Disk 1
MBR
LDM
database
1 MB
Disk 2
Protec-tive
MBR
GPT
Microsoft
Reserved
Partition (MSR)
LDM
database
GPT
LDM Metadata
partition
1 MB
The Acronis proprietary technology that brings a system online immediately after the system recovery is started. The system boots from the backup and the machine becomes operational and ready to provide necessary services. The data required to serve incoming requests is recovered with the highest priority; everything else is recovered in the background. Limitations:
A modification of Acronis Backup & Recovery 11 Agent for Windows that can run in the preinstallation environment. The plug-in can be added to a WinPE image using Bootable Media Builder. The resulting bootable media can be used to boot any PC-compatible machine and perform, with certain limitations, most of the direct management operations without the help of an operating system. Operations can be configured and controlled either locally through the GUI or remotely using the console.
A secure volume for storing backup archives within a managed machine. Advantages:
Limitation: Acronis Secure Zone cannot be organized on a dynamic disk.
Acronis Secure Zone is considered as a personal vault.
A modification of the bootable agent, residing on the system disk and configured to start at boot time when F11 is pressed. Acronis Startup Recovery Manager eliminates the need for rescue media or network connection to start the bootable rescue utility.
Acronis Startup Recovery Manager is especially useful for mobile users. If a failure occurs, the user reboots the machine, hits F11 on prompt "Press F11 for Acronis Startup Recovery Manager…" and performs data recovery in the same way as with ordinary bootable media.
Limitation: requires re-activation of loaders other than Windows loaders and GRUB.
The Acronis proprietary technology that helps boot up Windows or Linux on dissimilar hardware or a virtual machine. Universal Restore handles differences in devices that are critical for the operating system start-up, such as storage controllers, motherboard or chipset.
Universal Restore is not available:
because these features are primarily meant for instant data recovery on the same machine.
An action performed by Acronis Backup & Recovery 11 for achievement of some user goal. Examples: backing up, recovery, exporting a backup, cataloging a vault. An activity may be initiated by a user or by the software itself. Execution of a task always causes one or more activities.
An application that performs data backup and recovery and enables other management operations on the machine, such as task management and operations with hard disks.
The type of data that can be backed up depends on the agent type. Acronis Backup & Recovery 11 includes the agents for backing up disks and files and the agents for backing up virtual machines residing on virtualization servers.
See Backup archive.
A backup is the result of a single backup operation. Physically, it is a file or a tape record that contains a copy of the backed up data as of a specific date and time. Backup files created by Acronis Backup & Recovery 11 have a TIB extension. The TIB files which are the result of a backup export or consolidation are also called backups.
A set of backups created and managed by a backup plan. An archive can contain multiple full backups as well as incremental and differential backups. Backups belonging to the same archive are always stored in the same location. If the backup plan includes replication or moving of backups to multiple locations, the backups in each location form a separate archive.
An operation that creates a copy of the data that exists on a machine's hard disk for the purpose of recovering or reverting the data to a specified date and time.
Configuration parameters of a backup operation, such as pre/post backup commands, maximum network bandwidth allotted for the backup stream or data compression level. Backup options are a part of a backup plan.
A set of rules that specify how the given data will be protected on a given machine. A backup plan specifies:
For example, a backup plan can contain the following information:
Physically, a backup plan is a bundle of tasks executed on a managed machine.
A backup plan can be created directly on the machine, imported from another machine (local plan) or propagated to the machine from the management server (centralized plan).
A part of the backup plan that includes the backup schedule and [optionally] the retention rules and the cleanup schedule. For example, perform a full backup monthly on the last day of the month at 10:00AM and an incremental backup on Sundays at 10:00PM. Delete backups that are older than 3 months. Check for such backups every time the backup operation is completed.
Acronis Backup & Recovery 11 provides the ability to use well-known optimized backup schemes such as GFS and Tower of Hanoi, to create a custom backup scheme or to back up data once.
A bootable rescue utility that includes most of the functionality of the Acronis Backup & Recovery 11 Agent. Bootable agent is based on Linux kernel. A machine can be booted into a bootable agent using either bootable media or Acronis PXE Server. Operations can be configured and controlled either locally through the GUI or remotely using the console.
