Backup owners in a storage node
I just installed our new Advanced Workstation Management Server and I'm stuck on a setup for my users:
* I can distribute backup jobs to the clients
* the backup tasks then belong to my account. I cannot make the backup job belong to the user, because I don't know my users's passwords.
This is fine -- but
The backup archive in the storage node also belongs to me (the admin). I cannot change the owner of the backup afterwords, nor can I set ACLs for the archive.
But I'd like my users to be able to access their PC's backups - so they could restore files without having to call an admin every time.
The only solution I can think of at the moment is to sit down with every user and at least change the backup job so that it connects to the storage node with the credentials of the user. Not the best solution. I'd rather like to define the backup jobs and just give the user access (read only preferred). Is this possible?
It is certainly possible when I remove the storage node from the setup, but I'd really like keeping the deduplication :)
As I understood the problem is that all backups created by the centralized plans has its creator (the one person) as 'owner', and users can't see them at all and restore from them
The problem apparently is that once a centralized plan is distributed to the machine, it can't 'tell' the storage node to
hey, ASN, please 'delegate' ownership of archives I create to 'a random dude from DOMAIN\ that has a Users\randomdude directory on this box'. And please don't let them change anything they put on ASN (what about backup plan with retention rules? )
Hello Datastor:
Well, the ASN knows only two "Groups": Vault Administrators and Vault Users. I won't make every user a Vault Administrator. But if I define and distribute the backup plans with my credentials no user will be able to see (or restore from) their machine's backups.
The possible solution would be to define the backup plans and connect to the storage node as the user that should have access to it (this is possible in the "target" specification). But for that i'd need all my users' passwords... won't happen.
dev-anon: That's nearly exactly what I'd like to do. Especially I'd like:
Hey Acronis Agent. Please make a backup of this machine to the ASN and this list of people should have (read) access to it.
Hi Heiko
I believe you should be able to use your local/domain users or groups and add them to the list of users? (I have not done testing with this but this is the impression I got when reading that link posted above)
I've just loaded up a test ABR11 system and managed to successfully add one of the local PC’s users to the list of vault users (eg, ‘Testuser’ then hit the "Check the Names" button and it resolved the local PC’s name\test user).
I’m not sure if this will allow you to achieve what you are after but might be worth a try. You can also check that the ‘Acronis Agent User’ is part of the local administrators group for that PC which might also help and be worth a try. If none of this works I would suggest opening up a support ticket with Acronis direct and getting them to check into this for you.
P.S. I will try and get some testing done for you myself and post the findings (unfortunately I’m not able to do this right now).
@Datastor:
No I think you understood me wrong. Vault Users is set to "Everybody" - so every user is able to write to the ASN. BUT: According to the doc, a user is only able to see and access backups that he owns.
If I deploy a backup plan on the user's PC, the owner is me. You can see that if you list the backup in the storage node. There's an 'owner' column. And that value is not editable. So only I am able to access the backup - nobody else (except the people listed as "Storage Administrators"). If the user needs a file restored, he has to call me.
If I want the user to own his backups, I need to configure the plan so that it connects to the ASN with the user's credentials. So either I need to let every user configure the plan themselves or ask the user for their passwords.
The only solution I came up with was create a new local user on the ASN for every user and share the password. Or am I the only one that wants his users to be able to access their own backups?
Hi Heiko
My apologies, I misunderstood as you said. Unfortunately this is not something I’ve personally not done allot with this myself so hopefully someone else can give you some help? (I will also try and get some testing done for you when I can to see if I can still help out)... Alternatively if you log a case with Acronis please post your case number and I will make contact with someone at Acronis and request for the case to be escalated for you.