AN!Wiki :: Acronis Backup Best Practices

This is a collection of AN! documentation for standardizing operations. All data in contained articles should be sanitized for company/personal data and credentials. These are kept on the Wiki for transparency and on the chance the public finds the operations contained herein useful.

The purpose of offering BaaS to Alteeve! clients is to provide a AN! supported backup method that is tested and known on Anvil! platforms. While there are many data retention solutions available, Acronis was chosen for it's ease-of-use by the end user and simple management while still retaining robust local and cloud-based backup options. Acronis software is intended to be installed on the client's virtual machines, and only interacts with the Anvil! when a full OS recovery is required. The Anvil! ensures it's own data retention innately via it's Highly Available construction, and does not require Acronis provisioning.

Please remember that Virtual Machines belonging to clients are beyond AN!'s standard line of demarcation. Only access them and their information with explicit permission and only for the required operations, no more!

VM Requirements

A target virtual machine must have A recent OS, defined as:

Linux kernel >= 2.4.20 and glibc >= 2.3.2 (RHEL 4.x and greater)
Windows XP Professional SP2+ or more recent
Mac OS X Mountain Lion 10.8 or more recent
Access to the internet

To access the BaaS Management Console, the client must use the following, or more recent

Google Chrome 29
Mozilla Firefox 23
Opera 16
Internet Explorer 10
Safari 5.1.7 (iOS supported)

Local Backup Destination Requirements

If a client chooses, Acronis can store information in a location other than the cloud storage offered. This can either be a local file, or an accessible network location.

A Local destination may be any file or device connected to the Acronis client machine. As Acronis runs best as a scheduled backup, a removable storage device is not reccomended unless the client can ensure it will be available and connected at the scheduled times. CD or Removable media is not inherently supported, and must be burned or written manually.

A Network Location includes Samba (Windows Shared Directories) or NFS shares mounted on the client machine. Installation and configuration of those services can be found on their respective pages.

&&TO TEST&& Can autofs mount an nfs share when requested by an acronis backup job?

Method

Full Acronis documentation can be found at https://us-bc-baas.acronis.com/api/links/admin_guide?language=en. These instructions will not be replicated here, only a method by which they should be implemented, and any specific installation notes we might have in addition to the documentation.

The Management Console

The main advantage to Acronis' offerings is their very coherent Web-based management platform. The Backup Management Console allows us to easily create and manage client accounts, monitor backup failures, and fully recover data when required by the client.

The Backup Console can be found at https://baas.acronis.com. Login credentials are bestowed on AN! employees as needed, ask Digimer.

Creating Client Usergroups

- Initiating a group - Administrator vs. User Accounts - Client Properties

Installing Acronis Agents

- Agent for Windows - Agent for Linux - Agent for Mac

Creating Backup Schemes

- File/Disk/Full Machine

Data Recovery

- File/Disk/ISO

Acronis Backup Best Practices

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