A physical media (CD, DVD, USB flash drive or other media supported by a machine as a boot device) that contains the bootable agent or Windows Preinstallation Environment (WinPE) with the Acronis Plug-in for WinPE. A machine can also be booted into the above environments using the network boot from Acronis PXE Server or Windows Deployment Service (WDS). These servers with uploaded bootable components can also be thought of as a kind of bootable media.
Bootable media is most often used to:
A group of machines permanently located on a management server.
Built-in groups cannot be deleted, moved to other groups or manually modified. Custom groups cannot be created within built-in groups. There is no way to remove a machine from the built-in group except by removing the machine from the management server.
Cataloging a backup adds the contents of the backup to the data catalog. Backups are cataloged automatically by the agent as soon as they are created. A user has the option to turn off automatic cataloging and start it manually when appropriate. Backups that are stored on a storage node will be cataloged by the node in this case.
A backup plan that is deployed to a managed machine from the management server. Such plan can be modified only by editing the original backup plan on the management server.
Management of the Acronis Backup & Recovery 11 infrastructure through a central management unit known as Acronis Backup & Recovery 11 Management Server. The centralized management operations include:
A task propagated to a machine from the management server. Such task can be modified only by editing the original task or centralized backup plan on the management server.
A networked location allotted by the management server administrator to serve as storage for the backup archives. A centralized vault can be managed by a storage node or be unmanaged. The total number and size of archives stored in a centralized vault are limited by the storage size only.
As soon as the management server administrator creates a centralized vault, the vault name and path to the vault are distributed to all machines registered on the server. The shortcut to the vault appears on the machines in the Vaults list. Any backup plan existing on the machines, including local plans, can use the centralized vault.
On a machine that is not registered on the management server, a user having the privilege to back up to the centralized vault can do so by specifying the full path to the vault. If the vault is managed, the user's archives will be managed by the storage node as well as other archives stored in the vault.
Deleting backups from a backup archive or moving them to a different location in order to get rid of outdated backups or prevent the archive from exceeding the desired size.
Cleanup consists ofapplying retention rules to an archive. The retention rules are set by the backup plan that produces the archive. Cleanup may or may not result in deleting or moving backups depending on whether the retention rules are violated or not.
A tool for remote or local access to Acronis agents and Acronis Backup & Recovery 11 Management Server.
Having connected the console to the management server, the administrator sets up centralized backup plans and accesses other management server functionality, that is, performs centralized management. Using the direct console-agent connection, the administrator performs direct management.
Combining two or more subsequent backups belonging to the same archive into a single backup.
Consolidation might be needed when deleting backups, either manually or during cleanup. For example, the retention rules require to delete a full backup that has expired but retain the next incremental one. The backups will be combined into a single full backup which will be dated with the incremental backup's date. Since consolidation may take a lot of time and system resources, retention rules provide an option to not delete backups with dependencies. In our example, the full backup will be retained until the incremental one also becomes obsolete. Then both backups will be deleted.
Allows a user to easily find the required version of data and select it for recovery. On a managed machine, users can view and search data in any vault accessible from this machine. The centralized catalog available on the management server contains all data stored on its storage nodes.
Physically, data catalog is stored in catalog files. Every vault uses its own set of catalog files which normally are located directly in the vault. If this is not possible, such as for tape storages, the catalog files are stored in the managed machine's or storage node's local folder. Also, a storage node locally stores catalog files of its remote vaults, for the purpose of fast access.
A managed vault in which deduplication is enabled.
A method of storing different duplicates of the same information only once.
Acronis Backup & Recovery 11 can apply the deduplication technology to backup archives stored on storage nodes. This minimizes storage space taken by the archives, backup traffic and network usage during backup.
A differential backup stores changes to the data against the latest full backup. You need access to the corresponding full backup to recover the data from a differential backup.
An operation that is performed on a managed machine using the direct console-agent connection (as opposed to centralized management when the operations are configured on the management server and propagated by the server to the managed machines).
The direct management operations include:
A kind of direct management is performed when using bootable media.
An e-mail message that contains a list of backed up data items and detailed instructions on how to recover these items from a backup.
If the corresponding backup option is enabled, a DRP is sent to the specified e-mail addresses after the first successful backup performed by the backup plan, and also after any change to the list of data items or the DRP parameters.
A backup that contains a sector-based copy of a disk or a volume in a packaged form. Normally, only sectors that contain data are copied. Acronis Backup & Recovery 11 provides an option to take a raw image, that is, copy all the disk sectors, which enables imaging of unsupported file systems.
