Acronis Backup Wishlist
Hello Elizaveta,
Thank you for your answer. I know this way but I didn't mean this. We have 2 storage nodes in our infrastructure (with compression and deduplication). What I want to do is to be able to move some of the backups from one node to the other. For example in case the one location is full. That is what I meant.
Thank you.
Hello all
I want to propose an improvement for the location "Defined by script". Maybe this is already supported, but the help file does not contain any information on how to do it.
Here is my scenario. My company has many departments, each of them with a bunch of computers. In total there are around 200 of computers. I have a huge NAS from Synology which is accessible through SMB. Let's say that my nas is called MYSERVER. I have created two organizations (both on the same installation site), one is called OFFICES and another one is called PRODUCTION. The OFFICES organization contains FINANCIAL, LOGISTICS, HR etc. The PRODUCTION contains departments with names COLDMILL, HOTMILL, PACKAGING etc etc. If i had all my agents installed with one plan each and all of my agents were in groups, this would result in having multiple locations on the web console, all of them pointing to the same destination and the only difference between all of my plans would be some parts of the path location. For example, i would have a location called \\MYSERVER\OFFICES\FINANCIAL or \\MYSERVER\OFFICES\HR, both of them pointing to the same destination and only the last part of the path differs. I found out about the location "Defined by script", but it seems not very flexible. It can be improved like this:
WScript.echo("\\\\MYSERVER\\{organization}\\{machine_group}\\" + WScript.CreateObject("WScript.Network").ComputerName)
The {organization} would be replaced by the organization that my agent belongs to and the {machine_group} would be replaced by the FULL path of the agent under the {organization}. So the actual location would be:
\\MYSERVER\PRODUCTION\PACKAGING\OPERATOR_ROOM1\MYCOMPUTERNAME1.tibx
where MYSERVER is my NAS, PRODUCTION is the organization the agent belongs to, the PAGKAGING is a department under PRODUCTION, the OPERATOR_ROOM is an area of the PACKAGING (it is a very big area with many operator rooms) and MYCOMPUTERNAME1 is the result of the command:
WScript.CreateObject("WScript.Network").ComputerName
My proposal is that someone can be able to have ONLY ONE location for all of his plans, since he can have only one storage device.
1.Acronis Management Console interface can now only be displayed on the console with the host name. The customers strongly requests host information that can be based on the IP address on the AMS.
2.Acronis log information can be exported to the user's syslog server for enterprise-level log auditing.
3.Many Acronis users have proposed Acronis Storage Node components that support Linux systems.
Athanasios Pantziarelas wrote:Hello Elizaveta,
Thank you for your answer. I know this way but I didn't mean this. We have 2 storage nodes in our infrastructure (with compression and deduplication). What I want to do is to be able to move some of the backups from one node to the other. For example in case the one location is full. That is what I meant.
Thank you.
Hello Athanasios,
thank you for the request!
Did you try replicating your backups between the storage nodes? You will be able to use two storage nodes and replicate the backups via a replication task. Also, the deduplication will be taken into account.
Please let us know the results.
Thank you!
Nick Stamou wrote:Hello all
I want to propose an improvement for the location "Defined by script". Maybe this is already supported, but the help file does not contain any information on how to do it.
Hello Nick,
thank you for the request and welcome to Acronis forum!
Am I not mistaken that you would like to see the NAS as your only backup location, but be able to backup to multiple subfolders? So in UI in Backups - Locations you would see only \\MYSERVER\ and then be able to expand it to \\MYSERVER\PRODUCTION\, \\MYSERVER\OFFICES\ etc? I would be happy to pass your feedback to the concerned Team, but first I would like to hear your thoughts: What would you like to achieve? How do you think this should be seen in UI?
Thank you!
Frankshaw wrote:1.Acronis Management Console interface can now only be displayed on the console with the host name. The customers strongly requests host information that can be based on the IP address on the AMS.
2.Acronis log information can be exported to the user's syslog server for enterprise-level log auditing.
