Acronis Storage Node can only run one cleanup task on a centralized managed vault at a time. As a result, the tasks queue

This article applies to:

• Acronis Backup & Recovery 10 Advanced Server
• Acronis Backup & Recovery 10 Advanced Server - Small Business Server Edition
• Acronis Backup & Recovery 10 Advanced Workstation
• Acronis Backup & Recovery 10 Advanced Server - Virtual Edition

Symptoms

1. In an environment with Acronis Backup & Recovery 10, you have the following:
   • A considerable amount (e.g. more than 20) of Acronis Agents that back up disks or volumes to a centralized managed vault;
   • Retention rules that clean up the backup chains in the centralized managed vault.
2. The cleanup and backup tasks on the centralized managed vault stall at 0%.

Cause

Cleanup tasks on centralized managed vaults are performed by Acronis Storage Node.

Acronis Storage Node can only run one cleanup task at a time, regardless of how many vaults it manages. When there are several cleanup tasks to be performed by the Acronis Storage Node, they queue. Once one task completes, the next one starts.

When there are big amounts of data from a considerable amount of Acronis Agents in the centralized managed vault, completion of even one cleanup task - which involves consolidation of backups - may take some time.

As a result, all other cleanup tasks waiting in the queue to start will stall. The Acronis Storage Node will run one cleanup task at a time. All backup tasks (waiting for the respective cleanup task to finish consolidating backups in its chain) will also stall until the cleanup is over.

Solution

There are several possible workarounds:

• Schedule the cleanup tasks to run more often (especially for the machines which have a large amount of data backed up). For example, every 7 days instead of 14. This will reduce the amount of data to be consolidated and the tasks will be performed faster;
• Install more than one Acronis Storage Nodes on several machines:
  • If your centralized managed vaults are not password-protected, reattach them to different Acronis Storage Nodes;
  • If your centralized managed vaults are password-protected, create new centralized managed vaults and attach them to different Acronis Storage Nodes. Keep the old centralized managed vaults until the backups in them become outdated.
• Back up to unmanaged vaults. In this case the cleanup tasks will be performed by Acronis Agents instead of Acronis Storage Nodes - and thus they will not be dependent on the cleanup tasks running on the managed vaults.This scenario might be a good idea to use especially in case of large data backed up (e.g. you might want your file server backed up to unmanaged vault to prevent its cleanups stalling other cleanups for a long time).

  (!) It is recommended to have a separate unmanaged vault in a separate folder for every Acronis Agent.

More information

This design will be changed in a future version of Acronis Backup & Recovery 10.