ABR10 Advanced Workstation won't connect to a PC running ABR10 Workstation

Just want to make sure I understand the ABR10 documentation correctly: if I have NO servers in my network (just XP, Vista and 7 PCs), but yet I want to have a single PC (PC1) manage the other PCs (PC2, PC3, etc) relative to backup, I can install ABR10 Advanced WS on that single PC (PC1) and WS on the other PCs.  The Adv WS console on PC1 should be able to connect to the WS agents running on the other PCs, right?  Or do *all* PCs have to be Adv WS?

I *think* that's what the doc is saying.

-- Gary Richtmeyer

Hello Gary,

Thank you for choosing Acronis Backup & Recovery 10.

Yes, you are right - in order to connect to PC you should install Management Console on a computer you want to manage operations from and install Agent on each PC you're going to connect to. After that, you can choose the option Connect to Remote Machine, and specify its IP address. Please note that you should also specify administrator account credentials (for remote PC) in order to connect to it.

If you're going to manage machine remotely - the only thing you have to install is Acronis Remote Agent plus all management components to your management PC.

Regarding this particular error you reported:

This issue is related to insufficient privileges or access rights. Please disable Simple File Sharing option, which you can find in My Computer -> Tools -> Folder Options -> View -> Use simple file sharing (please UNMARK this option).

Thank you.

Alexander, thank you for the clarification.

Regarding the inability to connect from PC1 (AW) to PC2 (W), I double-checked PC2 and Simple File Sharing is turned off (it's the way I alway setup my XP Pro machines).  Just to be sure, I turned it off and then back on again. Trying to connect again resulted in the exact same error as in my original post. 

Thinking maybe I had an installation error, I completely uninstalled ABR10 on PC2, rebooted, and re-installed,  this time specifying only the Agent and the Tray Icon options, but am getting the exact same error.

I've got almost a dozen small business customers that are perfect candidates for ABR10 using a central mgmt PC, but I can't get this to work myself.

Any other suggestions or information I can get for you?

-- Gary Richtmeyer

Hello Gary,

Thank you for your response.

There can be a kind of discrepancy in terms, and please correct me if I am wrong.

As far as I understood, you installed the standalone version of Acronis Backup & Recovery 10 Workstation and now you are trying to connect to this computer using Management Console of the advanced version of Acronis Backup & Recovery 10 Workstation.

This is impossible. The standalone version of Acronis Backup & Recovery 10 Workstation can be used only locally, in this case the standalone version means the local version.

If you want to manage the computers remotely, you should use the advanced version of Acronis Backup & Recovery 10 Workstation. You can install Acronis Management Console to PC1. To perform the backup/restore operations you should install Acronis Backup & Recovery 10 Workstation Agent to PC2 (Acronis License Server should be installed also).

Thank you.

Oleg,  thank you for your explanation.

You said: "There can be a kind of discrepancy in terms".  For me, this continues to be a major problem trying to understand what is needed in a non-server environment: all my customers are workgroup environments so I've been concentrating on ABR10 Workstation and ABR10 Advanced Workstation.

The documentation is vague in technical specifics (sometimes contradicting itself) such that the user is often left trying to understand exactly what version should be used where, what connects to what, and what is required to make it run.

1) It is NOT obvious by reading the manuals - at least to me, and I've read (and written) many technical manuals - that ABR10 Workstation is a stand-alone, local-only product.  It IS obvious that ABR10 Workstation can not manage another PC, but it is NOT obvious that another PC can not manage it. Reading the manuals implies that a PC running ABR10 Workstation can either manage itself or be managed by another.

2) If the above is true, then I will need to buy ABR10 Advanced Workstation for every single PC in a customer network, even though those PCs are to be managed only by a central PC.  True?  If so, it's hard to justify the extra expense for Advanced Workstation when only one PC will be using the remote management function.

3) Is Windows XP Home Edition (SP2 or later) supported? The manuals are either vague or contradict themselves.  For example, the datasheet for ABR10 Workstation says XP (SP2) is supported, the comparison page on the web site mentions Pro, but not Home Edition, and the Installation Guide mentions Home Edition but only for 64-bit configurations (?).

4) In Alexander's post, he mentions that Simple Sharing must be turned off on the managed PC (and testing appears to support this statement).  However, I can't find this requirement listed in any of the manuals.  This requirement itself may be a show-stopper for many of my small office customers which have a mixture of XP Pro and XP Home PCs and use Simple Sharing to keep things simple.   (By the way, the Data Sheet for ABR10 Advanced Workstation says that Home Edition is supported, but Home Edition doesn't allow you to turn off Simple Sharing.)

Sorry for the length of this post, but it's been real frustrating trying to understand what's needed, the requirements, etc.

-- Gary Richtmeyer

p.s. Oleg, the last sentence in your post says that the License Server should be installed in PC2 (the managed machine).  I was under the impression that the License Server was installed only once, on the machine doing the managing, not on the managed PC.  Did I miss something here too?

Hello glricht,

Thank you for your response.

