Deploying Incremental images

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Thinking that I might have been promised something that is not correct when we bought ASD but hopefully it's just a matter of not knowing how to do it. Last year when my company were exploring getting Acronis (I've used Acronis for years and personally recommended the product) I was told that since Acronis True Image Echo is no longer available that we could use ABR11 (Which we bought 10 licenses) to create Full and Incremental images as well as browsing the image files and then use Snap Deploy (600 Licenses) to deploy both Full and Incremental images. So the problem is that when I deploy the Incremental (Which in ASD3 did not work at all) it will only allow me to deploy the latest image that was made. So here's an example to clear things up:

We want to have one image of Windows XP (no drivers except LAN, minimal applications) to use as a primer. Then we use Universal Restore to put this image on new platforms like a Dell E6410. Next, we load all drivers and applications for our base image. Finally, we create an Incremental image so we just have the one main image and then multiple Incremental images for the different laptops/desktops we use.

So I have an image, DellXP.tib, I create an Incremental for a laptop (DellXP2.tib) but when I use SD4 to deploy the original DellXP.tib image to different hardware the image that gets deployed if the incremental for the previous laptop. When I create the template I do specify the original and not the incremental but it is not what is being deployed. Is this the normal behavior for SD4? Was I sold a solution that will not work for our needs? Any help would be great.

Fri, 07/06/2012 - 19:57
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truwrikodrorowrelupicugojestutroclulachosaswunuhospikigawakijosaswenomaruclojeueclikaspedrubewidebrisubrohutrurifruuagothunugekedrumucisiuobrobrecrupeslapuswosluprothethibakaslechurathikucli
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Apparently you're right. At least when selecting via GUI (creating template) it detects such incremental backup made by ABR11 ( Update 0.5) as a multivolume split archive instead of incremental, and deploys the last one no matter which is selected. As a workaround (~ugly hack) if images are stored on a local folder of deploy server, you can create a hard NTFS link for a base image and place it in a separate folder - like
\incremental\arc.tib
\incremental\arc2.tib
- these are normal .tib files

\base\base.tib
- a hardlink to \incremental\arc.tib
so when you select image from \base only full backup is seen.

ps - incremental backups (images) uses previous (incremental or full ) as a reference. If you have single 'base' image and several derived from it, Differential is better. It uses the Full one as reference and doesn't depend on other backups.

Wed, 07/11/2012 - 21:24