One way we can do this is to use Acronis Cyberprotect backup.

The main feature of Acronis is to backup & restore VMs in a more advanced manner because there are so many features that we can do. One of them is anti-ransomware, RTO and RPO configuration, and many more.

And one of the features that we will be bringing up in this tutorial is the backup of our VM and restoring to infrastructure outside of CR.

To start doing it, there are some prerequisites that we need:

1. Have a VM you want to backup
2. The VM OS must be compatible and can be backed up by Acronis (Windows, Linux)
3. Have an active Acronis subscription
4. Have determined the destination to export the VM images. It can be according to your preferences, or you can use mainstream virtualization tools on the market *(VirtualBox, VMWare)

Download the Acronis agent

First of all, we install the Acronis agent in the VM.

This agent functions to connect our VM to our Acronis Cyber Protect service.

Acronis Cyberprotect supports backup for many types of devices, ranging from workstations & servers, mobile devices, virtualization hosts, and to application-based backups.

In this tutorial, my VM uses Linux Ubuntu Server OS.

So we will select the “Linux” option.

↳ The agent file will be .bin, and later we need to adjust the file permissions so that we can execute it via the terminal.

After the agent file download succeeds on our local PC, we need to upload the agent file to our VM. There are several methods we can do:

1. Can use S3CMD : https://s3tools.org/s3cmd
2. Cyberduck : https://cyberduck.ch/
3. Or by uploading this agent file into ServerStadium’s Object Storage.

Because I want to use this agent file again in the future. Then I will upload it into the ServerStadium’s Object Storage.

For those of you who want to know what ServerStadiums’s Object Storage is. Feel free to check this article and video.

Install the Acronis Agent into the VM

Now we access the VM that we want to backup, then download the Acronis Agent from the Object Storage link we already have.

If so, according to my previous explanation, we need to change the file permissions of this .bin so that we can execute it via the terminal.

# chmod a+x CyberProtect_AgentForLinux_x86_64.bin

Where the intent of the syntax is to allow all users (users, groups, and others) to be able to execute the CyberProtect_AgentForLinux_x86_64.bin file like a program.

Then we execute the file with the following command:

./CyberProtect_AgentForLinux_x86_64.bin

↳ After that, the launcher of the Acronis Agent installation will appear.

↳ At this warning, we can leave it alone, then click OK.

↳ In the component selection, select “Agent for Linux”.

↳ To complete the setup of this agent, we need to register this machine/VM with the Cyber Protection Service.

↳ If we select the “Register the machine” option, an error will appear as above. This error is because our Ubuntu Server VM is only CLI-based, not desktop-based GUI.

↳ Then we can select the option “Show registration info”.

↳ The Registration Code for our VM will be displayed. Now we register via the link provided. This registration code also has an active period of only 1 hour.

↳ Enter the registration code in the provided form.

↳ Click on “Confirm Registration”

↳ If the device is successfully registered, the following dialog box will appear.

↳ Our VM will also automatically appear on the Acronis Cyberprotect dashboard.

Adding the entire machine backup of our ServerStadium Cloud VM

The next step, we can start backing up our VM. We can do this by clicking on “Enable Protection”.

↳ On this page, select “Create plan” then “Protection”.

↳ In the New Protection Plan, we select backup for “Entire Machine”. There are several supporting options, such as schedules, how many to keep, etc.. Still, I didn’t set them specifically because, in this case, we only need a one-time backup to export the results to infrastructure outside ServerStadium. If so, click on “Create”.

↳ Now we run this backup and wait for the process for a while. It depends on the overall amount of data and the OS system on your VM. Because we will backup one whole machine.

Deploying the Local Virtual Machine

After we have done the backup, we now try to export this backup file out of the ServerStadium infrastructure.

For example, in this tutorial, I will export the backup VM into my local VM, which I will deploy in VirtualBox.

↳ On the main panel, click “New”

↳ Enter the details of the VM name, VM storage location, type, and version of the OS that we will run on it.

↳ Determine the amount of RAM.

↳ We create the virtual hard drive.

↳ On the virtual hard disk file type, for flexibility in exporting to other virtualization software (such as VMWare Workstation), I will choose VMDK.

↳ Adjust to your needs; if so, now let’s access the Acronis panel to recover the results of our ServerStadium Cloud VM backup to this local VM.

Export the Backup VM to the Outside Infrastructure

Now log back into the Acronis Cyber Protect dashboard panel. On the ServerStadium Cloud VM, we previously backed up, click “Recover”, then select “More ways to recover”.

↳ On the available tabs, click on “Download ISO Image”.

↳ After that, the Boot_media.iso file will be downloaded on our local PC.

↳ If we check again on the Acronis Cyber Protect panel, a popup dialog informing the Registration token of our account will appear. Please save this token because we will use it later.

