Offsite Backup and Running Cleanup job on remote location vault

Hello Jeff,

Thank you very much for your interesting question, it will be my pleasure to assist you.

I have checked all of our resources and unfortunately at the moment our software does not support remote retention rules and cleanup tasks independent of the server our software is loaded on. Regarding the issue with the "bogus" backup job, it could be a known issue with our software, however I could not find any such reports with our QA team.

I will definitely create a Customer Listening Ticket for this scenario, so that our Development Team takes note of it and we can implement it in a future release of our software.

Please let me know if you have additional questions.

Thank you.

Hi Anton,

Thanks for your help - I appreciate your to-the-point response as well. It would be great if you could pass this on to your Development team. I'm sure it would work fine if I could just run the cleanup task directly on the vault vs. having to create a bogus/fake job (using at least 1 drive entry) on the server where the vault is currently attached to (i.e. the remote location).

I could then run the cleanup task on both vault copies (local/remote) and they would match up. I believe other "offsite" imaging solutions are currently using this functionality so it would be great for Acronis to implement!

Thanks,
Jeff

I 2nd this request - there is a serious requirement for a better thought out policy to allow easy offsite setup.

Hello Paul,

Thank you for your post. I will definitely help you.

I will create another Customer Listening Case for this and forward it to our Development team, so that they are aware of the interest in such feature.

Please let me know if you have additional questions.

Thank you.

Can I add interest to this feature as well ... would save me a lot of headaches :)

Hi all,

I'm curious as to whether any progress as been made on this request. I'd also like to hear how others are possibly working around the limitation.

I experimented a bit more with this and can simplify my request a bit for the design team:

Goal: To run a cleanup job on a copied vault and have the results be the same as if I ran the cleanup job on the original server.

1. I take a vault's contents and copy it to another server running ABR10 (.meta folder and .tib files).

2. I create a "fake" backup job (custom / nothing scheduled) and duplicate the retention policy (Delete prior to 1 Day / Consolidate the Backups). I point the backup archive to the copied vault/archive.

3. I *only* run the cleanup task manually.

The problem is, Acronis immediately creates a second vault (and second .meta folder) and that botches everything up.

Possible Suggestions/Solutions:

1. Allow us to "import" vaults and not create the second .meta folder.
2. Allow us to easily click (and/or import) a vault and click "run cleanup".

Basically - some sort of easy, independent cleanup procedures implemented into the program would be helpful. I think this should be very easy to accomplish because the technology is already there. Just look at the vault and consolidate it - period. No new vault/.meta creation.

Anyway - thanks for your time. This is really the only piece to an otherwise great offsite solution we have implemented.

Jeff

Hello Jeff,

Have you tried creating a cron job on the backup server to delete the old backups? This would save you doing it through FTP - Or if its a linux server just set a cron in there or get it to SSH using keys.

Hi,

Deleting the old backups isn't the problem - it's using the consolidation feature locally and remotely (copy of the vault) and having them match-up that I need.

For instance (real scenerio) -

Day1:
CompanyServer1 backs up to a vault on a local NAS. I now have a 100GB vault with one full backup.
I copy that vault (whole folder) via USB drive, drive it over to the data center and copy it up to my storage server.
I now have duplicated vault data in both locations.

Day2:
CompanyServer2 runs and incremental backup.
At night, my data sync software syncs up the local vault with my data center storage server vault.
I now have duplicated vault data in both locations.

Day3 through Day 60:
Same thing.

Day 61:
I now have a full backup and 59 inc backups sync'd up at 2 locations.
I can't store inc's forever - I need to free up space. I only want to keep the last 30 days worth of inc's.
I can either:

a) Run another full backup. I can't sync up 100GB remotely - I'll have to manually do the USB drive/copy thing - a real pain.

b) Delete the last 29 days and run another inc. It's a large inc that keeps getting larger each month to the point that it's so large, I need to go back to option a again and start over (this is currently what I do now).

c) Run a consolidation job on CompanyServer1. Roll the inc's older than 30 days back into a new full backup file.