3.Many Acronis users have proposed Acronis Storage Node components that support Linux systems.
Hello Frankshaw,
thank you! Could you please give us more details on the first two points? As for the last one, the internal ID for this request is ABR-115447.
Thank you!
Elizaveta Khazanova wrote:Athanasios Pantziarelas wrote:Hello Elizaveta,
Thank you for your answer. I know this way but I didn't mean this. We have 2 storage nodes in our infrastructure (with compression and deduplication). What I want to do is to be able to move some of the backups from one node to the other. For example in case the one location is full. That is what I meant.
Thank you.
Hello Athanasios,
thank you for the request!
Did you try replicating your backups between the storage nodes? You will be able to use two storage nodes and replicate the backups via a replication task. Also, the deduplication will be taken into account.
Please let us know the results.
Thank you!
Yes, this is a method to do it. You can also export a backup to another vault and afterwards manually delete the backups from the source vault. It would be nice to have a simple move feature. It's just an idea that I had because my first vault was full and I wanted to quickly move some backup sets to the other one.
Thank you.
I would like to see that the "fast incremental/differential backup" option will also use file's checksum to determine whether a file has changed or not because only timestamp and file size may not be sufficient. For example, some SQL service will only change the timestamp of the database files when it mounts or dismounts the databases and the file size may not be changed if there are free space available within the database. Thanks
Comwave IT, thank you for suggesting this change, we've passed your feedback to the product management.
Elizaveta Khazanova wrote:Nick Stamou wrote:Hello all
I want to propose an improvement for the location "Defined by script". Maybe this is already supported, but the help file does not contain any information on how to do it.
Hello Nick,
thank you for the request and welcome to Acronis forum!
Am I not mistaken that you would like to see the NAS as your only backup location, but be able to backup to multiple subfolders? So in UI in Backups - Locations you would see only \\MYSERVER\ and then be able to expand it to \\MYSERVER\PRODUCTION\, \\MYSERVER\OFFICES\ etc? I would be happy to pass your feedback to the concerned Team, but first I would like to hear your thoughts: What would you like to achieve? How do you think this should be seen in UI?
Thank you!
Well not quite that. I already have multiple subfolders on my NAS and i still use ABR 11.7 to backup to them. But the way the new software works with the Location function, will make things difficult if your customer has many locations, because for each subfolder that contains images, a Location must be defined on the UI.
Please let me explain. After having installed just 20 agents with the new Acronis, when i create a new backup plan, my Location list is like below.
There are already enough locations, even with 20 agents. My company has many departments. For example, "Quality Control" is a very large department with many sub-departments and i don't want to have all backups to the same location. I want them in subfolders based on the agent physical location (the name of the subfolder is the name of the sub-department). I have licenses for 300 agents and i plan to install all of them. There must around 80 locations, which means 80 Locations on the UI. Just imagine that when i will create a new plan, i will have to scroll down to the location list to find the correct location. There are many chances that i will select the wrong one. Not only me but also another 5-6 of my colleagues who will use the management console. My suggestion is simple but very critical to continue with using the software. I can create agent groups on the console and subgroups under each group and possibly another level of subgroups. For example, i can have an agent in subgroup "Quality Control\Department One\Floor 2". It would be totally perfect, if the "Defined by script" function gets extended, so i can have only one location like this one:
\\MyStorage\{AGENT_GROUP}
If the agent knows which group it belongs to (and it should belong to ONLY ONE group), then {AGENT_GROUP} will be expanded to group of the agent, so the actual destination will be:
\\MyStorage\Quality Control\Department One\Floor 2\machineName.tibx
And If i have multiple organization units, the {AGENT_GROUP} will also contain the organization the agent belongs, if it belongs to the root. This means that i will have ONLY ONE location for the whole company. The actual location will be the full subgroup of the agent.
Sorry for the delay of my answer, but i never got an email notification that somebody quoted me on the forum.
