Build:38927November 21, 2024
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Table of contents

Overview

We are happy to introduce Acronis Cyber Protect – an AI-powered integration of Data Protection and Cybersecurity. Acronis Cyber Protect integrates backup, disaster recovery, AI-based malware and ransomware protection, remote desktop, and security tools in a single solution.

One integrated solution

  • Eliminates complexity
  • Delivers new security capabilities
  • Keeps costs down

What's new in Acronis Cyber Protect 16 Update 2

Per-VM licensing option for public cloud virtual machines (Azure, Amazon)

A new per-VM licensing model to simplify and streamline the licensing process when protecting public cloud virtual machines hosted in Microsoft Azure or Amazon Web Services (EC2 instances).

Supported in on-premises and cloud deployments.

Centralized Dashboard improvements

The Centralized Dashboard component, which allows monitoring all instances of Acronis Management Server in your environment, has been enhanced with the following items:

  • Unified view of all licenses that are allocated across Acronis Management Servers and workloads.

    • Single interface to view license details, including name, type, expiration date, and maintenance expiration date.
    • Transparent view of licensing usage to understand how licenses are distributed and utilized.
    • Export license data to XLS/CSV for comprehensive data analysis and reporting.
  • Support for HTTPS connections to Acronis Management Server instances.
  • Performance improvements.

Licensing:

Available in all editions

Supported in on-premises deployments

Support for ReFS version 3.7 and later

File-level recovery from disk/volume backups (including Entire machine backups) that contain volumes formatted with ReFS file system versions 3.7 and later.

Licensing:

Available in all editions

Supported in on-premises deployments

Support for new versions of hypervisors and operating systems

  • Hypervisors

    • Scale Computing HyperCore 9.3, 9.4

  • Linux-based operating systems (with Linux kernel versions 6.7-6.9)

    • Ubuntu 23.10, 24.04 LTS
    • Debian 12.x
    • Fedora 37, 38
    • Oracle Linux 8.7, 8.8, 9.4
    • CloudLinux 8.6, 8.7, 8.8, 9.4
    • AlmaLinux 8.6, 8.7, 8.8, 8.9, 8.10, 9.4
    • Red Hat 8.8, 9.4

Licensing:

Available in all editions

Supported in on-premises deployments

What's new in Acronis Cyber Protect 16 Update 1

WinRE-based environment for recovery with restart

Recovery operations that require restart of a Windows system, such as entire machine recovery, can now use Windows Recovery Environment (WinRE) instead of a Linux-based environment. This option allows mitigation of potential issues related to missing drivers during mission-critical recovery operations.

What's new in Acronis Cyber Protect 16

Centralized dashboard

Monitor all instances of Acronis Management Server in your environment by using a consolidated view of three dimensions:

  • Device List
  • Alerts
  • Activities

On the centralized dashboard, Administrator users can:

  • Adjust the view to show data for one or more Acronis Management Servers.
  • Download data from widgets, in the CSV or XLS format.
  • Drill down to specific devices on the Acronis Management server.

The solution requires a Microsoft SQL Database server as the backend database.

Licensing:

Available in all editions

Supported in on-premises deployments

Immutable storage

Achieve strict regulatory compliance and data security by ensuring that backed-up data cannot be altered or deleted. Immutable storage provides the following benefits:

  • Protection against data tampering: Immutable backup protects against unauthorized changes, deletions, or ransomware attacks.
  • Compliance assurance: By providing Write Once Read Many (WORM) capabilities, the immutable backup solution helps your organization comply with regulatory requirements.
  • Enhanced data security: Immutable backup adds an extra layer of security, for protection against both internal and external threats.
  • Time-defined data retention: Administrator users can configure separate retention periods for backups and for the immutable storage.
  • Proof against user errors: During the retention period, Administrator users can recover data from backups that were deleted by accident.

The solution is available for storage based on Acronis Cyber Infrastructure and on Acronis Cloud.

Supported on Acronis Backup Gateway version 2.12.28 or later.

