it. The work is still in progress so I suppose it will be added to one of the next updates.

If you have any other suggestions, feel free to post them here.

Hello SvenT,

Thank you for your posting! I truly appreciate your suggestions on helping us improve the product.

1. Wake-on-lan

The feature number is ABR-122336, we are working on it implementation, we have received quite a lot of Customer requests on it, so I think the feature will be released soon.

2. Commands after backup - execution vene in case of errors

I see what you mean, implementing this option will eliminate the possibility of downtime for database

 Here is the related request: ABR-63219

3. Command "really at the end"

This should also be a great feature, the request number is ABR-111317. We will enable post commands after all actions for that agent

4.  Differences to default settings

Could you please give more details on this?

5. Folder in storage location backup name

Thanks for the suggestion! Could you please explain in detail the usage scenario?

6. Dashboard cleanup

This one is also one of the most popular requests, the reference number is ABR-111722. We are close to release this feature, and as for now there is a workaround to delete specific entries: https://kb.acronis.com/node/59901

If you have any other suggestions, do not hesitate to contact us again! Thank you for being open with us.

Hello GCM Tech Support,

Thank you for your suggestions.

1. Access to a web API

The reference number is ABR-62289, thank you for explaining how it would help you out. The feature is in the development roadmap, it will be released in one of the next updates.

2. Recover to VM

If I got it right, you are performing conversion to a VM: https://www.acronis.com/en-us/support/documentation/AcronisBackup_12.5/…

In paragraph 6 it states that you can choose an agent to perform conversion. Could you please attach a screenshot illustrating the issue in your environment so that I could find out the root cause? Thank you in advance!

3. More description and admin visibility into storage nodes w/deduplication.

Thank you for the feedback! I will pass it to our development team.

If you have any additional suggestions or wishes, please let me know. Wishing you all the best.

Sven

Hello,

Top of my wishlist for Acronis Backup 12.5 is get rid of that appalling web interface.

Quite simply, i t  d o e s  n o t  w o r k .

I haven't been able to access Acronis 12.5 for two weeks.  I attempt to log in and all I get is a dark blue page and the browser's twirler twirls for ever.  I've tried other browsers (not that I should have to, I got in previously with FireFox and I've not applied any updates since).  If it was at all possible for me to go back to ABR10 that I'd been using quite happily for years I would.  This 12.5 interface is totally broken and utterly useless.  Please get rid of it and give us "proper software" rather than a web page.

Thanks, Mike.

Hello Mike,

First of all, thank you for taking the time to let us know about the issue! I'm really sorry that you're facing such difficulties with access to the web console. The purpose of this change was to make the access easier from any device without the need to install the Acronis components. Have you already contacted our support team? If not, I'd strongly recommend opening a support ticket at https://www.acronis.com/en-us/support/contact-us/ We have a very dedicated team here to help. Please let me know the ticket ID.

Thank you, 

A feature we as a business really need, is the ability for your server products to run multiple backprocesses, so the program can backup several things at the same time and if a process hang, the other backups will still complete.

At the moment we're looking for any alternative we can find sadly, as it is game stopping problem that Acronis is just not reliable. If two backup plans happen to overlap, then I want BOTH to start, not have one stall until the other is done. We can't promise our clients reliability when Acronis behaves like this.

Lets say you have a backup plan for the whole machine. This takes a couple of hours. Now this stalls every backup in those hours not being done when needed.

*

A Better GUI for the bootable media would be great.

The 12.5 one is garbage. Stupid attempt to reinvent something that didn't need revision.

Hello Adam,

could you share more detailed feedback? 

A Better GUI  - what should be changed?

Hi

In short, versions 9,10...even 11 were better from a bootable tool usability point of view.

• Bootable Media Displays Wrong Drive Letters. (I understand this is a linux environment hangup. But it is actually frustrating when training non-tech-savy members of my team to do backups)
• Lots of unnecessary scroll windows just to see the information. (really hard to find the volume/disk check boxes sometimes when the scroll window is so narrow)
• Why do I have to select a backup/restore library location first, and then select the backup. Why can't i just select the backup file directly (ie. unnecessary steps)

I'm sure i'll thing of more. I actually dread using the bootable tool in 12.5

Is trueimage any better? perhaps i should trial that.

Hello Everyone,

If you have time and want to discuss your feedback on usability and UI of Acronis Backup 12.5 directly with Acronis Product Design Team, please refer to https://forum.acronis.com/forum/acronis-backup-125/interview-acronis-product-design-team-interface-and-usability 

Send me your questions, if any. We'll really appreciate your help! 

