Acronis Backup & Recovery 10 review

Acronis is a well established player in the home and small business backup market, and is looking to move upmarket with the release of a more scalable enterprise solution in the shape of Acronis Backup & Recovery 10 (ABR10).

Based on the same patented disk imaging technology as the software aimed at small businesses, key features include policy-based management, fast recovery and extensive support for virtual machine environments. Data deduplication is an optional extra, and it's all billed as quick to deploy and simple to use, although we didn't find it quite as easy as expected.

Several different implementations of ABR10 are available. The Advanced Server we tested features centralised management rather than having to set up and manage each server and workstation individually. A number of components are required to achieve this, installed either on a single server or distributed around the network, including the licence server, core management tools, and agents on every server and workstation to be protected.

Deploying all of this can be a time consuming job, taking a couple of hours even on our small test network. On the plus side, wizards help automate the procedure, with SQL Server Express installed if needed to host the three databases the Acronis product employs.

To enable it to be backed up, the required agents were installed automatically onto our Windows management server, but we had to configure other network servers and PCs separately. Each requires its own licence and, although the agents can be pushed out centrally for Windows, we had to first generate the required installation files for Linux, then copy and install them manually.

There are two management consoles, one very basic and rarely used, to manage the licensing, the other to create and schedule back-up tasks, initiate recovery jobs and so on. The interface for this second console is uncluttered and easy enough to navigate, but there are lots of options and it took quite a while before we understood how it all worked and became confident in what we were doing.

In particular it took a while to decide where best to store our back-up archives. These can be kept in a folder on the machine being backed up, on tape or in a special protected partition (the Acronis Secure Zone) for easy bare-metal recovery. They can also be held on remote network storage, while on larger networks there's an option to define so-called data vaults managed by dedicated storage nodes.

In the end we opted for a single storage node on another Windows server, but up to 20 can be defined altogether, managing up to 20 data vaults each of which can be on disks local to the storage node, on network shares, NAS/SAN storage or locally attached tape libraries. Note, however, that because Windows Removable Storage Manager is needed there's no support at the moment for tape libraries on Windows Server 2008 R2 or Windows 7 hosts.

Once we'd worked out what we needed and how to configure everything, scheduling back-up policies and applying them to our target systems was pretty easy. Indeed it proved much like other back-up tools we've used, with support for full, incremental or differential backups plus policies for Grandfather/Father/Son and Tower of Hanoi rotation. Data can also be encrypted as it's copied.

Recovery options
Just as important are the recovery options and, here at least, it didn't take much effort to work out how to recover individual files or create bootable recovery media and rebuild a machine from scratch. A PXE server is also included as standard, enabling us to boot and recover PCs without first installing an operating system. Plus there's an optional Universal Restore module (£236+VAT per licence) to recover backups to different hardware.

Another very useful option was the ability to convert a backup to a virtual machine, which we used to bring a crashed machine quickly back online while the original was being rebuilt. The only caveat was the need to select this option in advance when the back-up policy was scheduled.

While on the subject of virtualisation, virtual machines can be included in the same way as physical machines by deploying the appropriate agents to those to be protected. In addition, however, there's a special Virtual Edition of the Acronis software (£1,309+VAT per licence) specifically to support VMware, Hyper-V, Citrix XenServer and Parallels servers.

This version allows an unlimited number of virtual machines to be protected per host without having to install agents in each one. Licences for virtual to physical migration are also included.

Data deduplication
Lastly there's the data deduplication option (£162+VAT per licence) to help reduce the amount of storage required for backups, which can be significant especially on large enterprise networks.

According to Acronis, its deduplication technology can, in theory, reduce storage by up to 90 per cent, with knock-on effects on bandwidth, power and cooling overheads.

In our tests we saw much more modest reductions, typically around 30 to 40 per cent. It's a lot smaller, but welcome nonetheless and, if you're curious, try the deduplication return on investment calculator on the Acronis web site. This gives you an idea how much space you might save based on the storage involved, the daily change range and your proposed retention policy.

Separate licensing is needed for deduplication, and we had to deploy additional software on each server as the technology can be applied at source, via the agent and on the storage node.

File and block level deduplication are both supported, and we found it relatively easy to implement. We didn't have much time to experiment with this option, but it worked as expected. Our only concern was the processing overheads, which could be an issue where large backups are involved.

In the end, our only real concerns with ABR10 were the amount of time it took to get to grips with the product (better online help would be welcome) and the high level of expertise required. For small companies we would recommend one of the locally managed implementations rather than the Advanced Server product, as these are easier to deploy and use.

It's not a cheap solution either, in any of its guises. However, it is well supported and, if nothing else, likely to give the more established backup players food for thought.

Management server: 1GHz processor or faster (32/64-bit) plus 1GB of RAM
Storage nodes: 4Gb of RAM recommended
Windows PC support: Windows 2000 SP4, Windows XP Pro SP2, Windows Vista, Windows 7
Windows Server support: Windows 2000 Server, Windows Server 2003/2008
Linux support: kernel 2.4.20 or later
32-bit and 64-bit OS implementations