Licensing:

Available in all editions

Supported in on-premises and cloud deployments

Automated modular agent deployment and uninstallation

Now, you can choose to install the Acronis Cyber Protection Agent without the components responsible for antimalware protection. Thus, users who do not want to use antimalware protection or URL filtering can use Acronis Cyber Protect with a decreased number of services running on their machine.

If you change your mind later, there is no need to manually install or uninstall antimalware components on multiple machines. It is done automatically after enabling or disabling the Antimalware protection or URL filtering in the protection plan.

One-click recovery

Recovery of an entire workload no longer requires a highly skilled IT workforce. Users with Administrator role can automate the recovery process to make it more friendly for regular users. This approach eliminates IT bottlenecks, and saves time and money by reducing downtime in the event of a cyber attack.

  • Supported backup locations: Acronis Secure Zone, local folder, network folder, and cloud storage
  • Supported for disk-level backups
  • Supported on Windows and Linux
  • Enhanced security: Administrator users can configure a recovery password

Licensing:

Available in Acronis Cyber Protect Backup Advanced and Acronis Cyber Protect Advanced

Supported in on-premises and cloud deployments

Agent for Synology

The new Agent for Synology is provided as a package for Synology Package Center and delivers native protection for data stored on Synology NAS devices. With Agent for Synology, data hosted on NAS shares is backed up by accessing it locally from the storage, instead of reading it over the network (via SMB), thus providing better performance.

By using the Agent for Synology, Administrator users can:

  • Back up and recover data hosted on Synology NAS devices
  • Preserve ACL and NAS-specific shares permissions during recovery
  • Use Agent for Synology for off-host data processing operations, such as backup replication

Installation notes

  • Supported versions of DiskStation Manager (DSM) 6.x and 7.x
  • ARM CPU-based Synology NAS devices are not supported

Licensing

Requires a Server or Universal license for each NAS device

Supported in on-premises and cloud deployments

Tape LTO-9 format support

This version of Acronis Cyber Protect adds support for the latest tape media format, LTO-9, so users can now back up data to, and recover data from, tape by using the LTO-9 format, including disk/volume and files/folders-level.

Note: The LTO-9 format requires tape media recalibration. Therefore, all non-calibrated tapes with disabled autocalibration will appear as Unknown until they are manually calibrated.

Licensing

Available in all editions

Supported in on-premises deployments

Added support for macOS on ARM CPU

All current backup and antimalware functionalities for macOS are now supported on ARM CPUs.

Licensing:

Available in all editions

Supported in on-premises and cloud deployments

Added support for Microsoft SQL Server 2022 as database for the Acronis Management Server

Microsoft SQL Server 2022 can be used as a database for the Acronis Management Server component.

Licensing:

Available in all editions

Supported in on-premises and cloud deployments

Recovery of workloads protected by BitLocker

This version of Acronis Cyber Protect adds a streamlined, uncomplicated process for the recovery of BitLocker-protected workloads.

You must suspend or disable BitLocker before updating the Cyber Protection Agent. After the update, enable BitLocker again. If you fail to disable BitLocker before the agent update, the BitLocker recovery key is required after the restart of the protected workload. See product documentation.

Licensing:

Available in all editions

Supported in on-premises and cloud deployments

Disable local folder browsing

This capability strengthens the security of protected workloads via the least privilege principle. Administrator users can disable local file browsing on the protected workloads by modifying the parameters in a configuration file.

Licensing:

Available in all editions

Supported in on-premises deployments

Installation notes

You can upgrade Acronis Cyber Protect 15 Update 3 (build 28035) or later to Acronis Cyber Protect 16.

If you use Acronis Cyber Protect 12.5 or an older version of Acronis Cyber Protect 15, you must first upgrade to Acronis Cyber Protect 15 Update 3, and then upgrade to Acronis Cyber Protect 16.