A number of dynamic disks that store the common configuration data in their LDM databases and therefore can be managed as a whole. Normally, all dynamic disks created within the same machine are members of the same disk group.
As soon as the first dynamic disk is created by the LDM or another disk management tool, the disk group name can be found in the registry key HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Services\dmio\Boot Info\Primary Disk Group\Name.
The next created or imported disks are added to the same disk group. The group exists until at least one of its members exists. Once the last dynamic disk is disconnected or converted to basic, the group is discontinued, though its name is kept in the above registry key. In case a dynamic disk is created or connected again, a disk group with an incremental name is created.
When moved to another machine, a disk group is considered as ‘foreign’ and cannot be used until imported into the existing disk group. The import updates the configuration data on both the local and the foreign disks so that they form a single entity. A foreign group is imported as is (will have the original name) if no disk group exists on the machine.
For more information about disk groups please refer to the following Microsoft knowledge base article:
222189 Description of Disk Groups in Windows Disk Management http://support.microsoft.com/kb/222189/EN-US/
A hard disk managed by Logical Disk Manager (LDM) that is available in Windows starting with Windows 2000. LDM helps flexibly allocate volumes on a storage device for better fault tolerance, better performance or larger volume size.
A dynamic disk can use either the master boot record (MBR) or GUID partition table (GPT) partition style. In addition to MBR or GPT, each dynamic disk has a hidden database where the LDM stores the dynamic volumes' configuration. Each dynamic disk holds the complete information about all dynamic volumes existing in the disk group which makes for better storage reliability. The database occupies the last 1MB of an MBR disk. On a GPT disk, Windows creates the dedicated LDM Metadata partition, taking space from the Microsoft Reserved Partition (MSR.)
Disk 1 |
MBR |
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LDM
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Disk 2 |
Protec-tive |
GPT |
Microsoft |
LDM
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GPT |
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LDM Metadata |
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Dynamic disks organized on MBR (Disk 1) and GPT (Disk 2) disks.
For more information about dynamic disks please refer to the following Microsoft knowledge base articles:
Disk Management (Windows XP Professional Resource Kit) http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/bb457110.aspx
816307 Best practices for using dynamic disks on Windows Server 2003-based computers http://support.microsoft.com/kb/816307
A group of machines which is populated automatically by the management server according to membership criteria specified by the administrator. Acronis Backup & Recovery 11 offers the following membership criteria:
A machine remains in a dynamic group as long as the machine meets the group's criteria. However, the administrator can specify exclusions and not include certain machines in the dynamic group even if they meet the criteria.
Any volume located on dynamic disks, or more precisely, on a disk group. Dynamic volumes can span multiple disks. Dynamic volumes are usually configured depending on the desired goal:
A backup archive encrypted according to the Advanced Encryption Standard (AES). When the encryption option and a password for the archive are set in the backup options, each backup belonging to the archive is encrypted by the agent before saving the backup to its destination.
A managed vault to which anything written is encrypted and anything read is decrypted transparently by the storage node, using a vault-specific encryption key stored on the node. In case the storage medium is stolen or accessed by an unauthorized person, the malefactor will not be able to decrypt the vault contents without access to the storage node. Encrypted archives will be encrypted over the encryption performed by the agent.
An operation that creates a copy of an archive or a self-sufficient part copy of an archive in the location you specify. The export operation can be applied to a single archive, a single backup or to your choice of backups belonging to the same archive. An entire vault can be exported by using the command line interface.
A self-sufficient backup containing all data chosen for backup. You do not need access to any other backup to recover the data from a full backup.
A popular backup scheme aimed to maintain the optimal balance between a backup archive size and the number of recovery points available from the archive. GFS enables recovering with daily resolution for the last several days, weekly resolution for the last several weeks and monthly resolution for any time in the past.
For more information please refer to GFS backup scheme.
The same as Disk backup.
A backup that stores changes to the data against the latest backup. You need access to other backups from the same archive to restore data from an incremental backup.
An activity performed by a storage node after a backup has been saved to a deduplicating vault.
During indexing, the storage node performs the following operations:
Indexing can be thought of as "deduplication at target", as opposed to "deduplication at source" which is performed by the agent during the backup operation. A user can suspend and resume indexing.