Regarding my previous post, the image i had embedded on my post, is not shown so i have atthached it here to present the "problem" with many locations,
Support for Foxpro Database
Editable Machine Names
Hope to see this in the next update :)
starcheese wrote:Support for Foxpro Database
Editable Machine Names
Hope to see this in the next update :)
Thank you, starcheese! Noted!
(internal ID for ref ABR-189561 - Rename machines)
Hi all
Currently using 12.5 trial and wanted to replicate a backup on the first, third and fifth (if there is one) Saturdays in a month.
Currently the options are only available for first, second, third, fourth and last.
The last Saturday could be the fourth week which I don’t want to replicate on that day.
Just had a look an it’s the same when setting up a schedule for a backup.
Alan
Alan Job wrote:Currently using 12.5 trial and wanted to replicate a backup on the first, third and fifth (if there is one) Saturdays in a month.
Currently the options are only available for first, second, third, fourth and last.
The last Saturday could be the fourth week which I don’t want to replicate on that day.
Thank you, Alan, we've noted your feedback!
- In earlier versions of Acronis Backup advanced, I was able to create dynamic groups based on Active Directory OU. I do not see this option in Acronis Backup 12.5.
- This is integral to my use-case in my environment. I would like this functionality restored or better documentation showing that it is possible.
- EDIT: I was looking at the web console and this seems it would be relatively easy to implement. The device search function needs to be edited to accept "distinguishedname" as a valid field since this is information that is already gathered by the device agent. Once that field is added as a valid search criterion, a dynamic group should be able to be created using that information.
- E.G. ' distinguishedname ILIKE "*OU=Desktops,OU=Computers,DC=contoso,DC=com" ' then click 'Save As'
- Also, in product release 12.5 Update 4 a customizable comment field is able to be added to devices. Would it be possible to add a comment during the installation of the Windows Agent by using the TRANSFORM (*.mst) file? This would be useful for the automation of device organization in dynamic groups.
Hello Thomas0311,
thank you for sharing your feedback!
1 is in our plans (internal ID for ref ABR-67254). I've added your comment as a vote for the feature.
2 I haven't found a parameter for altering the comment field during installation (checked parameters in https://kb.acronis.com/content/61525) If you have time, I'd suggest raising a support ticket, so that our expert engineers can help implementing your scenario. Please let me know if you open a ticket for this issue.
Better solution/option for Backups to daily swapping drives
(i guess all youd have to do is to make an entry in a xml file (on each drive) which drive is being used right now so that it can continue the backup at the right point....
Lu1z wrote:Better solution/option for Backups to daily swapping drives
(i guess all youd have to do is to make an entry in a xml file (on each drive) which drive is being used right now so that it can continue the backup at the right point....
Thank you, Lu1z, added your feedback to the existing feature request.
Hello,
* Why not use a service like uservoice.com for new features/suggestions/whishlist?
I would really like to see admin/enduser be able to restore seperate tables of a database. Bacula systems have had this for many years now.
Morris M wrote:Hello,
* Why not use a service like uservoice.com for new features/suggestions/whishlist?
We're considering implementing a voting mechanism for the features requests.
I would really like to see admin/enduser be able to restore seperate tables of a database. Bacula systems have had this for many years now.
Thank you for your feedback, Morris, it will be passed to the RnD.
Hello,
I would wish for the following "feature" to be gone and forever forgotten:
Impossibility to change "What to back up" in the Backup plan settings. Once it's set to Entire Machine/Disks/Volumes/Files/Folders and saved, it can never be changed for whatever reason.
If you need to change it for one or two devices, then it's only slight annoyance, because you have to re-create only 1 or two backup plans.
If you make 100 backup plans and later realize, that instead of Entire machine, you want to backup only selected Volumes, then I guarantee you will be more than just annoyed, because it means you have to create 100 backup plans from scratch - again.
This was one of basic functions in version 11, I don't understand why it's not possible in v12.
Thank you
Lukas
It should be possible to open all clients "Manage Services" in different tabs in the same browser!
Here is a couple of more features to be added to WHM/cPanel plugin that would really help.
Some of these features R1Soft and other providers have had for years!