I'd love to have more control over assigning agents.

For example, we have multiple VMs in ESXi and we have the All-in-One Appliance installed.

Today, I tested installing an additional agent (Agent for VMware) on a Windows system.  The goal here is to speed up the copy and validation portions of the backup task.

[ESXi with VMs and All-in-One Appliance]
[Network]
[Windows System with Agent]
 - [Backups Stored on Windows System RAID Array]
 - [Copy of Backups Stored on Windows System USB 3.0 HDD]

Using the agent from the All-in-One Appliance means that the backup, copy, validation, and validation in second location have to all go over the network.
If I manually assign the agent living on the Windows system to a VM, then the copy and validation tasks for that VM are sped up greatly.  The agent installed on the Windows system) doesn't have to go over the network to perform these tasks.

However, we also replicate these VMs to other hosts in ESXi.  The replication task uses the same assigned agent.  This means if I want to speed up the backups by using the agent on the Windows system, then the replication tasks will also use the agent on the Windows system.

Does this mean the agent will have to go over the network to reach the source host/VM and then go over the network to write the replica VM data to the destination host?

If so, I would like to have the ability to assign agents by plan, not by device.  I would want the replication plans to use the All-in-One Appliance agent, and the Backup plan (including Copy and both Validations) to use the agent installed on the Windows system.

Ideally, the "automatic" assignment selection would handle this, or perhaps even choose a different agent for each task in a given plan.  For example, Backup with one agent based on it being local to the source (in the ESXi stack or on the same host), and Copy and Validate with the other agent based on it being local to the destination.

I understand that you can setup separate tasks for validation in the Advanced version, but if you're assigning agents to devices, wouldn't those validation tasks use the same agent anyway?

Hi.

After several days of AB 12.5 trial, I'm come to mind about tape backups.

As we know, there is no catalog support for tape backup data but it will hard to find specific data for the restore later in many tapes.

So how about add catalog service for tape backup data too or add some kind of folder/file explorer in console to make it easy to find and restore specific file/data among the tapes?

Thanks.

iiykkim,

thank you for your posting! The information about the contents of tapes is stored in a dedicated database, so you can have an overview of all backups stored on all tapes. See https://www.acronis.com/en-us/support/documentation/AcronisBackup_12.5/#38751.html

Brian,

if I understood your use-case correctly, you want to be able to define Agents for specific operations (plans), then this is already possible with Off-host data processing (available in Acronis Backup Advanced only) Open a pic in a new tab for better resolution. 

Hi, thanks for update but I want to comment more about your reply.

As we can see, if I need to restore specific file, let's say I need to restore "A.dat" file which is done backup several months ago in one of tapes, I need open up backup list in console.

And all I can see in backup list in left pane are many dates of backup so I need to click and open/browse each of date that likely exist the "A.dat" backup file.

But if we can browse tape backup list/files like file browser of Windows or other OS then we can easily find and restore the "A.dat" backup file from proper backup tape.

I hope this feature implemented soon in product updates.

Thanks.

Thank you for elaborating on your use-case! I've found this feature request in our internal system (internal ID for reference ABR-128626) and added your comment as a vote for the feature. 

Fix handling storage space out of free space error handling.

First it appears that Acronis doesn't monitor or respect disk space limitations during backup consolidation operations. If your trying to consolidate incremental backups and the disk runs out of free space, acronis just locks up. You have to mannualy stop the services, clear up the full disk issue, then restart the services.

Is it not possible to monitor free space and gracefully end the process? I have been fighting this issue for 9 months with many tickets. I've been promised a solution for the last 3 versions. Still a problem. Having to log in and manually check for issues every day isn't good. If I had the budget, I'd switch to a different product.

1. Management Server - Agent Updates - When multi-selecting clients, allow username in ".\Administrator" notation that replaces the "."(dot) on each item with the specific hostname, rather than assuming the Servers' hostname. Putting the actual hostname\administrator and on 100+ client updates is quite time consuming.
2. Ping and check the clients' MMS.exe Service is running before attempting a scheduled backup. I have some clients that appear 'greyed' when I know they are 'on'. I go to them and need to start the Service periodically.
3. Allow more granular permissions model in Management Server, so I can allow a group of users permission to ONLY recover machine and NOT FULL permissions to delete/change Settings/Vault/Jobs etc.
4. API to interface back end Database so I can interrogate status of machines backups from my own C# application.

Seeing as I'm here I may as well add my own requests.

