Dual Destination to eSATA Hard Disk
Hello,
I will give a breif overview of our current situation, and the problems that I face...
I've recnetly migrated our Acronis server to Windows Server 2008 Standard. I would normally back up all my Images to tape using ntbackup. I must have been asleep for the last 18months as I did not realise tape support has disappeared in 2008! Acronis also does not work with tapes when using Server 2008 so I find myself in a strange situation.
I am currently looking at replacing my LTO4 tape drive with rugged external SATA hard disks. The issue I have come across now is that Server 2008 doesn't detect eSATA disks as removable devices - though I think htere is a fix for this- however, I am investigating using Acronis's Dual Destination but would like a bit more information if possible...
How is this data stored on the 'dual destination' and can I use eSATA for this? I know it's a seperate issue but does Acronis facilitate a similar 'Safely remove hardware' feature within the product, or would I have to use Windows to perform this?
I'm amazed at what Microsoft have done, both with tapes and removable media...I don't get it- and it is making my otherwise simple life, painful - very painful!!!
I understand that half of the issues listed above aren't anything to do with Acronis, but I'm keen to get this sorted as I believe other people must face a similar issue...
For the record, I am not prepared to use a third-party backup solution (other than the existing Acronis software) to have my data off-site unless absolutely required.
Thanks for the reply, I had a look at the document and it looks helpful enough - I do have a couple of questions however;
Firstly, how does it cope with a pool of disks? I plan to have 5 disks - one for each working day. Will it just add the missing data to the new disk? eg:
Monday- copy 1 full, 1 incremental (Disk1)
Tuesday- copy 1 full, 2 incrementals (new Disk 2)
Wednesday- copy 1 full, 3 incrementals (new Disk 3)
and so on.
Does that make sense? :)
Secondly, after the first week - if the cleanup is ran successfully on the local disks and I put in an external disk with the preivous weeks data on, will it delete this and update it with the new archive, or will it just append to it causing the disk to fill up very quickly?
Forgive me if I have missed this is the document.
Regards,
Steve
Hello Steve,
Thank you for getting back to me.
I am sorry to disappoint you, but at the moment, the dual destination function is rather limited in its functionality. In simple words, all it does is, copies a set of data from one location to the other. Things like retention rules and drive swapping do not work I am afraid.
The only workaround I can see in your scenario, if you are going to be swapping hard drives, please make sure they have the same drive letter, our software will identify them as the same and simply update the backup files created previously.
I will submit a Customer Listening System ticket for this, so that our Development team is aware of our customers' interest in a more flexible dual destination feature.
Please let me know if you have additional questions.
Thank you.