How to test True Image 2021 backups: SLOW!
I wanted to test our Cloud backups. The local host machine is Win10 on an i7, 16 gigs RAM, SSD.
I booted VMWare Workstation Pro 15.5 using AcronisBootablePEMedia.
I was able to restore 118 gig tibx, local backup file to the VM, which then booted and ran the restored Windows fine. But the restore took quite a few hours.
I wondered if maybe doing a cloud restore in a VM was the bottleneck.
So I started TI2021 on my local machine and initiated a cloud restore of a ~160 gig cloud backup to a local (internally mounted) SSD drive like D:\.
But when True Image asked me to reboot my machine and then booted into a dedicated True Image instance, and the restore was going to take almost 20 hours, I gave up. I can't dedicate my machine for 20 hours to test.
Are these slow speeds typical for True Image 2021?
I have 1 megabit internet access and have confirmed that speed with a variety of online speed tests.
During my cloud restore, I observed data being downloaded non-stop at just ~30 mbps, which is just a few percent of our available bandwidth. TI support told me that they throttle restore speeds, but I suspect there are other factors causing the slowdown.
Our backups aren't complicated. Each is one Full (~154 gig) and just 3 incremental backups of about 10 gigs.
We don't feel we have a viable disaster recovery solution if we have to wait ten or twenty hours for our data to be restored.
How can we speed up cloud restores? How can we periodically test cloud restores?
We know that local backups and restores are faster. But, we subscribed to a cloud backup solution because we wanted all the advantages the cloud gives.
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Hi, Enchantech,
Thanks for the reply!
My internet speed is confirmed. I can test it on any number of test sites and I also see download speeds of many hundreds of kbps when downloading from major sites. But True Image 2021 restores from the cloud craw along at just 5 or 10% of that.
You said, "Personally I would never attempt to restore a backup directly from the cloud."
Is it actually possible to download a single restore file from a backup to the cloud? How? I'd prefer that since restore of local tibx files is so fast. Cloud backups, being incremental, would require that Acronis consolidate the incremental files on the fly to and create the file.
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First, open your Online Dashboard found in the Account tab of the GUI:
Next, login to the online dashboard:
Next click on the Archives tab and select the desired backup archive:
Next select the desired backup file:
In this example I have selected the backup of C: disk and result gives you the download option:
Hope this helps.
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Under Archives, all I see is a message "There are no archives yet in Cloud"
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Ahh, I understand your issue. You are creating backups to the cloud storage and the only way you have to use them is to restore them. have to admit that i do not use the cloud for backups. In my example I posted what you see is an Archive created using a VHD file.
My apologies for misunderstanding.
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I did a live recovery from the Cloud may years ago - during beta testing of ATI 2015 or ATI 2016 I think. The conditions on which I did so were not typical. It was of an HP Slate 8, the backup was made few days before (first backup).
The upload speed of your internet connection may be a limiting factor with a live recovery; the process involves (in substance) creating a consolidated backup and then downloading it. This can be an complex process. If you download a disks and partitions image, then a zip file is created containing the backup; unfortunately the file starts downloading when the process starts, and the delays caused by the consolidation process can result in a timeout of the connection aborting the download. I have never been able to get a download to complete; it tends to timeout early in the process. I have reported the issue to Acronis several times but they (to the best of my knowledge) have done nothing to address the problem.
Ian
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Thanks, IanL-S.
Although not everyone would have the timeout problems you describe, it seems to me that everyone would have the dozen or more hours doing a restore even a modest 200 gig backup from the cloud.
I just don't see how a True Image cloud backup can be a viable disaster recovery tool if it can take so long to recover. Are my expectations too high?
Frankly, I think I'm going to purchase a few terabytes of AWS storage and upload my backups there, avoiding the Acronis bottleneck.
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