1) We have just moved to Acronis and I have being going in and out of backup plan configurations repeatedly, organizing backups to two Storage nodes and replications to tape. Having to go into "Edit" mode to see all the plan's configurations then go in and out of "settings" then "Schedule" to match the "weekly" full backup with the schedule and the retention settings takes a lot of patience.
   Perhaps more of the details could be visible directly under "Details" and the "Weekly backup" could especially be there, closer to both schedule and retention.
   
2) I know I can see the backup type (Full, Incremental) for a backup completed under the "Backup" navigation but could it also be visible in reports and a plan's "Activities"?  I want to quickly know that weekly replication plan is going to  copy the a full backup ( the "last backup") to tape rather than an incremental. I could also get an idea on how each full/incremental is going for the past week, etc.

3.1) I also would like to see improvement on backup scheduling. I've had backups sit at 100% for hours while cleanup tasks run (consolidation etc) and other backups for the same client agent remain queued. Surely some of these tasks can be background tasks, visible in the gui but launched by the backup to allow the "backup" to finish and let other plans run.
3.2) Similar for Replications - seems odd the agent on a storage node can handle only one replication at a time. I have 4 tape drives on a library but can run only one replication from each of 2 storage nodes at a time. Does the code for managing the archives need an efficiency review?

Thanks,
Albert

few request:

1. we use Acronis Backup appliance for vmware. We can't find any options to support MS active directory users or LDAP. Therefore, we must use local user (root or create local). We would like to use either LDAP or AD groups/users to provide different access to the backup infrastructures such as Read Only/Admin, etc. 

2. I found that there is no local firewall enabled in Acronis Backup appliance for vmware (both Management server appliance and agent only appliance). I think that security should be one of the most important thing today. I would like to see the appliance being locked down.

3. Also, there is no option to change the default root password when/after deploy the Agent only appliance (vmware). I assume that I still can change it manually in command line but it will be better to force password change during the deployment or having button on GUI to change. This should be part of the locked down as I suggest above.

4. When I enable "application backup" (e.g. AD), acronis automatically try to enable on every VMs (device) in the same plan and giving warning/error to those not running the related application (e.g. non AD). I would like to see if there is option while setting up the backup plan to select only the VM which require "application backup" enabled. 

5. It will be nice if there is credentials management. therefore, whenever create plan/location, we can select predefined user/password

Thanks,

Aldous

Westcana hello. 

Thank you for your posting! As I understand, you are referring to the case 03418032 “Backup ignoring "How much to keep" settings”. This looks like a technical issue. As far as I checked your settings, the backups should be deleted when 1,56 TB is reached, but for some reason, it doesn’t happen. I would suggest you contacting Acronis support to continue working on that issue.

We have also received a request to add a retention rule option "When there is insufficient space while backing up" (internal feature request ID ABR-122514). This feature means that the archive will be cleaned up only during backup and only if there is not enough space to create a new backup. I will add one more vote to the feature request.

Hello Steve,

Thank you for your suggestions! I will be happy to add votes to the corresponding epics. If you come up with more ideas – please do not hesitate to write them here. Your feedback is important to us, as when it comes to planning new features we review all the feedback.

1. As I understand, this feedback concerns Linux-based systems. We have already added this feedback in case 03382198.
2. We do not have any related topics right now, so I would pass it to the developers for the review.
3. This is one of the most popular requests; its internal ID is ABR-53675. We are working right now on this feature, but unfortunately, there is no ETA.
4. Backup API is not publicly available but you can always check which requests Backup Console (JS application) sends to REST API using Developer Tools built in into browser. As soon as it is not available publicly it can be changed in future versions and you have to update your integration.

Hello Steve,

Thank you for your suggestions! I will be happy to add votes to the corresponding epics. If you come up with more ideas – please do not hesitate to write them here. Your feedback is important to us, as when it comes to planning new features we review all the feedback.

1. As I understand, this feedback concerns Linux-based systems. We have already added this feedback in case 03382198.
2. We do not have any related topics right now, so I would pass it to the developers for the review.
3. This is one of the most popular requests; its internal ID is ABR-53675. We are working right now on this feature, but unfortunately, there is no ETA.
4. Backup API is not publicly available but you can always check which requests Backup Console (JS application) sends to REST API using Developer Tools built in into browser. As soon as it is not available publicly it can be changed in future versions and you have to update your integration.

Albert hello,

Thank you for using Acronis Backup 12.5. We always welcome any feedback on our product – this is a great way for further improvements.

I have registered your suggestions in our internal system, thank you! If you have any further feedback – please let me know.

Hello,

I would like to be able to move backups from one storage vault to another.

Thank you.