This registration token functions so that we can access our Acronis services via bootable media without entering our account username and password.

↳ Now we open the .iso file on our local Virtual Machine.

↳ After that, the Acronis Rescue Media user interface will appear. In the available options, select “Rescue Media”.

↳ Select  “Register media”.

↳ In the dialog box that appears, enter the server from Acronis Cyber Protect, namely https://sg-cloud.acronis.com, and enter the Registration token we got earlier.

↳ In the window that appears next, click on “Recover”.

↳ In the “Recover data” step, select the backup we will restore to this Local VM.

↳ Select “Cloud storage”, then select our Acronis Cyber Protect account.

↳ Select the Backup file that we created earlier.

↳ Now we specify the location we want to recover this backup data.

↳ Select storage from our Local VM. If so, click OK

↳ When everything is done, click OK to start recovering backup data from the ServerStadium Cloud VM to our local VM.

↳ Let’s wait a while for the process. The speed of the process depends on the size of the backup we already have and the speed of our connection.

↳ Here’s the result when the recovery process is complete.

↳ Now we unplug the Bootable Media, then reboot this local VM.

↳ After rebooting, our local VM will automatically be recovered in the exact same condition as our ServerStadium Cloud VM.

Exporting the local VM to another Virtualization Platform

Now we try to export our backup results on this local VM into .ova form.

An OVA file is a virtual appliance used by virtualization applications such as VMware Workstation and Oracle VM Virtualbox. 

The OVA file is saved in the Open Virtualization Format (OVF), a standard format used to package and distribute software run in virtual machines.

↳ In Oracle VirtualBox, select “File”, then “Export Appliance”.

↳ Under “Format”, select Open Virtualization Format 1.0 for better compatibility.

↳ Wait for the process

↳ Now let’s try on other Virtualization platforms, in this example, VMWare.

↳ We select the .ova file and then restore.

↳ We can see that our ServerStadium Cloud VM has also been successfully restored in VMWare. And the application inside the VM is also running normally.

Conclusion

Hopefully, this article will be a help for you and your project. Find more tutorial articles in our Knowledge Base, or even better, if you want to try ServerStadium’s Cloud VM, you can directly register here for free.

The post Exporting ServerStadium Cloud VM to outer ServerStadium’s Infrastructure using Acronis Cyber Protect appeared first on ServerStadium.

Acronis on-premises and cloud backup and recovery software products have the reputation of being user-friendly, stable, and innovative. Its software has been designed to use minimal CPU and memory and can also be written to different destinations, including storage arrays, the cloud, and tape. This gives administrators greater flexibility with regard to mixing and matching media and destination types within their data backups.

Acronis supports many Operating Systems like Microsoft Windows, Linux, macOS, etc. Thus, we can use Acronis as a robust backup facility for many servers and VM’s in various Operating Systems.

Here are the steps for backing up a Linux VM via Acronis in ServerStadium.

Prerequisites

– VM installed with Linux OS (for this case, we use CentOS 7).
– Security Profile with list opening ports below :

TCP port 43234 for remote installation and remote upgrade
TCP ports 445 and 25001 for remote installation
TCP port 6109 for Active Protection
TCP ports 7780, 7755, 7756, 7765, 9852, 9860, 9862, 9876, 9877 for communication between components
TCP ports 9850 and 9851 for command line (acrocmd, acropsh) commands
TCP ports 443 and 902 to access the vCenter Server and ESX(i) hosts
TCP ports 443 and 44445 for backup to cloud
TCP port 30800 and 30801 for Alert Feed Manager
TCP port 2600, 2700 for Archive Server Core
TCP port 6110 for Acronis Cyber Protect service
TCP port 31009 for Active Protection Manager
TCP port 9773 for Antimalware backups scanning
TCP port 9999 for Authorization and routing requests for different components
TCP port 18018, 18019, TCP and UDP incoming port 6888, UDP port 6771 for Acronis updater
TCP port 1337 for syncing protection policies between server and agent
TCP port 8081 for Acronis Scheduler2 service
TCP port 9772 for Acronis Cyber Protect Agent

Preparation

For the CentOS (RHEL) based Linux, there are some packages needed by Acronis which is :

• kernel-devel
• gcc
• make
• elfutils-libelf-devel
• perl

Most of the packages above will be downloaded and installed when the Acronis setup program runs. But, for the Perl package, you have to install it manually by using the command :

# yum install perl

In some cases, the downloaded kernel-devel version does not match with the kernel build version when installing using the Acronis setup program. However, we have to download and install the binary package manually in this case.

