DR and System Migration Simplified

Acronis True image Enterprise Server is a D.R and system migration solution
meant for physical as well as virtual environments. It supports bare-metal and
granular disaster recovery and live disk snapshots for databases as well as
sever applications. It provides full disk imaging as well as incremental and
differential backups. It allows users to restore a server from an image, which
includes OS, applications running on top of it, their configuration as well as
databases. Restoration can be performed to the same or new server, which can
also be a virtual server. Acronis also supports automation of backups, ie you
can schedule backups at your convenience. It notifies users through email as
well as Windows pop-up messages.

One of the useful features present in this solution is Acronis Secure Zone. This
is a hidden partition where you can store backup archives. This secure zone can
be created on a network share as well as on a single machine. In case Secure
Zone runs out of the space, it automatically deletes the oldest full backup
present in the Secure Zone partition. Acronis also supports dual destination
backup, where a copy of every backup is stored at a separate location which can
be present on a local drive or network. Other features include 256 AES backup
encryption, backup compression, mounting images in read/write mode, clone disks
etc. It also has the Event tracing feature, which if enabled places the backup
report in Application Event log of Windows. It also allows the user to send a
report to an SNMP recipient.

Installation

Installing Acronis True Image Echo Enterprise Server is easy. Its components
include True Image management console, Acronis Backup Server, Group Server and
agents for Windows and Linux, as well as the core Echo Enterprise Server.
Acronis True Image Echo Enterprise server supports Windows Server 2008, 2003
Server and Vista. Its True Image Agents runs on Linux 2.4.9 or subsequent
kernel. Install True Image agent on servers you want to monitor remotely. Also
install its True Image management console component. Installation of agents on
servers can be done manually or remotely through its console component.

How to use

Once you have installed the agent on a remote server, launch its remote
console and connect to the server you want to manage. Once connected to the
remote server under Acronis backup server management, you can configure user
profiles, backup locations, edit default settings, etc. To take backups, go to
“Backup and Recovery Tasks”, here select backup option to launch create backup
wizard. Wizard will ask you for basic information like what all do you want to
the backup and the location where you want to keep it. It will also ask you
whether you want to take a full backup or incremental backup, or deferential
backup. Once you finish the wizard, it will start performing the backup
operation.

In Acronis you can easily convert a backup image into a Virtual disk, it supports all major virtual machine formats as shown above.

Acronis True Image server also allows you to mount a backup image and manage
its backup contents as if it were a logical drive.

Startup Recovery Manager

With Acronis' Startup Recovery Manager, you can run True Image Echo
Enterprise Server without loading the OS and restore a damaged partition. For
this you don't need to boot the server with removable media or any remote
server. This feature can be enabled from Tools menu. Select the option "Activate
Acronis Startup Recovery Manager". This will launch a wizard, which will first
create an Acronis Secure Zone. For this, select the partition where you want to
create the Secure Zone and define the size for this partition. The next wizard
will ask you whether you want to password protect the Secure Zone partition or
not. Once you finish the wizard, it will automatically create the partition and
enable Startup Recovery. In case the server fails or gets damaged, you can
restore it through the Startup Recovery Manager. To do this at the time of
booting the server, press F11. This will invoke the Startup Recovery Manager and
boot True Image Echo server, from where you can launch recovery wizard and
restore damaged partitions.

Through acronis event log, you can see details of each and every event as soon as it takes place.

Migrating a server

Through Acronis you can migrate an existing server to a new disk or even to
a virtual disk. This option is handy if you have run out of disk space. For
transferring a server to a new disk you will need to add another hard disk to
the existing server. If this is not possible, you can clone its hard disk and
restore it to a new server. Acronis comes with two transfer modes, manual and
automatic. In manual mode, it allows you to select the method of partition as
well as data transfer. In manual mode you can also select whether you would
remove or keep old disk partitions. To clone a disk, you can start clone wizard
from "manage hard disk options". Once the wizard has started, it will ask you to
select the destination drive and whether you want to keep existing partitions or
not. It will also ask you which transfer method you want to use. You have three
options: proportional, manual and 'As is.' In proportional, the new disk space
will be evenly distributed amongst cloned partitions while in manual you can
define the new size and rest of the parameters. If you are cloning the partition
which holds the active OS, the solution will reboot the machine before starting
to clone the server.

Through the Remote Console, you can manage a server, running Acronis agent and perform all backup and recovery tasks.

Converting a backup image into a virtual disk

Converting an image to a Virtual Disk is easily done. Launch Convert to
virtual disk from Tools menu. Here first provide the location of the image file
you want to convert to a virtual disk. Next the wizard will ask you to choose
the virtual disk type. Here you will have five options: VMware, ESX, MS Virtual
PC or Server or Hyper-V, Parallels and Xen Server. Choose the option as per the
virtualization solution you are running. Lastly, provide the location where you
would like to save the virtual disk and click on Proceed. Now it will start
converting your image to a virtual disk. The total time taken will depend on the
size of your backup. We were able to convert a 4.9 GB image in 8 minutes.