Acronis Backup for Windows Server Essentials - User Guide - Manual (Page 340)

340 Copyright © Acronis International GmbH, 2002-2014
15 Centralized management
This section covers operations that can be performed centrally by using the components for
centralized management. The content of this section is only applicable to Acronis Backup Advanced.
15.1 Understanding centralized management
This section contains an overview of centralized data protection with Acronis Backup. Please be sure
you have an understanding of how data is protected on a single machine before reading this section.
15.1.1 Basic concepts
Creating centralized backup plans and tracking their execution
To protect data on a single machine, you install on the machine an agent (p. 431) or multiple agents
for various data types you want to protect. You connect the console to the machine and create a
backup plan (p. 431) or multiple backup plans.
What if you have to manage hundreds of machines? It takes time to create a backup plan on each
machine, while the plans may be quite similar – you need to back up, say, the system drive and the
users' documents. Tracking the plans' execution on each machine separately is also time-consuming.
To be able to propagate the management operations to multiple machines, you install Acronis
Backup Management Server (p. 439) and register (p. 440) the machines on the server. After that you
can create groups of machines and thus manage multiple machines as a whole. You can protect all of
them or your selection by setting up a centralized backup plan (p. 350).
Once you complete setting up a centralized backup plan on the management server, the server
deploys it to each of the machines included in the plan. The agents on the machines start executing
the plan. You are able to monitor the plan's status on a single screen and navigate, if required, to
each machine or activity to see their status and log entries. The management server also enables you
to monitor and manage the agent's locally originated activities.
Since you connect the console to the management server rather than to each machine and perform
all management operations through the central management unit, this way of management is called
centralized management (p. 433).
Centralized management does not rule out the direct management (p. 435) of each machine. You can
connect the console to each machine and perform any direct management operation. However,
centralized backup plans can be managed through the management server only, since a well-thought
out plan functions automatically and rarely requires human intervention.
Using the management server, you can create one or more centralized archive storages (centralized
vaults (p. 433)), which will be shared by the registered machines. A centralized vault can be used by
any backup plan, either centralized or created on the registered machines using direct management.
Organizing a managed archive storage
What should the capacity of your centralized vault be? What if transferring sizeable backups to the
vault will cause network congestion? Does backup of an online production server affect the server
performance? To ensure that the centralized backup will not slow down business processes in your
company and to minimize the resources required for the data protection, you install Acronis Backup