Moving Management Server
Hey there,
is there any procedure to move a management server from one machine to another keeping all settings, reports and so on ?
Acronis Backup 12.5 is now out for more that 2 years (!) and hopefully this is implemented now?
The step from 11.7 to 12.5 deleted so much features so I hope that at least this typical and quite normal process for an admin is supported.
Regards
Sven
Hi Ekaterina,
Sorry, but this is no movement in my eyes.
It´s a pure reinstallation and reimport of the plans.
So
- protocols --> lost
- reports --> lost
- application settings settings --> cannot be transferred
How can I manage that
- after the movement all my made backups are still present ?
- the reimported plans continue on the existing backup files ?
I´m very disappointed on the product as this is one feature more that was simply deleted from 11.7 to 12.5.
11.7 had the ability to make a database bakup/restore.
Since 2 years is 12.5 available and since then such features as
- WOL
- database cleanup
- migration
is stated "to be planned for one of the next versions".
Sorry Acronis, I´m paying several hundreds of Euros a year for maintenance and therefore these features (that were available in teh past) were simply deleted?
Has any of the product managers the professional admins in mind or only the private customers?
I think it might be the time to look for another tool.....
A very disappointed
Sven
Any hints on the upper questions
How can I manage that
- after the movement all my made backups are still present ?
- the reimported plans continue on the existing backup files ?
S.
I've recently migrated our systems from 11.7 to 12.5, though I haven't tried moving AMS from 12.5 to 12.5 here are my thougts:
What is your use case that you need to move AMS? Recreating the settings is a pain, but I don't see it consuming a great deal of time, unless you have to do this often, but then the questions is: why? I can also see that reports can be exported/imported. Not sure what are you thinking of for "database cleanup" and "protocols".
- after the movement all my made backups are still present ?
I don't know why moving AMS would affect them. As long as the backup location is undisturbed they stay where they are. From what I've seen few actions actually affect them in a destructive way.
- the reimported plans continue on the existing backup files ?
I'd test this out, but in the worst case scenario you need to make a full backup of all your machines, since you can't continue your existing incremental/differential backups. If you backup to a deduplicated location there won't be much difference anyway. Your old backups with the old plans are still there if you need to restore from those.
- WOL
As a workaround I'd configure some utility program that checks and performs wake-on-lan on schedule (if that's what you are referring to) and call a backup after this. It's a shame you can't configure commands to be run elsewhere than the location you want to back up, could be an okay workaround to run a wakeup program just before backup.
What is your use case that you need to move AMS?
Background:
We will migrate our servers to Windows Server 2019 and as the licensing scheme is different compared to our current 2012R2 we try to safe money.
And so we will move the Acronis AMS on a virtual machine that runs WIndows 10 Pro.
And that´s the reason why we want to migrate it.
I can also see that reports can be exported/imported.
Where is that option in Backup Advanced 12.5 ? I cannot find it anywhere in the GUI to export and reimport the activities and dashboard entries.
Can you give me a hint where I can find this?
Not sure what are you thinking of for "database cleanup" and "protocols".
After some time of daily work there are machines and also backups that have been deleted in the meanwhile.
The database, protocols, acivities and dashboard enteies still show them and I have no chance to delete them
- after the movement all my made backups are still present ?
I don't know why moving AMS would affect them. As long as the backup location is undisturbed they stay where they are. From what I've seen few actions actually affect them in a destructive way.
What I mean is that after the movement I want to see the backups in the backups list in the storage locations.....
- the reimported plans continue on the existing backup files ?
I'd test this out, but in the worst case scenario you need to make a full backup of all your machines, since you can't continue your existing incremental/differential backups. If you backup to a deduplicated location there won't be much difference anyway. Your old backups with the old plans are still there if you need to restore from those.
Yes that´s right, but the necessary space on my backup storage location increases as rthe retention rules do only affect the "new" backups.
And if I cannot continue my backup chains I also have the need to handle the double amount of backups as I have to handle the "backups before movement" and "backups after movement" in case of a restore.
And fro my point of view a professional backup solution should be able to handle that and continiue existing backup chains even from another management server.