A backup plan created on a managed machine using direct management.
A task created on a managed machine using direct management.
This term has two meanings, depending on the context.
A physical or virtual computer uniquely identified by an operating system installation. Machines with multiple operating systems (multi-boot systems) are considered as multiple machines.
A machine, either physical or virtual, where at least one Acronis Backup & Recovery 11 Agent is installed.
A centralized vault managed by a storage node. Archives in a managed vault can be accessed as follows:
bsp://node_address/vault_name/archive_name/
Physically, managed vaults can reside on a network share, SAN, NAS, on a hard drive local to the storage node or on a tape library locally attached to the storage node. The storage node performs cleanup and validation for each archive stored in the managed vault. An administrator can specify additional operations that the storage node will perform (deduplication, encryption).
A central server that drives data protection within the enterprise network. Acronis Backup & Recovery 11 Management Server provides the administrator with:
If there are multiple management servers on the network, they operate independently, manage different machines and use different centralized vaults for storing archives.
A dedicated tool for creating bootable media.
A local or networked vault created using direct management. Once a personal vault is created, a shortcut to it appears on the managed machine in the Vaults list. Multiple machines can use the same physical location; for example, a network share; as a personal vault.
See Backup plan.
Date and time to which the backed up data can be reverted to.
A machine managed by a management server. A machine can be registered on only one management server at a time. A machine becomes registered as a result of the registration procedure.
A procedure that adds a managed machine to a management server.
Registration sets up a trust relationship between the agent residing on the machine and the server. During registration, the console retrieves the management server's client certificate and passes it to the agent which uses it later to authenticate clients attempting to connect. This helps prevent any attempts by network attackers from establishing a fake connection on behalf of a trusted principal (the management server).
A tape pool that is allowed to take tapes from the Free tapes pool when required.
Copying a backup to another location. By default, the backup is copied immediately after creation. A user has the option to postpone copying the backup by setting up replication inactivity time.
This feature replaces and enhances the dual destination backup feature, which was available in Acronis Backup & Recovery 10.
A part of backup plan that specifies when and how to delete or move the backups created by the plan.
A group of machines which a management server administrator populates by manually adding machines to the group. A machine remains in a static group until the administrator removes it from the group or from the management server.
A server aimed to optimize usage of various resources required for protection of enterprise data. This goal is achieved by organizing managed vaults. Storage Node enables the administrator to:
A set of actions to be performed by Acronis Backup & Recovery 11 at a certain time or event. The actions are described in a non human-readable service file. The time or event (schedule) is stored in the protected registry keys (in Windows) or on the file system (in Linux).
A popular backup scheme aimed to maintain the optimal balance between a backup archive size and the number of recovery points available from the archive. Unlike the GFS scheme that has only three levels of recovery resolution (daily, weekly, monthly resolution), the Tower of Hanoi scheme continuously reduces the time interval between recovery points as the backup age increases. This allows for very efficient usage of the backup storage.
For more information please refer to "Tower of Hanoi backup scheme".
Any vault that is not a managed vault.
An operation that checks the possibility of data recovery from a backup.
Validation of a file backup imitates recovery of all files from the backup to a dummy destination. Validation of a disk backup calculates a checksum for every data block saved in the backup. Both procedures are resource-intensive.
While the successful validation means a high probability of successful recovery, it does not check all factors that influence the recovery process. If you back up the operating system, only a test recovery under the bootable media to a spare hard drive can guarantee successful recovery in the future.
A place for storing backup archives. A vault can be organized on a local or networked drive or detachable media, such as an external USB drive. There are no settings for limiting a vault size or the number of backups in a vault. You can limit the size of each archive using cleanup, but the total size of archives stored in the vault is limited by the storage size only.
On Acronis Backup & Recovery 11 Management Server, a machine is considered virtual if it can be backed up from the virtualization host without installing an agent on the machine. Such machine appears in the Virtual machines section. If an agent is installed into the guest system, the machine appears in the Machines with agents section.
A minimal Windows system based on any of the following kernels:
WinPE is commonly used by OEMs and corporations for deployment, test, diagnostic and system repair purposes. A machine can be booted into WinPE via PXE, CD-ROM, USB flash drive or hard disk. Acronis Plug-in for WinPE enables running the Acronis Backup & Recovery 11 Agent in the preinstallation environment.