Important

  • Starting from Acronis Cyber Protect 16 Update 1, updating from older builds requires an active subscription license or support maintenance agreement. If the subscription license or support maintenance agreement has expired, the installation will fail.
  • If you are using BitLocker on protected workloads, suspend or disable BitLocker before updating the Cyber Protection Agent. After the update, enable BitLocker again. If you fail to disable BitLocker before the update, the BitLocker recovery key will be required after you restart the workload. See product documentation.
  • If you plan to use the immutable storage functionality, see Updating the Account Server certificate.
  • If you plan to use Virtual Host/Universal licenses for protection of VMs by running backup agents inside them (agent-based), make sure to review the following KB article that describes the licensing specifics: https://kb.acronis.com/content/67155.

Issues fixed in Acronis Cyber Protect 16 Update 2 (Builds 38690, 38823, 38927)

Issues fixed in build 38927 (November 21, 2024)

Common

  • [ABR-381036] The mms.exe service consumes RAM resources even if no protection plan is applied.

Backup and recovery

  • [ABR-392793] Backups to ASN tapes are not working properly after update to agent build 38690.

Issues fixed in build 38823 (November 4, 2024)

Backup and recovery

  • [ABR-391228] One-click recovery is not available if the protection plan name contains spaces.
  • [ABR-390855] The error 'External IDs conflict for >1 credential objects' is shown in a network folder location when backups are deleted from this location.

Issues fixed in build 38690 (October 15, 2024)

Security

Common

  • [PLTFRM-60160] Hanging activities might not be canceled properly in the Cyber Protect console.
  • [ABR-386569] The ZIP package cannot be downloaded when using the "Collect System Information" option in the Cyber Protect console if the package size is bigger than 700 MB.

Installation and upgrade

  • [ADP-22766] In some cases, remote installation or update of Agent for Windows that is initiated from Acronis Management Server might fail with the error "An unknown error occurred trying to verify the signature of the file."

Backup and recovery

  • [ABR-357997] Backup replication plans and cleanup plans (as off-host data processing) might not run on schedule, but run normally when executed manually.
  • [ABR-361452] In some cases, a protection plan that backs up data from network shares (SMB/NFS) cannot be created or edited, because correct credentials for the network shares are not accepted.
  • [ABR-372156] Fixed the misleading error message "No target was specified or the target is invalid." when trying to back up to a network share by using a read-only account.
  • [ABR-383472] Only full backups are created instead of incremental ones.
  • [ABR-387246] In rare cases, the backup might fail with the error "POR: Element 'Name' cannot be found."

Tapes management

  • [ABR-310958] The erase operation might start before the rewind operation finishes, which results in a half-erased tape, and the inventory operation with this tape fails.
  • [ABR-382340] Backups (recovery points) are shown in the Settings >Tape Management tab only after you browse them in the Backup storage tab.
  • [ABR-387454] After the initial full replication succeeds, an incremental backup replication to a tape might fail with the error "No media are available."
  • [ABR-385898] The tape inventory operation might fail if a custom configuration is used in the tape_devices.xml file.

Issues fixed in Acronis Cyber Protect 16 Update 1 (Builds 37977, 38093)

Issues fixed in build 38093 (July 3, 2024)

Backup and recovery

  • [ABR-336197] Agentless backup of a Scale Computing VM may fail with "THRIFT_POLL (timed out)" error.
  • [ABR-362864] Cross-platform recovery into Scale Computing VM may fail with "FORTE_RESOLVE_SYMLINK_BROKEN" error if the recovered backup contains Windows 7 guest OS.
  • [ABR-383060] Agentless backup of VMs from Scale Computing Hypercore version 9.4 fails with "Failed to find the virtual machine with UUID..." error.
  • [ABR-383554] Agentless backup of VMs from Scale Computing Hypercore version 9.4 may fail with "Nothing to back up. The operation has been terminated." error.