To check the kernel-devel and perl installation, you can check it by using the command :

# yum list installed | grep kernel-devel

# perl --version

Installation

To begin with the installation process, first, open the Acronis portal with the URL link :

https://cloud.acronis.com/login

After that, add a new device. Then choose “Linux Servers”

Then SSH into your Linux VM, and download the Acronis Cyber Protection Agent Installer with the URL link :

https://sg-cloud.acronis.com/download/u/baas/4.0/15.0.27305/Cyber_Protection_Agent_for_Linux_x86_64.bin

The latest Acronis Cyber Protection Agent Installer version when this article was written is 15.0.27305. After the Acronis Cyber Protection Agent Installer is downloaded, change the permission of the file by adding “execute” permission with this command below :

# chmod +x Cyber_Protection_Agent_for_Linux_x86_64.bin

Execute the installer by using this command below :

# ./Cyber_Protection_Agent_for_Linux_x86_64.bin

The installer will start shortly. When the “Component Selection” pop-up appears, choose the “Agent for Linux” option. Then, proceed to the installation step with the “Next” button.

Another pop-up message will appear. Click the “Continue” button to install the additional package using “YUM“.

Wait for the installation progress until finished.

When the installation process is finished, due to the Linux VM with Command-Line Interface does not have a web browser installed in the first place, we have to register the VM manually by choosing “Show Registration Info” button.

Then, the registration Link and the Registration Code will appear in the next pop-up window.

Keep in mind that the Registration Code has an expiration of 1 hour. Therefore, you have to successfully register the machine in 1 hour period.

Open the Registration Link with your other device (PC, Laptop, Smartphone, etc), then enter the Registration Code that you got before, and click the button “Confirm Registration”.

After that, you will get a pop-up notification that the machine is successfully registered and will appear in the machine list.

Backup Configuration

The last step is we have to configure the backup plan of the Linux VM, in order to back up the VM data into Acronis. After the machine is successfully registered on the Acronis, click the machine on the “All devices” page. On the right side, a new sidebar will appear. Choose the “Protect” section, and click the “Create plan” button. Then, click the “Create” button.

After the “Create” button is clicked, a new page will appear. On this new page, you have to set up some parameters like :

• What is to backup –> Is it “Entire Machine”, “Certain Files / Folder”, “SQL data”, etc.
• Where to backup –> On the ServerStadium, currently, we have only one destination to backup. Which is the “Cloud Storage”.
• Backup schedule –> Monthly / Weekly / Daily / Hourly period.
• How long to keep the backup.
• Enable Encryption or Not.
• Enable Application backup or Not (Application Backup example is for Exchange Server, cPanel, SQL Server, etc).
• Enable Antivirus & Antimalware protection or Not.
• Enable Vulnerability assessment or Not.

Finally, the backup plan is created with the configuration setup above. Since our created backup plan above is scheduled, in order to trigger the backup process, we have to click the “Run now” button.

Wait for a while until the backup process is complete.

Then, after the backup process is successful, we have a few options to threaten this saved backup. Do we want only to keep this backup, recover this backup into the VM, or we can run this saved backup as a new VM if we choose the backup plan option “Entire Machine”. You can adjust this saved backup to meet your needs.

Conclusion

To sum up, in this guideline, we have installed and configured Acronis as a backup facility for backing up a Linux VM in ServerStadium. Also, we know that Acronis can be used as a robust backup facility that has the flexibility to meet user requirements in the Linux environment.

The post How to backup Linux VM via Acronis in ServerStadium appeared first on ServerStadium.

The Steps are literally simple.

• First, we need to spin up some machines that are using Debian and RPM as their base (e.g. Centos 7, Ubuntu 20 series, RHEL 7, etc), as well as to spin up machines that use Windows Operating System
• Secondly, Install the Acronis Agent, based on their operating system (Linux or Windows)
• Thirdly, register the machine to the Acronis management console
• And then, create and set the protection plan of the guest machine in the Acronis management console
• Finally, Run the protection plan and do troubleshooting if the backup plan shows an error

We will explain the points above in more detail below:

1. First of all, you need to refer to this link on how to deploy virtual machines in ServerStadium.
2. Then, Install The Acronis Agent. You can get your agent file through the Acronis management console.

After that, save the Agent installer on the directory you desire, open it, then run the installation as instructed by the agent.

Windows Agent Installation Setup

Linux Agent Installation Setup

Next, locate the Linux Agent you downloaded from the management console, give executable permission to the file (chmod +x /path/to/agent installer), and execute the installer file binary.

3. Backup Registration on Linux Machine
   • First, open terminal as a root user
   • Then, ype in the following command to register the agent using account and password: /usr/lib/Acronis/RegisterAgentTool/RegisterAgent -o register -t cloud -a  https://sg-cloud.acronis.com -u <username> -p <password>.

