New Acronis User - True Image Questions

Hello, I'm a new Acronis customer and a first time True Image user. My workplace bought True Image with Universal Restore for two 24x7 mission critical computers (Server 2003 and XP workstation) that control our water treatment plant operations. We are backing up daily from each computer to USB external hard drives. We also want to make periodic full CD image backups as well.

I've just installed the software and made an initial full image backup and scheduled incrementals to run once a day. I also made a bootable rescue media CD. I'm still learning all the software features and options based on the Help feature and the Acronis support webpage. I want to make sure I can do a bear metal restore during any disaster recovery event. I don't know exactly what to expect since we don't have the luxury of a system to fully test it on yet.

Can anyone recommend a proper way to setup backup jobs? I'm worried about having one full backup with daily incrementals appended to the same file. Should there be multiple backup job schedules and full vs. incrementals? I'm worried about the restore process and how to deal with many incrementals that have accumulated over time since the full backup.

We also are running a SQL database so I'm concerned about the backup option regarding temporarily suspending and restarting the SQL service. I don't know the batch file command lines to do that. Should I manually stop the service before making a CD image for example, and what about our regular daily image backups to the external USB hard drive too?

What should I be aware of to have in place so I don't get caught unprepared in a disaster recovery situation? I don't want to overlook something critical or ever assume I'm fine with a bear minimum. I want to be able to do a full bare metal restore if need be.

We recently lost 2 out of 5 drives at the same time in our server's SCSI RAID5 array and had to send our server off to the plant software vendor out of state to have everything reloaded. They said it was too complicated for us to do ourselves since it involved a SQL database, custom software programming for our plant's SCADA system, etc. We were without a server for 3 weeks and don't want to go through that again. The computer system was purchased before I started here recently and didn't include any backup system! That's what got me interested in Acronis as a complete solution.

Thanks,

Steve...

 

Hello snmavronis,

Thank you for choosing Acronis Disk Backup Software.

We are sorry for the delayed response.

Please note that the incremental backup file only contains data changed since the last full or incremental backup creation. Therefore, it is smaller and takes less time to create. But as it doesn’t contain all data, all the previous incremental backups and the initial full backup are required for restoration. If you have enough space to hold daily full backup you can use only full backup archives. As for the scheduled scheme, I would recommend that you have a look at this previous post providing some examples. Acronis True Image Schedule Task Wizard allows you to create flexible scheme for scheduling, so you can create another scheduled scheme that will suit your needs.

As for the question about database, note that if your database is compatible with Microsoft Volume Shadow Copy Service (VSS), then enabling VSS support will ensure completion of all transactions before the backup process starts. Then the database will be ready to access immediately after recovery. The examples of VSS-aware databases are Exchange, Oracle, SQL. Otherwise, you should temporarily suspend the corresponding processes in order to preserve the application-level consistency. Please see chapter 6.3.4 of the respective User's Guide for further details.

We may recommend that you create the Acronis True Image Bootable CD using the latest build of the appropriate version of Acronis True Image. After that boot you computer from this CD and check its functionality. Please find the instructions on how to create the Acronis True Image Bootable CD in chapter 10 of the User's Guide. To get access to updates you should first register your software.

It is also recommended to check the integrity of the created image archives to make sure they are not damaged. Refer to chapter 11. "Other operations" to find the instructions on how to validate the image archives.

If you have any further questions concerning Acronis software, please feel free to submit a request for technical support or post any of them on this forum. We will certainly try to help you in resolving any issues.

Thank you.
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Aleksandr Isakov