When checking logs in WHM it should be possible to see which dato customer restored from. Which recovery point.
When admin/root user wants to restore from WHM/cPanel it should be possible to write the whole path to the folder/file instead of browsing around.
R1Soft has had this for years.
If a customer fixes the issue or the restore is to slow, it should be possible to cancel the restore for both admins and endusers in cPanel.
Morris M wrote:Here is a couple of more features to be added to WHM/cPanel plugin that would really help.
Some of these features R1Soft and other providers have had for years
Morris, thank you for your feedback! We've forwarded it to the product team and here an update
> When checking logs in WHM it should be possible to see which dato customer restored from. Which recovery point.
> When admin/root user wants to restore from WHM/cPanel it should be possible to write the whole path to the folder/file instead of browsing around.
were added to the backlog, thank you!
> If a customer fixes the issue or the restore is to slow, it should be possible to cancel the restore for both admins and endusers in cPanel.
Currently it's possible to cancel scheduled (not started) restore operations only. Restore operation is not atomic, so cancelling it in the middle will result in an inconsistent state.
Hi all,
it would be ABSOLUTELY FANTASTIC if you add the possibility to move machines between units. Something simle like select the machine, move machine to another unit...
Right now you need to remove the machine and it again and sometimes it generates problems...
Thanks
Hello No No,
thank you for your posting! This feature is registered under internal id ABR-121137. I will add a vote to it, to raise its priority. Thank you!
If you have further ideas, please let us know!
No No wrote:Hi all,
it would be ABSOLUTELY FANTASTIC if you add the possibility to move machines between units. Something simle like select the machine, move machine to another unit...
Right now you need to remove the machine and it again and sometimes it generates problems...
Thanks
It is not necessary to remove the device completely to modify its Unit. On the device in question, open cmd, navigate to C:\Program Files\Acronis\RegisterAgentTool\, and execute the following command:
register_agent.exe -o register -a <management server address> --tenant <unit_id>
Please see https://kb.acronis.com/content/59828 for reference.
Hello,
it would be nice to have an option to create installation package even if there is already Acronis installation present on the PC. At the moment it will offer only option to Repair or Modify the current installation, which means that in order to be able to create an installation package, I need to uninstall it first. I have to do this with every new version (when I need to prepare package for automatic installation).
Thanks
Brose wrote:it would be nice to have an option to create installation package even if there is already Acronis installation present on the PC.
Thank you, Brose! Added your comment as a vote for the existing feature request ABR-126212. Unfortunately, we cannot share any ETA on this request.
Hello,
I have other suggestion for you - it would be nice if we had an option to set what to show in Alerts section (Overview - Alerts), or what we consider as Critical (maybe some list of types of critical messages we could filter?), for example.
I don't mean email notifications, just the Alerts section itself.
Because not every Acronis customer uses this application the same.
For example, in our environment, Critical message "Machine is offline for more than 30 days" means nothing and is far from Critical.
Many of our clients (PCs) are often sent to suppliers for configuration etc. and stays there for months, so we are getting quite a lot of these "critical" notifications. Well, first Warnings ("Machine is offline for more than 20 days"), then Critical Alerts ("..more than 30 days").
I already got a few requests for this from our users, as they often see some new Alert notifications, so they go there and see that there's nothing, just unimportant information about offline machines.
I understand, that for some users this information might be useful, as they are probably not aware of their PCs being offline, but I think there will be also many users like us.
Some options to filter Alerts section would be nice.
Thank you
Lukas
Hey there,
is it also allowed to post a longer list of wishes here?
I´m working now for 3 years with ABA (before about 5 with True Image) and also other backup solutions and think I have a good overview what is helpful in a professional surrounding....
S.
Hello,
same as Sven, my list of all the wishes would be a little bit longer :) . Or is there a email address where we could send our suggestions/wishes?
I have another one about the "feature" I'm (and other users) currently fighting with:
I don't understand why, when I remove device from DEVICES assigned to backup plan, Acronis completely resets ITEMS TO BACK UP. It makes no sense and also means a lot of extra work.
