Creating a backup plan

Before creating your first backup plan, please familiarize yourself with the basic concepts used in Acronis Backup & Recovery 11.5.

Select the type of data to back up and specify the data items. The type of data depends on the agents installed on the machine.

To access these settings, click Show access credentials, exclusions.

Access credentials

Provide credentials for the source data if the plan's account does not have access permissions to the data.

Exclusions

Set up exclusions for the specific types of files you do not wish to back up.

Specify a path to the location where the backup archive will be stored and the archive name. The archive name has to be unique within the location. Otherwise, backups of the newly created backup plan will be placed to the existing archive that belongs to another backup plan. The default archive name is Archive(N) where N is the sequence number of the archive in the location you have selected.

If the specified location is an RDX drive or USB flash drive, select the device mode: Removable media or Fixed drive.

To access these settings, click Show backup file naming, access credentials, archive comments.

File naming

[Optional] Select the Name backup files using the archive name, as in Acronis True Image Echo, rather than auto-generated names check box if you want to use simplified file naming for the archive’s backups.

Not available when backing up to a managed vault, tape, Acronis Secure Zone, or Acronis Online Backup Storage. When backing up to an RDX drive or USB flash drive, the file naming scheme is determined by the removable device mode.

Access credentials

[Optional] Provide credentials for the location if the plan account does not have access permissions to the location.

Archive comments

[Optional] Enter comments on the archive.

Specify when and how often to back up your data; define for how long to keep the created backup archives in the selected location; set up schedule for the archive cleanup procedure (see “Replication and retention settings” below).

Define whether to copy (replicate) the backups to another location, and whether to move or delete them according to retention rules. The available settings depend on the backup scheme.

[Optional] To set up replication of backups, select the Replicate newly created backup to another location check box. For more information about backup replication, see Setting up replication of backups.

To access these settings, click Show validation, convert to virtual machine.

When to validate

[Optional] Depending on the selected backup scheme, define when and how often to perform validation and whether to validate the entire archive or the latest backup in the archive.

Convert to virtual machine

[Optional] Applies to: disk or volume backup, backup of entire virtual machines or volumes of a virtual machine.

Set up a regular conversion of a disk or volume backup to a virtual machine.

[Optional] Enter a unique name for the backup plan. A conscious name lets you identify the plan among others.

[Optional] Configure parameters of the backup operation, such as pre/post backup commands, maximum network bandwidth allocated for the backup stream or the backup archive compression level. If you do nothing in this section, the default values will be used.

After any of the settings is changed against the default value, a new line that displays the newly set value appears. The setting status changes from Default to Reset to default. Should you modify the setting again, the line will display the new value unless the new value is the default one. When the default value is set, the line disappears. Therefore, in this section you always see only the settings that differ from the default values.

To access these settings, click Show plan's credentials, comments, label.

Plan's credentials

[Optional] Specify the credentials under which the plan will run.

Comments

[Optional] Type a description of the backup plan.

Label

[Optional] Type a text label for the machine you are going to back up. The label can be used to identify the machine in various scenarios.

After you have performed all the required steps, click OK to create the backup plan.

The plan you have created will be accessible for examination and managing in the Backup plans and tasks view.