Scheduling

Acronis scheduler helps the administrator adapt backup plans to the company’s daily routine and each employee’s work style. The plans’ tasks will be launched systematically keeping the critical data safely protected.

The scheduling is available when creating a backup plan with any of the following backup schemes: Simple, Custom or Tower of Hanoi. The schedule also can be set for validation tasks.

The scheduler uses local time of the machine the backup plan exists on. Before creating a schedule, be sure the machine’s date and time settings are correct.

Schedule

To define when a task has to be executed, you need to specify an event or multiple events. The task will be launched as soon as any of the events occurs. The table below lists the events available under Windows and Linux operating systems.

Event	Windows	Linux
Time: Daily, Weekly, Monthly	+	+
Time since completion of the last successful backup within the same backup plan (specify the length of time)	+	+
User logon (any user, current user, specify the user’s account)	+	-
User logoff* (any user, current user, specify the user’s account) *Shutting down is not the same as logging off. The task will not run at a system shutdown.	+	-
System startup	+	+
System shutdown	+	-
An event in Windows Event Log (specify the parameters of the event)	+	-

Condition

For backup operations only, you can specify a condition or multiple conditions in addition to the events. Once any of the events occurs, the scheduler checks the condition and runs the task if the condition is met. With multiple conditions, all of them must be met simultaneously to enable task execution. The table below lists the conditions available under Windows and Linux operating systems.

Condition: run the task only if	Windows	Linux
User is idle (a screen saver is running or the machine is locked)	+	-
Location's host is available	+	+
The task run time is within the specified time interval	+	+
All users are logged off	+	-
The specified period of time has passed since the completion of the last successful backup within the same backup plan	+	+

The scheduler behavior, in case the event occurs but the condition (or any of multiple conditions) is not met is defined by the Task start conditions backup option.

What-ifs

What if an event occurs (and a condition, if any, is met) while the previous task run has not completed?
The event will be ignored.
What if an event occurs while the scheduler is waiting for the condition required by the previous event?
The event will be ignored.
What if the condition is not met for a very long time?
If delaying a backup is getting risky, you can force the condition (tell the users to log off) or run the task manually. To automatically handle this situation, you can set the time interval after which the task will run regardless of the condition.