Imagine you have local environment with hundreds of PCs (different configurations, different number of partitions..) and have only a few backup plans for them (so no separate plan for each and every PC). Each of those backup plans have, let's say, 20-50 devices assigned.
You have backup plans set to back up specific Disks/volumes and by specific I mean that it might be different for each client. Some have only C:\ partition, some have 4+ partitions and not all of them are selected for the backup (too large, unnecessary data etc.).
Then, when you uninstall some Agent(s), you need to go to the backup plan settings, remove the uninstalled Agent from there and after that, you have to go to items to back up (because this is now reset) and set everything up again from scratch.
You might say that I don't need to remove uninstalled Agent from the backup plan if it means so much work afterwards - but it's necessary, because when you then need to change anything in ITEMS TO BACK UP (exclude/add some partition, for example), it won't let you save the changes. Why? Because there are offline/uninstalled PCs assigned to the plan and Acronis is (I guess) trying to load them in the background and fails to do that, thus won't let you to change anything.
Unavailable clients assigned to the backup plan shouldn't prevent any changes to the backup plan itself.
Acronis behaves the same in all v12.5 updates we have tried so far, so this is not a bug introduced by one of the recent releases.
Short version:
Acronis shouldn't force users to set everything from scratch in ITEMS TO BACK UP, when one of the clients is removed from the backup plan.
To be honest, it shouldn't do this also when a new PC is added to the backup plan - but it's happening.
For home use this wouldn't be a problem, but for professional solution where hundreds/thousands of PCs are involved, it's a problem.
Lukas
Brose wrote:
Acronis shouldn't force users to set everything from scratch in ITEMS TO BACK UP, when one of the clients is removed from the backup plan.
To be honest, it shouldn't do this also when a new PC is added to the backup plan - but it's happening.
Lukas, thank you for sharing your feedback! This issue has been reported to the RnD (internal ID for reference ABR-233907). If you have more feedback, please feel free to post it here, we're registering all comments regarding the product quality in our tracking system. The feedback is also reviewed by the RnD on a weekly basis.
SvenT wrote:Hey there,
is it also allowed to post a longer list of wishes here?
Absolutely! Sven, you're always welcome to share your feedback\concerns regarding the feature set\product quality.
Hello,
I have another question/request: are you considering any quality-of-life changes in process of deleting backups?
At the moment, if you want to delete backups manually, you have to go one-by-one and that takes forever.
Let's say you have 30 backups and you want to delete 15 of them, but not of specific age (so you can't use cleanup task for that), just randomly spread for any reason.
In case like this, you have to select (just one) backup -> delete -> wait for refresh -> select another backup -> delete -> wait for task to finish and refresh the list -> etc. etc.
In version 11 it was simple and easy to do, now it's usable only when you need to delete a handful of backups, otherwise it's not really usable. It would be great if, for example, there would be a DELETE button next to "refresh" button (when browsing backups inside an archive) and by clicking on it, Acronis would enable selection of multiple backups and second click on that button (or another one) would delete those selected backups.
Thank you,
Lukas
Hi,
I am using True Image 2020 and Cyber Backup 12.5. Both do creating images with File Type TIBX. Why you cannot make both images combatible for the two products. For restoring tibx images it is not clear from which product it was created.
Thanks Toni
Hello Anna,
I've been a long-time user of Acronis B&R since v9; always writing to a large set of disk drives rotated through off-site storage. Before they were dropped in Cyber Backup v12, using the [Date] and [Time] "simplified names" variables made it easy to remotely mount a disk in a drive cradle and immediately identify all candidate TIBs by filename to know which drives likely contained desired file versions. V12's use of a GUID for unique ID's requires far more time and effort to dig through the off-site drives.
Please, please, please bring back support for those two particular variables.
Thanks!
