Run Tasks or Plans in batch mode?
We are new to Acronis. We are running 12.5 Advanced, we run fulls on weekends and incrementals on week nights, and we have about 30 Windows servers of different sizes, some file servers, some application servers, most of them virtualized.
Scheduling this many servers for backup jobs during off-peak hours, and at the same time trying to spread out the load on the Acronis servers can be a challenge. Is there a way, maybe with acrocmd, to run backup jobs, or plans, consecutively in a batch mode?
I simply want to launch a Plan or series of Plans or Tasks that would allow a single backup job to run to completion and then start the next job, like a batch file. Can acrocmd facilitate the launching of tasks in a batch mode? How can I run a series of Plans or Tasks consecutively without using a schedule?
Thanks. Randy
Thanks for the reply.
I tested using the “Limit the number of simultaneously running backups by X for virtual machines” parameter. It seems to limit the simultaneous jobs per virtual host (physical server), not per plan. If I create a plan say with 10 Hyper-V host servers and set the simultaneous limit to 1, then it appears that one virtual guest server per host will be backed up at one time. But it does not limit the total number of simultaneous jobs within the plan, only within a host server. So in my example I could have 10 jobs running at once. The option to distribute backup start times within a time window does not give me enough control over when jobs run, and I see nowhere to edit the “random” start time.
I'm still holding out some hope that the acrocmd utility might have the ability to give me some batch processing options. But, what I want may not be possible. RC
Hi
Use "acrocmd list tasks" command on the agent to list tasks of all plans for this agent.
Then use "acrocmd run task" to start task.
After that use "acrocmd list activities" to monitor when task is finished (to start another task consecutively).
Using acrocmd is very difficult, if not impossible, to automate for purposes of running backup Plans for many servers consecutively without intervention.
I was hoping that the new feature in Update 3.1 that will limit the total number of simultaneously backed-up virtual machines, might help our particular situation. But, no joy.
In our scenario we have 20 physical Hyper-V host machines, each with an agent. We are backing up multiple guest servers on each host using just the agent on the host, so agentless backups for our VM’s. I have the Scheduling option for simultaneous backups set to 1 in each Plan and must use estimated timings to schedule a Plan for each physical server in order to avoid “performance overload”. This can be a problem because of the tight 12-hour window into which we must squeeze all of our backup jobs (pushing 20TB native). So, I am constantly adjusting scheduled Plan run times.
If I create a single Group containing 30 VM guest servers from 20 separate physical hosts, for example, and associate a single backup Plan to that Group, the launched Plan will run 20 backup jobs simultaneously. Not Good.
It would sure be nice to have the ability to limit concurrent backup jobs from the management server regardless of which server agent is getting queued up. In other words, I would like to create a single Plan for all of our 20 physical host servers and nearly 40 virtual servers, have the Plan back up X number of the VM’s concurrently (maybe 1 or 2 in our case), and continue backing up VM’s X at a time. Or, better yet, instead of limiting the number of VM’s (which is already available per Agent), I would like a parameter that would limit the number of Agents that can run backups simultaneously.
Is this functionality already available, is this something that could be easily added to the system, or is it impossible?
Hello Randy,
as I checked there is no exact same functionality you are describing. However I can inform our feedback team about scheduling idea with limitation of backups and agents. In my opinion the best way you can use right now is creation of a plan for each Host where you specify "1" in “Limit the number of simultaneously running backups by X for virtual machines” parameter und you can set different start time for each plan (f.e. Plan 1 - 20.00, Plan 2- 21.00, Plan 3 - 22:00)
Yep, that is what I'm doing now: I have one Plan per physical host machine and have limited the simultaneous virtual backups to 1. Then, through trial and error over many months, I have created schedules for each of the Plans so there are limited concurrent backup jobs running. I have about 20 physical machines, each with two virtual guests, many of which exceed 1TB. Our total native is nearly 20TB. I am constantly checking incremental run times and full run times in order to keep the concurrent processing to a minimum. But, that means I am juggling about 40 Plans (20 incremental and 20 full). I split the fulls from the incremental jobs because we have a short window on week nights to get the backup jobs done, so I crowd the incremental job schedules with some overlap through the night. And, because the full jobs take much longer to run, I cannot include them in a single weekly Plan for a server, so they get a completely different schedule beginning on Friday night and running into Saturday. This is a bit of a management headache.
If I could limit the number simultaneous server Agents to one or two, then I could create a single Plan to take care of all of my virtual host servers instead of trying manage 40 Plans. Please pass this on to your developers, maybe it is an easy modification. Many thanks. RC