How Does Acronis Handle Overlapped Backup Jobs?
I just installed ATI 2017 and want to backup both to the cloud and to an external hard drive. I first set up a job to backup to the external drive on a daily basis. That job ran without problems. Then, I set up a job to backup to the cloud. It will take about a week for all the files to upload. What happens to the cloud backup when the next local backup is scheduled to run? Will the local backup be delayed until the cloud backup is done, or will the cloud backup be suspended while the local backup runs... or what? I haven't found anything in the forum or knowledgebase on this, so I have suspended the local backup job for now so it doesn't affect the cloud backup in process.
I imagine that with local and cloud backup jobs on different schedules and completion times this won't be the only time they may overlap, so what I'm looking for is how Acronis 2017 handles overapped backup jobs. Do they run simultaneously? Does one get suspended, and if so, which one? Does Acronis crash and burn? I don't want to interrupt the current initial cloud backup to experiment, so I'd appreciate some input. Thanks.
Thanks, Steve, for the quick reply. So, when a backup is scheduled to start while another backup job is running, it will be queued to run when the running backup completes or is stalled. Upon the stall or completion of the first backup job, does the queued backup immediately start running? And, if so, what happens if that operation overlaps the start of another scheduled backup. Do jobs just pile up in queues? I wish the user manual explained all this, but I searched the manual for the words "queue" "cue" and "overlap" and found nothing. Is there someplace online where this is explained?
I am not aware of any specific documentation on how Acronis manages queued jobs, most information has been gleaned from years of experience as a user of the product plus picked up here in the forums.
When a task is queued, then this is handled via the Acronis Scheduler - there is a Scheduler Manager tool (link in my signature) that can be used to look at the information related to this function.
Typically, tasks are queued in the order they are presented, so each new task joins the back of the queue and runs when its turn arrives.
Thanks for the info. You'd think that Acronis would include in their documentation a description of how it manages overlapped jobs. This was never a problem for me for all the years the I ran the standalone ATI program to backup to an external drive, but it becomes an issue with my new install of ATI 2017 and the ability to have local and cloud backups. I'm guessing that once the initial cloud backup is done that subsequent ones won't take days to run and that will leave time in the schedule to plan backup jobs that won't overlap.
I haven't fully decided on how I will use local versus cloud backups. My initial thoughts are to have frequent or continuous backups to the local drive for the convenience of grabbing a file I accidentally delete, or to revert to a previous file version. The cloud backup can run weekly as a safeguard against a disaster that wipes out all local files (storm, fire, theft, virus, etc.). I'm not away from home that much, so having cloud access on a regular basis is not a big need for me. I just don't want a continuous local backup to prevent a cloud backup from ever running.
Once your initial full backup to the Cloud is finished, then only delta backups are made to capture changes to the source data, so these should be significantly faster and not cause the same issue with queuing other tasks you have.
Having a mix of different backup strategies is recommended, so your initial thoughts on this are very much what other users are doing too. I personally do not have any full system backups to the Cloud but this is mainly due to poor upload speeds with my ISP, so my Cloud backups tend to be specific folders or file types etc. My main backups are local and to my own network NAS plus using file synchronisation to other computers to give redundancy for important files / data.