Introduction

This document is composed by Acronis Disaster Recovery Service technical support and intended for Acronis Disaster Recovery Service customers who are using Acronis Backup Advanced 11.x transport.

The document describes the mass deployment update procedure for Acronis Backup Agent for Windows and all the additional components to the current version - 11.7 Update 1 Hotfix 5. It is recommended to follow the mass deployment update procedure if you have Acronis Backup Agents installed on a large number of Microsoft Windows servers managed by Windows domain using Active Directory Group Policy.

Prepare for the update

Make sure that the current Version is 11.7.50214 or 11.7.50220 (or older builds: 11.7.50212, 11.7.44190). In order to check your current product version, please open Acronis Management console, connect to Acronis Management Server and click Help -> about. If your build differs from the list, please use another guide.

Check if you are using any additional application-aware agent components and please update them manually.

• Acronis Agent for MS SQL server – you are backing up Microsoft SQL server using single-pass backup option.
• Acronis Agent for Active Directory – you are backing up a domain controller(s) using single-pass backup option. 
• Acronis Agent for Exchange – you are backing up your Exchange server on Database level to be able to recover separate emails or mailboxes.

To check if you are using Single-pass backup option for some of your MSSQL servers or domain controllers please follow the steps below:

1. Open Acronis Management Console.
2. Click Backup plans and tasks in Navigation pane.
3. Find the backup plan for your Microsoft SQL server(s) or Domain controller(s).
4. Right-click the backup plan and click Edit.
5. Find Single-pass disk and application backup clause and check if single pass backup enabled

For SQL server:

For Active Directory:

For Exchange:

Check if one of your backup plans for Exchange server has Microsoft Exchange Information store in What to backup section

6. For any server with Application aware agent found it is necessary to update these servers manually.

Another way to check if any application-aware agents are installed is the following:

1. In the Acronis Management console navigate to Machines with Agents -> All Machines with Agents.
2. Find required Agent and right-click it. Choose View details in drop-down menu
   
3. Click the Machine tab. This tab contains information about all of the installed components along with their versions:
   

For any servers using any specific application-aware agents you have to run the manual agents update procedure.

Prepare the infrastructure

1. Download and run the installer using this link. Click Extract installation files:

2. Select the following components to extract to some folder:
   AcronisAgentCore.msi
   AcronisAgentWindows.msi
   

3. Create a shared folder accessible for all of the servers requiring Acronis Agent update. Folder should have NTFS and sharing permissions allowing read access for Everyone.

4. Place both files to the network share created on the previous step, for example: \\172.21.10.143\c$\ABA\MSI

5. Create a security group in your domain and name it Acronis DR Machines.

6. Add all the servers you need to update as a members of Acronis DR Machines group. 

7. In order to be able to add computers to security group click Object Types… button in a dialog box to select objects and check Computers check mark. By default computer objects are filtered out.