What's new in Acronis Backup 12.5

New features available in all on-premise deployments

Backup

• A new backup format that increases the backup speed and reduces the size of backups
• Up to five locations for replication in a backup plan
• Conversion to a virtual machine in a backup plan
• Schedule by events
• Setting conditions for backup plan execution
• Predefined Grandfather-Father-Son (GFS) backup scheme
• SFTP as a backup location
• Default backup options stored on the management server
• Selection of the backup method (full or incremental) when starting a backup manually
• Backup options:
  • Email notifications:
    • Specify the email notifications subject
    • Notifications are now based on alerts instead of backup activity results. You can customize the list of alerts that trigger a notification.
  • Backup file name
  • Backup start conditions

Recovery

• Manual disk mapping. The capability to recover individual disks or volumes.

Bootable media

• Startup Recovery Manager

Applications

• Backing up Microsoft Exchange Server mailboxes

Virtualization

• The capability to assign a virtual machine to a specific agent (VM binding)

Operations with backups

• Mounting volumes in the read/write mode
• ASign allows a backed-up file to be signed by several people

Notifications and alerts

• The capability to configure the severity of an alert (via the configuration file)
• Device status is now derived from alerts instead of backup activity results. This covers a wider range of events, for example, missed backups or ransomware activities.

Acronis Active Protection

• Proactive protection from ransomware by detecting suspicious processes

Usability improvements

• Dashboard - a customizable set of more than 20 widgets that are updated in real time
• A new section in the UI shows all backup plans and other plans
• The capability to set an encryption password in Backup Monitor

New features available with the Advanced licenses only

Administering

• Customizable reports that can be sent or saved on a schedule
• Roles on the management server: create units and assign administrators to them
• Group management: built-in and custom groups of devices
• Acronis Notary: prove that a file is authentic and unchanged since it was backed up

New backup locations

• Acronis Storage Node with deduplication
• Support for tape devices

Bootable media

• Working with bootable media via the backup console
• Automated backup and recovery by execution of a predefined or custom script
• PXE Server for network boot

Applications

• Support for Database Availability Groups (DAG) in Microsoft Exchange Server
• Support for AlwaysOn Availability Group (AAG) in Microsoft SQL Server
• Protecting Oracle Database

Virtualization

• Backing up ESXi virtual machines from NetApp hardware snapshots
• Backing up Citrix XenServer, Red Hat Virtualization (RHV/RHEV), Kernel-based Virtual Machines (KVM), and Oracle virtual machines (by installing an agent into the guest system)

Operations with backups

• Conversion to a virtual machine, validation, replication, and retention of backups can be performed on a schedule by a dedicated agent
• Cataloging - a separate catalog service enables search throughout all backups in managed locations