It is NOT obvious by reading the manuals - at least to me, and I've read (and written) many technical manuals - that ABR10 Workstation is a stand-alone, local-only product.  It IS obvious that ABR10 Workstation can not manage another PC, but it is NOT obvious that another PC can not manage it. Reading the manuals implies that a PC running ABR10 Workstation can either manage itself or be managed by another

I can confirm, that the standalone version of Acronis Backup & Recovery Workstation can't be managed remotely.

If the above is true, then I will need to buy ABR10 Advanced Workstation for every single PC in a customer network, even though those PCs are to be managed only by a central PC.  True?  If so, it's hard to justify the extra expense for Advanced Workstation when only one PC will be using the remote management function.

You are right, to have an opportunity to manage all the computers in the network you should use Acronis Backup & Recovery Advanced Workstation. According to Acronis software licensing policy, you should purchase one copy of Acronis program per each machine it will be used with.
 

Is Windows XP Home Edition (SP2 or later) supported? The manuals are either vague or contradict themselves.  For example, the datasheet for ABR10 Workstation says XP (SP2) is supported, the comparison page on the web site mentions Pro, but not Home Edition, and the Installation Guide mentions Home Edition but only for 64-bit configurations (?).

Windows XP Home is not supported by the corporate versions of the program for a remote management (you can use them only locally). Please see the article Operating systems Acronis Backup & Recovery supports, it contains the most complete information.

In Alexander's post, he mentions that Simple Sharing must be turned off on the managed PC (and testing appears to support this statement).  However, I can't find this requirement listed in any of the manuals.  This requirement itself may be a show-stopper for many of my small office customers which have a mixture of XP Pro and XP Home PCs and use Simple Sharing to keep things simple.   (By the way, the Data Sheet for ABR10 Advanced Workstation says that Home Edition is supported, but Home Edition doesn't allow you to turn off Simple Sharing.)

Yes, you are right, Home Edition doesn't allow to turn off Simple Sharing, that's why this kind of OS is not supported for a remote management. If a customer has Windows XP Home Edition, the most effective way is to use Acronis True Image Home 2009 and to manage the computer locally. I will send a request to the appropriate department, the information in the documentation will be clarified.

Oleg, the last sentence in your post says that the License Server should be installed in PC2 (the managed machine).  I was under the impression that the License Server was installed only once, on the machine doing the managing, not on the managed PC.  Did I miss something here too?

The license Server should be installed in the network, it doesn't matter where you install it. I didn't mean that you should install it in PC2, I meant that Acronis Backup & Recovery 10 Advanced Workstation Agent can't be installed without Acronis License Server.

Thank you.

Gary,

Well said, I have just found this thread trying to resolve the same sort of issue. Acronis documentation seems to be very poor when it comes to detail.

I have a small Acronis installation, 4 ATIE Svr and 1 ATIE Wks. The ATIE Wks machine is installed with the complete package and I use it as a Backup Server, PXE Server, Snap Deploy and License Server. I can only install ATIE Wks licenses on to the license server and I understand that is because it is part of ATIE Wks. However, what I can do with regards to backing up the ATIE Svr machines is create machine profiles on the ATIE Wks Backup Server and then create a backup task on each ATIE Svr machines to backup to the Backup Server.I can then create a strategy of quotas and limits to manage the content of the Backup Server.

Now I have upgraded to ABR 10 Svr and ABR 10 Adv Wks and suddenly I can no longer achieve the aforementioned strategy without paying a damn fortune upgrading the ABR 10 Svr to ABR 10 Adv Svr.

If you read the User Guide there is NO mention of any requirement for the use of ABR 19 Adv Svr but when I attempt to set up the scenario it fails with an error 'Failed to check the license key. The license is disabled' See attached.

Regards,

Paul 

I'm not certain if this fix is applicable in this case, but I wanted to post a solution that worked for me when I encountered the following error:

"Code: 11,468,816(0xAF0010)"; "Module: C:\Program Files\Acronis\BackupAndRecovery\mms.exe"; "Message: Failed to establish remote connection: Remote connections are disabled."

Initially, I installed the ABR10 License Server in our test environment (Windows Server 2008 Standard R2) and then installed the agent on a new workstation (XP SP3) that was being prepped for production. At that point the agent worked great, but later on I changed the administrator's account password. After that the management console began reporting the above error.

At this point two changes needed to be made to the following Acronis services to get it working again:

1) Acronis Managed Machine Service - Enter the new user account password, then stop and start the service. At this point the error was still present, so no fix yet.
2) Acronis Remote Agent - This is strange because the "Network Service" account shouldn't be affected by a change to the admin account password, but nonetheless... I blanked out the "Network Service" user password and hit apply to re-set the credentials, then stopped and started the service.

After making both of the above changes the management console was again able to connect to the client machine. I'm not a Windows security expert, so I'm not certain why step 2 was necessary or why the agent software can't handle a password change, but this will certainly be an annoyance because I'm required to change passwords annually...

I hope this helps.
Adam

I have the same error show up however, I have been backing up successfully for about two or three weeks now, at least until this morning when a full backup failed with the same error information and code. Nothing has changed as far as user rights, nor, to my knowledge, has the remote computer changed.

Any thoughts?

Looks like a lost connection to the license server and after grace period expired, remote connection were blocked. Examine agent logs locally (are there errors regarding license server?) or install console locally and check dashboard.