Support Digest: October 2017

Hello Colleagues!

In October we started working with the new Acronis Data Cloud platform, and have already released the new Hotfix 1, as well as the new versions of backup agents. Let's see what was the most important for the past month, and what you should be aware of for the upcoming month:

• Hot topics
• New KB articles
• New training materials
• New features
• Datacenter and agent updates
• Release notes

Hot topics

The top 3 questions in October were all regarding the agents, so let's look closer at them now:

  #1 ► Agent installation. What to do if agent installation fails or doesn't even start?

Agent software must be installed on every device that should be consistently protected, and the installation process can be roughly split into 3 steps: configuration, installation and registration. Let's see the first 2 steps here:

• During configuration, user credentials are verified on the cloud server. If this fails, make sure that you can login with these credentials to https://cloud.acronis.com and check that all ports are open with the Connection Verification Tool
• Additional step in configuration involves selection of the agent components to be installed. If some components are missing, make sure you use the latest agent build with the all agents installer, and that the environment is supported
• Installation in Windows uses MSI technology and any failure involves interpretation of the MSI log, see KB1647. For example, if MSI module requires system reboot after installing another software, you will get the error "MainEngineThread is returning 1603", see KB59045
• Installation in Linux requires a number of packages to be available or already installed. In case the compilation of a kernel module fails, you can compile it manually, see KB1556
• Installation in Mac does not compile the SnapAPI module, but yet sometimes requires manual installation. In this case follow KB58154

  #2 ► Agent registration. And what if the agent does not appear in backup console at all? What to do if it appears twice?

The last step of the installation requires the agent to register in the cloud management server with its unique ID. If the agent fails to install, start the local services or connect to the cloud server, the registration will fail.

• Registration of Agent for Windows starts at 96%, so hanging or failing at this stage usually indicate, that the registrations process failed.
• When installation fails and the agent does not appear in the backup console, verify whether the agent software was installed on the system, or it was removed during rollback. In case of latter, identify and resolve the problem with installation and re-attempt the entire installation procedure.
• For the installed software, make sure the Acronis Managed Machine Service is running with administrative privileges.
• Finally, register the agent the agent manually in the cloud management server: KB55244
• If the agent appears twice in the backup console, this means the software was re-installed and the agent changed its unique ID. Remove the duplicate offline agent
• For agentless backup (VMware, Hyper-V and Virtuozzo) the UUID is used to locate and displate the VM. If the VM does not appear in backup console, make sure its UUID is not duplicated within another VM on the same host

  #3 ► Agent synchronization. What to do when the agent is offline or shows incorrect data?

Finally, once you get the agent installed, it starts communicating with the cloud management server via ZMQ protocol. Whenever this communication is broken, the information in the backup console may be out of date or the agent may appear as offline.

• Agent may appear as offline when local services are not running, there is a network issue or agent changed its unique ID. Troubleshoot these issues following KB57601
• If multiple machines show synchronization problems at the same time, first confirm that the cloud servers are accessible from the local network, and then report the issue to Acronis Support
• A way to monitor the agent status is to track the relevant alerts. Alerts "Machine is offline for more than X days", "Backup did not start" and "Backup status is unknown" are good indicators that the agent connectivity may have failed

New KB articles

Acronis Backup Cloud

• KB60572: Acronis Backup Cloud: retention fails with "Failed to delete the backups" and "An unsupported URI is specified"
• KB60586: Acronis Backup Cloud: backup fails with "The user name or password is incorrect"
• KB60495: Acronis Backup Cloud: website backup is not available in Backup management console for Partner administrators
• KB60597: Acronis Backup Cloud: the Size column is removed from the Web Recovery console
• KB60606: Acronis Backup Cloud: retention rules fail with "Cannot free up space taken by the deleted backups. The operation will be retried during next backup deletion"

Acronis Disaster Recovery Cloud

• KB60499: Acronis Disaster Recovery Cloud: how to deploy and configure Disaster Recovery VPN Appliance

See all new KB articles here: https://kb.acronis.com/new

 Did you know that you can see all tagged articles if you click the tag in the bottom of the page? Here is an example of all alert-related articles: https://kb.acronis.com/tag/backup-status-alerts

New training materials

• Acronis Storage 2.3

See all training materials here: https://kb.acronis.com/MSPtraining

 Did you know that a certified Service Provider requires twice as less support assistance from Acronis as a non-certified one?

New features

Backup Service

• Support for macOS High Sierra 10.13
• Support for "hardened" Microsoft SQL Server: backup and recovery of Microsoft SQL Server data no longer requires enabled SQL Server Browser Service and TCP/IP protocol

Disaster Recovery Service

• Extending local networks to the Acronis cloud with VPN
• Protecting a machine with a recovery server
• Testing failover in an isolated network
• Machine failover to the cloud
• Machine failback
• Protecting applications and appliances with a primary server

Acronis Storage

• Support for Object Storage (S3, Azure, Swift, etc.) by Acronis Backup Gateway
• Automated backup data migration from Acronis Storage Gateway v1.6 and v1.7 via Acronis Backup Gateway
• NFS support. Store general purpose files in Acronis Storage cluster via the NFSv4 and pNFS protocols
• Acronis Backup Gateway geo-replication (technical availability)
• E-mail notifications
• Quality of service for iSCSI
• Custom SSL certificates for WebCP
• Improved Acronis Backup Gateway monitoring

 Did you know that Disaster Recovery Service uses Backup Service as the initial data transport from local network to the Acronis Cloud? Which means that you can already start protecting your backed up devices with the Disaster Recovery Service!

Datacenter and agent updates

Current agent versions:

• Backup Agent for Windows (v.12.0.4492)
• Backup Agent for Mac (v.12.0.4492)
• Backup Agent for Linux (v.12.0.4470)

Release notes:

• Acronis Data Cloud 7.5 Hotfix 1

Share your experience!

• What is your experience with new Files Cloud and Disaster Recovery Services?
• Did you find all necessary support information on our website and Knowledge Base?
• Share below your experience and your questions.