Acronis Backup & Recovery Advanced Server

Acronis Backup & Recovery Advanced Server is a complex software application designed to back up and restore important data on a network of computers, whether we are talking about a small or large scale business. It comes loaded with comprehensive features such as data deduplication, scheduled tasks, along with centralized and personal vaults.

As far as the interface is concerned, the program adopts a clean and intuitive window with a neatly organized structure, where it is possible to examine a panel with available backup and restore operations.

A backup job can be immediately performed by specifying the items to include, output location, single-pass disk mode (recover app data without retrieving the entire disk or volume), along with the backup type (full, incremental or differential).

It is possible to exclude objects from the backup task (such as hidden or system files and folders), add archive comments, as well as ask the tool to ignore any backup errors and continue the task, and to validate the backup file right after it's created.

Additional backup settings can be configured when it comes to password protection, cataloging, priority, HDD writing and network connection speed, file splitting, compression level, disaster recovery plan, email notifications on important events (e.g. successful or failed tasks), error handling, event tracing, cleanup inactivity time, pre and post data capture commands, sector-by-sector backup mode, Volume Shadow Copy Service, and so on.

Similar to creating a backup job, it is possible to design a backup plan for the computer, so that it can automatically run on a regular basis to update changed files and add new ones to the backup item. There are several types of backup schemes put at users' disposal, depending on their preferred schedule (simple, Grandfather-Father-Son, custom, Tower of Hanoi, manual start).

Users can define retention rules to keep the backups indefinitely or to delete/move older ones. When moving them to a secondary location, Acronis provides the option to validate the files and convert them into virtual machines.

Unsurprisingly, Acronis uses a significant amount of CPU and RAM while backing up files. However, it executes commands swiftly and without any issues. It did not hang, crash or pop up errors in our tests. This application has a lot to offer to those interested in efficiently backing up important files in the network in the event of data loss, theft or corruption. Thankfully, it contains help documentation that clarifies all modules and settings.