Option c is where I need to be. It's clean and can be automated. The problem is, I now end up with a new 100GB full backup file that does not match the one at the data center. I have to manually start over again - copy the file - drive it over - etc. What I want to be able to do is:

c) Run a consolidation job on CompanyServer1. Roll the inc's older than 30 days back into a new full backup file.

d) Run the same consolidation job on the copy of the vault located on my data center storage server using a locally installed copy of ABR 10.

I would then have sync'd up data at both locations. The feature request is to allow for me to do step d - which Acronis currently won't let you do. You can't run a cleanup/consolidation job on a vault - it has to be part of a Backup plan which in turn creates a whole other vault and botches it up.

Thanks,
Jeff

Hi,

Do we have any updates on this issue? Although we like Acronis, we're about to abandon the product completely (and take 20+ clients, a few dozen servers and over $20k in product sales) and move to a different solution solely because of this limitation. We simply have no choice; the manual management of offsite vaults is too time consuming vs. products like ShadowProtect that have it built in.

Again, all I need to do is take duplicated vault data (i.e. both the local vault and remote vault have the exact same set of files in them), run a consolidation on both and have them match up. That's it; I don't even need Acronis to be responsible for the data transmission. Sadly, if Acronis can't figure this out or is unwilling to add the functionality in, they are going to lose a lot of business and resellers.

Thanks,
Jeff

Im in the process of implementing a SBS2011 server which I would like to backup to both a local and remote NAS. I have the following two questions:
1) I understand SBS2011 support is in the pipeline for your next release, is that true, ETA?
2) Can Acronis handle the backups to both the local and remote NAS. If so how would it do this? I need to keep the bandwidth requirements to a minimum for the remote copy and was looking to use the deduplication add-on to assist with this. Do i backup to one location and use a tool to copy to the remote location. Grateful if you can offer some guidance as to how Acronis can assist?

Reading this thread would indicate I may have an issue regarding the remote location backups, has this been addressed in the next release?

I would like to see this feature implemented in the Acronis standard server editions as well.

Our company has been a loyal Acronis customer for a number of years and we prefer Acronis over other brands. However, these other brands are providing this feature and doing it at a cheaper cost than Acronis. If Acronis cannot implement this simple feature then our company, like Jeff's, will have no choice but to switch to a brand that provides this feature.

Hi All,

I have managed to succeed in consolidating backups on a remote server using the command line utility (trueimagecmd.exe). However, this consolidated backup does not work with any new incremental backups performed on the original server. Perhaps someone with a bit more knowledge of the Acronis TIB file structure might be able to explain why it's not working?

My testing procedure was as follows:
Install ABR10 on server A and server B.
Perform full backup of server A, followed by a number of incremental backups (I worked with about 3 or 4)
Copy the full backup with incrementals from server A to server B.
Consolidate the backups on server A by changing the retention settings in the backup plan.
Consolidate the backups on server B by using the command line utility:
trueimagecmd --pit-info --filename:ABR10_2013_11_19_17_37_45_831D.TIB
trueimagecmd --consolidate --filename:ABR10_2013_11_19_17_37_45_831D.TIB --include_pits:4 --target_filename:ABR10.TIB
Manually remove the old backup files and rename the consolidated backup file to match the files coming from server A:
del ABR10_2013*.TIB
ren ABR10.TIB ABR10_2013_11_19_17_37_45_831D.TIB
Perform another incremental backup on server A.
Copy the new incremental backups from server A to server B, placing it in the folder as the newly consolidated backup.
Attempt to read the pit info from the backup on server B:
trueimagecmd --pit-info --filename:ABR10_2013_11_19_17_37_45_831D.TIB

Only pit 1, the full backup, will be present. The incremental backup copied from server A is not acknowledged.

If we can get the ABR10 command line utility to acknowledge the new incremental backups from server A, we can turn that into a workable solution. Ideas anyone?