Missing from Acronis backup for vmware

Hi Lubos,

Thank you for the input. Please see my comments for each item:

1. This feature is pending to be included in one of the next updates for Acronis Backup 12. The internal tracking ID is ABR-107970

2. Deduplication in Acronis Backup for VMware works regardless of the archive format, so it doesn't matter whether there are physically different files or the archive is represented as single file in terms of deduplication effectiveness. 

While technically there is no deduplication in Acronis Backup 12 (it will appear in Advanced edition only), the backup format used in this version already compresses data within the archive much more effectively than it was done by Acronis Backup for VMware even with deduplication enabled.

In practice deduplication in Acronis Backup for VMware made sense _only_ when backing up 2 or more VMs deployed from exactly the _same_ VM template or which were cloned (it is not very likely situation to have a lot of such VMs). In all other cases the size of the backup of the same set of the VMs (even with the same guest OS) is much less with Acronis Backup 12 than with Acronis Backup for VMware. This was confirmed by multiple tests performed in our QA lab.

Therefore instead of inheriting old less effective deduplication algorithms from Acronis Backup for VMware we decided to focus on alternative approaches to reduce the archive size: 1) Advanced compression algorithms 2) invest into improving deduplication provided by Acronis Storage Node component which will come in Advanced edition.

3. The default backup options will also be included in the next updates for Acronis Backup 12. The internal tracking ID ABR-87040 .

Thank you.

Hello Vasily,

thanks for reply. As for point 2 his is exactly our case ... we are using lot of machines deployed from 1 single template and we are backing them with jobs that consist of 10 VMs. For us deduplication was 1 of few main reasons why we used Acronis 9 (and previous versions of course). So looks that we need to check advanced edition ... and see how it will go against competitors.

Best Regards,

Lubos

Is it real that Acronis Backup 12 only can backup one VM per time?
Acronis VMprotect and Acronis Backup 11.7 can backup 3 machines per time!

So I get a big timeproblem with this new release. :(

Arconis Backup 12 start the backup task, do the backup with replication to
another storage and after that finished the next task will be started.

Acronis go back to the roots and give us all features we had in the previous versions, please!

Hi,

you can set maximum count of simultaniuosly running jobs in Backup options -> Scheduling.

Ahh hmm thanks but I come from 11.7 and I've migrate all backuptasks.
This is very strange, I think I have to create a new backup planning, because
with 11.7 I create one task for one VM.

My second problem is the maximum size of local storage.
With 11.7 this was 1,9 TB now I can create 4 TB but this is not enough. :(

Hello Raphael,

we don't set this option (so number of simultaneously running backups should not be limited) and only 1 VM is backing up at a time .... So i don't think the number can be increased. The only situation where 2 (or more) VMs can be backed up at same time is when you are using multiple Acronis appliances ... looks like the limit is 1 active backup of VM per appliance. What is sad as previously this was 5 i guess.

BR,

Lubos

Lubos,

If you don't set this option specifically then it effectively equals "1", e.g. simultaneous backup will be disabled. We are changing the design of this option in GUI, so that it is enabled by default independently from other scheduling options on the same page, but until then you need to enable the option specifically.

Thank you.

Vasily wrote:

We are changing the design of this option in GUI, so that it is enabled by default independently from other scheduling options on the same page, but until then you need to enable the option specifically.

But why you change the default over all backups to "1"?
I think it will be clean if you had the situation before one task one backup.
If I have more backups in one task I'm agree the "1" simultaneous backup option
but I don't want to set in every task this option...

I think this is an option for the management server to set it global?

The setting is applied per-backup plan. You can apply a single backup plan to multiple machines and this is the case where this option will come in play. If there are different backup plans for different VMs (one for each) then still it is necessary to enable the option, since the plans when run simultaneously also consider this option, so it works on per-backup _agent_ basis.

For now I'm afraid the only way is to edit the backup plans individually.

The general recommendation is to have as few backup plans as possible, so that each plan protects as many VMs as possible. Thus you will be able to change settings for plans and apply these changes to either individual machines included in the plan (this will trigger new plan creation) or to all machines included in the plan.

