Upgrading from Acronis Backup to Acronis Backup Advanced

Purchasing licenses

Prior to upgrade, purchase the Acronis Backup Advanced licenses for each machine where you are planning to upgrade Acronis Backup. Names of the licenses depend on the product currently installed on the machine.

After the purchase, you will receive an e-mail with the license keys.

Upgrading the product

To upgrade Acronis Backup to Acronis Backup Advanced, do the following:

Step 1. Changing licenses

On each machine where you want to upgrade Acronis Backup, change a license as follows:

1. Run Acronis Backup.
2. On the Help menu, click Change license.
3. Click Change to the right of License for backup of disks/files, click Change, and then click Use the following license keys.
4. Enter the new license keys for this machine.
5. Click OK to apply the new licenses, click Yes in the warning message, and then click OK.

The licenses previously assigned to the machine will be revoked and the management console will restart. Now, you can connect the console to a remote machine and connect to this machine from a remote location.

Step 2. Downloading the setup program

Download the setup program of Acronis Backup Advanced from the Acronis website as described at http://kb.acronis.com/content/1642.

Step 3. Installing the management server

Install Acronis Backup Management Server on a machine running Windows. The machine must have at least 8 GB of RAM and 4.5 GB of free space on a system disk.

It is acceptable to install the management server on one of the machines where you have upgraded the product. To do this:

1. Run the setup program, and then click Install Acronis Backup.
2. After accepting the terms of the license agreement, click Modify.
3. In the components tree, select Management Server.
4. Follow the on-screen instructions. In most cases, you can leave the default settings.

In large environments, we recommend setting up a dedicated physical or virtual server. For detailed information, refer to the installation documentation for Acronis Backup Advanced.

Step 4. Adding the upgraded machines to the management server

1. On any machine where the product was upgraded, run Acronis Backup.
2. Click Connect to a management server and type the server name or IP address. If prompted for credentials, specify the user name and password of a user who is a member of the Acronis Centralized Admins and Acronis Remote Users groups on the management server.
3. In the Navigation tree, select Machines with agents.
4. Click Add multiple machines on the toolbar.
5. Add the upgraded machines in any of the following ways:
   • By specifying their names or IP addresses.
   • By browsing the network.
   • By browsing an Active Directory domain.
   • By importing a list of machines from a .txt or .csv file.

   For detailed information, refer to the "Specifying the list of machines" section of the installation documentation for Acronis Backup Advanced.

Tips for further usage

The added machines will appear in the Machines with agents view of the management server.

The backup plans on the machines will remain intact. To view them on the management server, right-click the machine name > View details > Backup plans and tasks. The product continues doing backups and you can recover from the backups created before the upgrade.

You can now create centralized backup plans that will simultaneously back up several machines to a single location.