-Bob
Bob Riddle wrote:Hello Anna,
I've been a long-time user of Acronis B&R since v9; always writing to a large set of disk drives rotated through off-site storage. Before they were dropped in Cyber Backup v12, using the [Date] and [Time] "simplified names" variables made it easy to remotely mount a disk in a drive cradle and immediately identify all candidate TIBs by filename to know which drives likely contained desired file versions.
Thank you, Bob! Added your comment as a vote for the feature request (internal ID ABR-131367 Additional variables for archive name). Time stamps are currently supported in the backup format 11 https://forum.acronis.com/comment/498018#comment-498018
Antonio Zampino wrote:Hi,
I am using True Image 2020 and Cyber Backup 12.5. Both do creating images with File Type TIBX. Why you cannot make both images combatible for the two products. For restoring tibx images it is not clear from which product it was created.
Thanks Toni
Hi! Acronis Cyber Backup 12.5 is compatible with images created with Acronis True Image, please refer to https://kb.acronis.com/content/1689 The reverse compatibility is not offered since the images created with the business solutions might contain the unsupported OS.
Brose wrote:Hello,
I have another question/request: are you considering any quality-of-life changes in process of deleting backups?
At the moment, if you want to delete backups manually, you have to go one-by-one and that takes forever.
Let's say you have 30 backups and you want to delete 15 of them, but not of specific age (so you can't use cleanup task for that), just randomly spread for any reason.
In case like this, you have to select (just one) backup -> delete -> wait for refresh -> select another backup -> delete -> wait for task to finish and refresh the list -> etc. etc.
Thank you, Lukas! I've added your request to the project RM-616 Recovery points improvements
I also second the need for a more streamlined approach to deleting arbitrary backups.
My scenarios for this:
- Delete backups that were made outside of normally scheduled times for some reason.
- A backup was made manually after a significant change (i.e. OS reinstallation), but a scheduled backup was made too close to this event, therefore it's deleted by hand to avoid confusing the boundary of this change
- Delete backups too free up space. There's no easily definable rules when some machines have higher priority to preserve more backups whereas others may be fine with a single backup if neccessary.
-- Peter
Péter Szatmári wrote:I also second the need for a more streamlined approach to deleting arbitrary backups.
Thank you, Peter! Noted your feedback in the project RM-616 Recovery points improvements
Hello again,
I have another wishlist entry for you: Backup Monitor should show "Last successful backup" instead of "Last backup" information.
At the moment (r14330) it's showing when the backup plan was run the last time, but that doesn't need to mean anything, if the plan was manually stopped or failed.
Because even if the backup plan fails, it's shown in Backup monitor as "Last backup".
User would think that this date is the last available backup (successful backup), but that's not always true. In many cases Last backup = Last available backup (if everything goes well), but if your backup plan fails, then this information is not really valid.
Thank you
Lukas
Brose wrote:I have another wishlist entry for you: Backup Monitor should show "Last successful backup" instead of "Last backup" information.
Hello Lukas,
thank you for sharing this request! Passed to the product management for review (internal ID ABR-88473)
Hello!
I've recently discovered that the disknumber windows diskpart/disk manager reports are zero based and what "acrocmd list disk" outputs is 1 based index.
Could you plase add a warning to the "disk" section in the command line reference pdf about this? I know it's noted to use "acrocmd list disk" to output the disk numbers, however it's not said that other ways to determine the number wouldn't be correct. Same situation with volumes for diskpart vs acrocmd output.
-- Peter
Ekaterina wrote:Brose wrote:I have another wishlist entry for you: Backup Monitor should show "Last successful backup" instead of "Last backup" information.
Hello Lukas,
thank you for sharing this request! Passed to the product management for review (internal ID ABR-88473)
Hello!
I'd rather vote for it to be configurable either way.
In my case it would be more confusing to have it display last successful backup, as the monitor only serves to notify acronis/system administrators. For us it's more useful to know when was the last attempt made (successful or not).
Where monitor serves mainly to notify users of backup operations running in the background or clients of a company managing backups, I can understand if last successful backup time would be displayed.
-- Peter
Best regards,
Elizaveta Khazanova | Support Engineer
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