- WOL
As a workaround I'd configure some utility program that checks and performs wake-on-lan on schedule (if that's what you are referring to) and call a backup after this. It's a shame you can't configure commands to be run elsewhere than the location you want to back up, could be an okay workaround to run a wakeup program just before backup.
Yes I also have such type of workaround, but why the hell do I need to use a workaround to bypass a problem of Acronis. The simply removed the feature with the version change 11.7 to 12.5.....
Even TrueImage 2019 has a feature that wakes up the machine if a scheduled backup should run, but the "professional" Tool ABA 12.5 cannot do it ? Thats somewhat embarassing.
S.
Where is that option in Backup Advanced 12.5 ? I cannot find it anywhere in the GUI to export and reimport the activities and dashboard entries.
Can you give me a hint where I can find this?
If you hover over a report in the reports view a "..." menu appears on the right. You can find export there. The import option will appear on the bottom of "Add report" view.
After some time of daily work there are machines and also backups that have been deleted in the meanwhile.
The database, protocols, acivities and dashboard enteies still show them and I have no chance to delete them
Try detaching and reattaching the storage location. I recently removed some machines and found that this process cleans up records in the database marked as deleted.
What I mean is that after the movement I want to see the backups in the backups list in the storage locations.....
From what I've seen any time you reattach a location (even if it's the same server, same storage node) it will be reindexed and the backups will show as expected. You might have to request the indexing yourself though if you are interested in the backups of a particular machine, as it's quite slow and indexing may not have reached that machine yet.
Yes that´s right, but the necessary space on my backup storage location increases as rthe retention rules do only affect the "new" backups.
Which type of retention rule and backup scheme do you have? I admit I haven't really had the chance to experiment with the cleanup plans since we threw away the old backups. Still wouldn't the default "By age" cleanup option work for your scenario as well? From what I can gather cleanup doesn't care what plan created the backup, because you define what counts as a weekly backup right there in the cleanup plan, so you don't have overlaps in your recovery points.
If you hover over a report in the reports view a "..." menu appears on the right. You can find export there. The import option will appear on the bottom of "Add report" view.
This exports and imports the settings of this report, but not the content of the database like activities, alerts, protocols and so on.
So the history of my backups gets complete lost.
Try detaching and reattaching the storage location. I recently removed some machines and found that this process cleans up records in the database marked as deleted.
That´s exactly what support told me to do, but that never had any effect.
They then stated, that a database cleanup is currently not possible to do manually and the confirmed, that records from e.g. renamed machines confuses the database engine a bit....
So the feature I demand is the possibility of manually define the records that have to be deleted (e.g. older activities and so on...)
From what I've seen any time you reattach a location (even if it's the same server, same storage node) it will be reindexed and the backups will show as expected. You might have to request the indexing yourself though if you are interested in the backups of a particular machine, as it's quite slow and indexing may not have reached that machine yet.
Yes, the backups come back, but the plans do not continue the backup chain as the unique IDs seem to change.......
Which type of retention rule and backup scheme do you have? I admit I haven't really had the chance to experiment with the cleanup plans since we threw away the old backups. Still wouldn't the default "By age" cleanup option work for your scenario as well? From what I can gather cleanup doesn't care what plan created the backup, because you define what counts as a weekly backup right there in the cleanup plan, so you don't have overlaps in your recovery points.
I have GFS cheme but thats completely independent of my retention rules:
If the backup chain is not continued if I move the AMS to another machine, the old backup chain remains unchanged till the end of time....
S.
I'm sorry I couldn't help more. I guess we just have to wait until they reimplement the features that were lost between version 11 and 12.
Hey Peter,
thanks for any of your hints, but as mentioned they do not solve the problem ;-)
I also think that waiting is the only option - if I want to go with Acronis in the future.
The point is, that these features are said to be planned since more than 2 years.....and my hope disappears that this happens in a resonable time....
I´ve got the impression that Acronis concentrates more on fancy-GUI-consumer-one-click-stuff than on reliable solutions for IT profssionals.
S.