     NOTE: <username> and <password> are login and password for backup user account

4. Backup Registration on Windows Machine
   • Open Command prompt and navigate to C:\Program Files\BackupClient\RegisterAgentTool: cd “%ProgramFiles%\BackupClient\RegisterAgentTool”
   • Issue this command to register the client machine using account and password: register_agent.exe -o register -t cloud -a https://sg-cloud.acronis.com -u <username> -p <password>.

     NOTE: <username> and <password> are login and password for backup user account
     

5. Create the protection plan for the guest machine
   • Select the machines that you want to back up
   • Click Protect
   • To create a new plan, click Create plan. Enable the Backup module and unroll the settings.

6. To apply an existing protection plan
   • Select the machines that you want to backup
   • Click Protect. If a common protection plan is already applied to the selected machines, Click Add plan
7. To start the backup, click Run on the applied protection plan
8. If the backup plan run successfully, The last backup status on the management console device will show some values

References:

• https://kb.acronis.com/tag/protection-plan
• https://kb.acronis.com/content/55052
• https://kb.acronis.com/content/55244

The post How to Backup Desktop Linux and Windows via Acronis in ServerStadium appeared first on ServerStadium.

Acronis Cyber Protect is a backup solution provided by Acronis that integrates backup and recovery, disaster recovery, malware prevention, security controls, remote assistance, monitoring, and reporting. With Acronis Cyber Protect and your hosted VM on ServerStadium, you will achieve a 3-2-1 Backup Strategy which will let you have ease of mind with your data on the cloud.

Here are the thing you need to prepare before you start to backup your ServerStadium Windows VM using Acronis Cyber Protect.

Preparing the Infrastructure

First of all, you need a Windows virtual machine in ServerStadium Cloud Panel. You can read the detailed guides on how to create a new VM in this Knowledgebase article: Deploying a Virtual Machine in ServerStadium – Knowledge Base

After successfully deploying a Windows virtual machine in ServerStadium, you’ll need an Acronis Cyber Protect Backup solution subscription. You may use your own subscription or get one from us with a special price just by Contacting us.

Setting Up the Backup

After you have access to the Acronis Management Console, Login to it using your account. If you ordered the Cyber Protect Backup from us, you may access Management Console from this link : https://sg-cloud.acronis.com

After Acronis Management Console (MC) has opened, the next step is to add the VM to the Protection Plan. Click on the button on the top right location of the console. Then a sidebar will come up.

Since the type of your Windows VM is a Windows Server, click on Windows Button under the Servers group. After that, you will be asked to download the Acronis agent. Download and copy the agent to the VM we need to protect.

After the installer window is opened, click Install. After the installation is completed and the agent is registered, it will show up in the Console.

After the agent is recognized, we need to create a backup plan to protect the VM. We can set it up by clicking on the Gear Icon -> Protect -> Add Plan. In this article, we set the Protection Plan 1 day per week backup plan with 4 weeks of retention.

Since Acronis Cyber Protect also provides a score to evaluate a security issue within a protected VM, in the VM that we have protected, we can see the #CyberFit Score section to get the Initial Score.
Based on the initial score, the VM score is low due to poor setup. Perform all recommended fixes until the score shows green.

And that’s it!
We have successfully protected the VM with Acronis Cyber Protect. Your data will be kept safe from many risks or incidents.

In Case of an Emergency, Restore the VM

In any case of an emergency that needs you to restore the VM, you can easily perform it by following these steps:

Create a new VM on the ServerStadium Cloud Panel that will act as a restore container of the protected VM. Using the previously provided guide, create a new Windows VM in ServerStadium. After a new VM has been created. Login to the VM using the console

After that, setup the Agent in the new VM with a procedure that we’ve covered before. After the agent has been correctly configured, it will also appear in the Cyber Protect Console.
We don’t need to create a backup plan for this VM since this VM is only used as a recovery place for protected VM.

After that, log in to Acronis MC, select the protected VM, and click on Gear Icon -> Recovery. Then click on the preferred backup date and click on Recover, then Entire Machine.

Select the target machine to Target VM (in this case, errylab-dr). Then click on Start Recovery.

Now, we are waiting for the Recovery process to be completed.

After the recovery has been completed, we can check on the VM and log in.

In ServerStadium, the default Internal IP is a DHCP IP which is assigned by the system. Thus, we need to change the IP of the new VM to be the same as the old one.

And voila!
Your broken VM is now successfully restored. All with a few simple steps.

That’s it; we’ve covered backup and restoring VM on ServerStadium using Acronis Cyber Protect.
The conclusion is: A great backup strategy and solution doesn’t always need a super-sophisticated process; you only need a great backup solution and simple steps to follow.

The post Backing-Up ServerStadium Windows VM Using Acronis Cyber Protect appeared first on ServerStadium.