The ability to set default backup options will be included in future updates.

Hello Acronis,

I tried to do few test restores (2x different UX boxes) ... and to my surprise both failed = file system of both VMs was corrupted (missing files,MD5 hash didn't match). So beware everyone using AB 12 .... test the restores carefully. 

Oh .. and tried to chat with support 3 times with no success ... 1. no agent responded 2. chat window opens but no reply or whatever 3. We are sorry to keep you waiting; all our agents are now busy.....

I thing its time to move forward .... AB 12 looks promissingly however it shouldn't be released now ... but after proper testing (buggy) and development (features missing from previous products).

BR,

Lubos

There are a lot of things...

I've a few problems with installing AB 12 the documentation which I've downloaded from my control center was wrong and incomplete!
The support gave me an KB article with more and right informations.

But I can tell you don't delete the old Acronis Appliance after migrate to AB 12 you'll need it
before you're ready with AB 12 to use... ;)

Lubos Oravec wrote:

Hello Acronis,

I tried to do few test restores (2x different UX boxes) ... and to my surprise both failed = file system of both VMs was corrupted (missing files,MD5 hash didn't match). So beware everyone using AB 12 .... test the restores carefully. 

Oh .. and tried to chat with support 3 times with no success ... 1. no agent responded 2. chat window opens but no reply or whatever 3. We are sorry to keep you waiting; all our agents are now busy.....

I thing its time to move forward .... AB 12 looks promissingly however it shouldn't be released now ... but after proper testing (buggy) and development (features missing from previous products).

BR,

Lubos

I've checked the most recent ticket you've submitted to our support team and apparently you're doing "Run VM from backup" for specific Linux VMs , rather than VM recovery - the mounting of VM and recovery of it are 2 completely different processes. Full VM recovery must work in either case even if the backed up VM contains logical volumes structures which cannot be normally parsed in agent-less mode (such as Linux VMs with LVMs) - this may affect the Run VM from backup functionality though. You should continue working with our support team on the issue - we will closely monitor it to ensure quick resolution.

I'd like to add that your case is a unique one - obviously we've not run into such problems neither during Beta nor we've got any reports from any other users. Otherwise there would've been no release of Acronis Backup 12 if we had such bugs discovered beforehand.

Raphael wrote:

Hi,

you can set maximum count of simultaniuosly running jobs in Backup options -> Scheduling.

Hi Raphael,

I thought about a new backup concept and create a new backup task for four machines in one plan.
I set the simultaniously running jobs to 3 and hope that I can create three machine backups in one time.
But nothing... I get the first one up to 100% and after that the second one.
This is not perfect because Acronis is sheduling the other three machines up to the first one has finished:

- Backup
- Validation
- Copy to a second share

This take a long time and I lose a lot of them with unsimultaniously backups. :(

Edit:
It is working...
After the first backup completed I get a run of the other three machines simultaniousliy!
I think this happened because I create the task and run it on machine one after that I sort the
other three machines to that backup plan and run them too but acronis can also start alle tasks
simultaniously. :/

Hi RFSG,

It works for me, see screenshot (just masked out parts of machines names).

Acronis help says:

Help wrote:

Limit the number of simultaneously running backups by

This option is available only when a backup plan is applied to multiple virtual machines. This option defines how many virtual machines an agent can back up simultaneously when executing the given backup plan.

If, according to the backup plan, an agent has to start backing up multiple machines at once, it will choose two machines. (To optimize the backup performance, the agent tries to match machines stored on different storages.) Once any of the two backups is completed, the agent chooses the third machine and so on.

You can change the number of virtual machines for an agent to simultaneously back up. The maximum value is 10.

Backups of physical machines will start exactly as scheduled.

My backup plan is applied to 35 VMs, all are located on the same datastore distrubuted across three hosts.

Are the logs showing anything useful?

They are located at you AB12 Management Server in C:\ProgramData\Acronis\BackupAndRecovery\MMS\mms.0.log .