Acronis Backup & Recovery 11: Staging

What is staging and how to use it

This article applies to:

All Acronis Backup & Recovery 11 Versions

Introduction

Acronis Backup & Recovery 11 allows you to move outdated backups to a new location for better storage organization.

You can select up to 4 additional locations where backups will be moved upon certain event.

The following locations can be used as destinations at various stages:

First destination	Following destinations
Local Fixed or Removable Drive	Local Fixed or Removable Drive
Network Share	Network Share
Acronis Secure Zone	RDX drives
RDX drives	FTP/SFTP
FTP/SFTP	Managed Vault (vault on tapes can only be the last destination)
Managed Vault (except vaults on tapes)

(!) When creating a centralized backup plan for several machines, the first location can be individual for each machine, all consequent locations are the same for all machines.

Solution

Retention rules with option for moving backups are available in Simple and Custom backup scheme. You can specify a separate set of rules for each location where backups are stored.

Setting up Simple backup task with staging

Select Create backup plan in Acronis Backup & Recovery 11 main menu:
Select the items to backup and initial location; in How to back up select backup scheme: Simple, and press Schedule to set the backup time:
In Retention rules drop-down menu select Move backups older than:
Specify after what time backups should be moved:
In Where to replicate/move backups specify the second location to which backups should be moved:
In 2nd location you can select whether it is necessary to move backups to next location:

You can specify up to 4 locations besides the initial one and retention rules for each location.

(!) Time for storing backups is calculated separately for each location. E.g. if for initial location you select to move backups older than 2 weeks, and in second location you select to move backups older than 30 days, 2 weeks after creation backups will be moved to the second location, and 30 days after they will be moved to the third location.
Press OK to save the backup plan/policy.

Setting up Custom backup task with staging

Select Create backup plan in Acronis Backup & Recovery 11 main menu:
Select the items to backup and initial location; in How to back up select backup scheme: Custom:
Press Add schedule to specify the schedule for running backup jobs:

You need to specify a schedule for at least one backup type.
In Clean up archive section select Using retention rules:
Press Retention rules to open window with retention rules details:
In Retention rules window specify what conditions should be met to initiate moving of backups:
- Backups older than:
- Archive size greater than;
- Number of backups in the archive exceeds:
Select how to proceed if the backup to be moved has dependencies:
- Retain the backup until all dependent backups become subject to deletion(movement): the backup will be kept until all backups that depend on it also violate retention rules. Then all the chain will be moved at once. This mode requires extra storage space for storing backups whose movement is postponed;
- Consolidate these backups: The program will consolidate the backup that is subject to movement with the next dependent backup. This mode requires more time and system resources to perform the consolidation.
  (!) If Consolidation operation is interrupted (e.g. due to power failure or connection loss) backups may become corrupted.
In If all the specified conditions are met section select Move the oldest backups to another location:
In Where to replicate/move backups section, specify the location for the moved backups:
In 2nd location section you can specify retention rules for the second location. If you choose to move backups, a section 3rd location will become available:

You can specify up to 4 locations besides the initial one and retention rules for each location.
Press OK to save the backup plan/policy.

Restrictions for moving backups:

This option is not available when using simplified file naming: see Acronis Backup & Recovery 10: Simplified Archive Naming
Moving backups to and from CD/DVD/BD is not supported;
Moving backups from tape is not supported: tape can only be the final location;
The same folder cannot be used twice in the same backup plan;
Retention rules are effective if the archive contains more than one backup. The last backup in the archive will not be moved even if a retention rule violation is detected.

Knowledge Base

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