Request for feedback from Server end-users

I've been a fan of Acronis for a couple of years now, but have had a few 'issues' with the workstation product. Ver 8, for example has had a number of problems with displaying in some LCD monitors, for example. Nevertheless, we are considering a license of the Server Edition for our server. I seek anecdotal reports on how well the server edition does in 'live' mode; how does it handle large databases, for example - does the 'snapshot' technology stop server operations for a moment to capture the snap, or else how? Does is it work well? Have people here actually restored images of servers? Any comments would be very welcome.

 

Hello! We just bought TI 8 Enterprise Server to replace Symantec LiveState 3.0 Advanced Server. Yes, TI 8 works great in the server realm. It takes live images without issue, and restoration has been fine. The only issue I have is how TI 8 handles Dynamic Disks, which we use on all our servers. It images them fine, but restores them as Basic Disk. Certainly, it's easy to then convert them back to Dynamic Disk, but it's an extra step that adds another reboot. For mission critical servers that are costing the company thousands per second of downtime, the extra reboot could be costly. Another issue with upgrading to Dynamic Disk after a restore is that any hidden partitions are also made Dynamic, when they are supposed to be Basic. I haven't tested to see if they work after they are upgraded, but it should be noted. I have it setup so I have one SAN-attached server with a lot of disk space where the images are stored. Every server I want to image has just the agent installed (~3.3mb). I use the scheduler to keep images on a constant rotation. We do backup DB servers, but haven't used the new scripting tool in 1124 to disable/enable DB services before an image, but we will have to test it soon. Overall, my experiences have been excellent, and I recommend it. Now if they can only release a version that automatically verifies an image when it is complete...

 

Hi, we use Acronis to back up all our servers and it has proved very effective. Nick.

 

Could you tell me a bit more about this new scripting tool for stopping/starting databases? Or is there somewhere I can go to read about it? I find the information on the Acronis site very sparse, but perhaps I haven't looked in the right location.

 

Sure...basically, you create two scripts: one to stop the services, and one to start them. For example, a stop script would be a notepad file like this:

net stop MSSQL Server
net stop Transaction Server

The start script would then look like this:

net start MSSQL Server
net start Transaction Server

In True Image Management Console, connect to the DB server then you go to Tool>Options and navigate to the Database Support section. There, you check the box to enable scripting, then browse to both the stop and start script. That's it.

When the image kicks off, it will stop the services only for a few seconds while it does its data capture, then restar them. I hope this helps. Otherwise, check our page 41 of the this document: http://download.acronis.com/pdf/TrueImageEnterpriseServer8.0_ug.en.pdf

 

It's page 41 on the book, but page 42 in Adobe.

 

Is this function present in TI 8 Server, or do I need Enterprise server?

Also, when not using scheduling but the command line way of backup , are these batch files being processed?

Y