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Creating a Backup Task with the Acronis Server

The Acronis Backup & Recover 11.5 Server for Windows is the long awaited new version of the already renowned Echo series of Acronis Corporate products.  The Acronis Backup & Recover 11.5 Server for Windows is a perfect solution for protection of all data stored on Windows server, including the Server Operating System. Acronis Backup & Recover 10 Server for Windows simplifies and automates the data recovery process, even when the need arises to recover to dissimilar hardware platforms.  See our review of the Acronis Backup & Recover Server for Windows.   

The Acronis Server backup and imaging software makes it easy to back up any of the recent versions of the Microsoft Windows Server Operating Systems. The Acronis Backup & Recover 11.5 Server supports backing up and imaging of the following Microsoft Windows Servers:

• Windows 2000 Server SP 4+
• Windows 2003 Server SP 2+ x32 and x64 Editions
• Windows 2008 Server SP2 x32 and x64 Editions
• Windows 2008 Server Foundation
• Windows 2008 Server R2

New Version is Released

Acronis Backup & Recovery 11.5 has been released with new strategies geared towards virtual, cloud and server unification, the new version offers an outstanding range of new features, as well as hundreds of useful enhancements.

Creating a backup task for your Windows server with Acronis is an easy task to perform. Here is a review of how to create a backup task using the Acronis Echo server backup software.

Simply click on the Tasks button on the main interface to create and manage the backup jobs on your server. 

This screen shows you the scheduled tasks that you have created.  Here is where you can manage the list of tasks scheduled for execution on this server.  You are able to run, edit and delete tasks from this screen.  There are no scheduled tasks created yet so just click on the Run button to create a new task.

The following screenshot welcomes you to the Acronis Schedule Task Wizard.  This wizard will help you to build a new backup creation for your Windows Server by selecting parameters for the backup archive. You will be able to start the created task manually or schedule the backup for executing at the specified time.

This screen shows you the initial options of the backup task.  You need to choose the type of task you need to schedule.  You can either schedule a Back up of the server or Validate an existing backup archive.  I chose to create a new back up task.

The next step is to choose what you want to back up.  If you choose My Computer, you can create an image of the entire disk or its partitions. Backing up the entire system disk (creating a disk image) takes significant disk space, but enables you to restore the system in minutes in case of severe data damages or hardware failure.  The imaging and restore process was already covered in the previous review.  

When you select the My Data option, you are able to choose specific files and folders to back up. You can either manually select the files and folders or specify types of files you want to back up.  I chose this option and clicked Next.

The following screen is where you select the files and folders that you want to backup.

Then you are prompted to specify any files that you do not want to include in the backup archive.

The next step is to choose a backup Archive location.  You can choose to create a new back up archive or use an existing archive.  I chose to create a new archive on an external disk drive.

Now you have to select the backup mode.  You can choose either a full, incremental or a differential backup mode.  For the purpose of this review, a full backup archive will be created. 

The next screen gave me the option to use the default options or set the backup options manually.  I chose the manual option to see the following screen.  As you can see there are many options that can be performed pertaining to the back up task.  You can choose to password protect the backup archive, receive an email or windows messenger message about the backup, choose different compression levels and a multitude of other settings to configure the server backup in any way you see fit. 

Then you have the option to name the archive.

The next screen is where you can schedule the task to run at any given time or interval.

Then you will see the summary screen showing the options selected to be run with this backup task.  I smacked the Finish button to add this task.

You can then check the scheduled tasks screen to verify that the backup task was created successfully. 

You can see that the backup task is scheduled to run every weekday at 12:17am backing up all the files located on the Server D_Drive. It just doesn't get any simpler than that to back up a Windows Server with this Server backup software. The Acronis Server makes it easy to create and run a Windows Server backup task.