Issues fixed in build 37977 (June 7, 2024)

Installation and upgrade

  • [ABR-385433] Upgrade to Acronis Cyber Protect 16 Update 1 is available for installations of Acronis Cyber Protect 15 Update 3 (build 28035) or later.
  • [PLTFRM-65772] Upgrade to Acronis Cyber Protect 16 fails because of foreign key violations that happen during the database migration.
  • [ABR-380999] In some cases, the update of the All-in-One Appliance is blocked because the "Update" option is missing after booting the appliance from the installation ISO image.

Backup and recovery

  • [ABR-382834] In rare cases, backup locations on network shares may disappear from the list after performing Instant Recovery (Run as VM) from backups in these locations.
  • [ABR-379996] Backup replication to an archive that contains corrupt metadata information for one or more backups may fail with the error: "Cannot find a backup with key…"
  • [ABR-372609] After a successful backup, the protection plan may still show the "Failed" status.
  • [ABR-367869] Off-host data processing plans may fail with the error "Task timeout expired", due to internal database inconsistency.
  • [ABR-364886] In rare cases, recovery of files or folders from a backup of an XFS volume fails with the error "The file is corrupted."
  • [ABR-349915] Editing a protection plan applied to a group of devices fails if the group has been deleted.
  • [ABR-306021] When processing multiple archives in a row, off-host data processing plans may fail with the error "Task timeout expired" after 12 minutes.
  • [ABR-384588] Encrypted archives that are created by a different agent cannot be browsed.
  • [ABR-384692] Agents appear offline because they are not authorized in the zmqgw service due to a misreading of public keys in the GPRM module.
  • [ABR-385558] A filter in the Cyber Protect console shows the online agents for which an update is available.

Tapes management

  • [ABR-382340] In some cases, after tape inventorying and re-scanning, backups are not listed in the tape backup locations that are managed by Acronis Storage Node until the backup list within the archive is browsed manually.

Issues fixed in Acronis Cyber Protect 16 (Builds 37391, 37427, 37482, 37792)

This product version is based on the code base of Acronis Cyber Protect 15 Update 6. All fixed issues were present in the latest build of Acronis Cyber Protect Update 6, build 37255 (February, 2024). For more information, see the Acronis Cyber Protect 15 release notes.

Issues fixed in build 37482 (March 13, 2024)

  • [PLTFRM-63501] Registration status is not synchronized after a re-registration of the management server, and the allocated licenses cannot be assigned to workloads.

Issues fixed in build 37427 (February 29, 2024)

  • [PLTFRM-63246] The check for updates is unavailable.
  • [ABR-381020] The download links for several Cyber Protect agents are incorrect.
  • [ABR-380999] The all-in-one appliance cannot be updated from Acronis Cyber Protect 15 Update 6 to Acronis Cyber Protect 16.
  • [ABR-380201] The status of recovery tasks cannot be obtained if a network issue occurs when running the recovery through the command line interface from a remote machine.
  • [ABR-349915] You cannot edit a protection plan if it is applied to a group of workloads that was deleted.

Issues fixed in build 37391 (February 21, 2024)

Security

For information about the security issues fixed in this release, see https://security-advisory.acronis.com/updates/UPD-2308-4ed0-adc7.

Common

  • [AMP-4580] The antimalware component ("BDDCI" service) of Acronis Cyber Protect Agent for Windows may become missing after updating Windows 10 to Windows 10 20H2.
  • [PLTFRM-53897] When licensing synchronization with the cloud, the management server incorrectly counts the value for "time since last sync." The value is counted beginning with the Acronis services start time, instead of system start time. As a result, the warning "The management server has been offline for XX days..." appears and the licensing synchronization might not work.
  • [PLTFRM-52903] The alerts "Machine is offline for more than X days" and "This management server has been offline for 10 days. Fix the Internet connection issue and ensure that your license is up to date." may be erroneously raised for agents and/or management servers.
  • [PLTFRM-49933] The api_gateway.exe process may cause high CPU usage in some cases.
  • [PLTFRM-36826] The Acronis Managed Machine service fails to start if the host-alias.yaml or the aakore.info file have been modified to contain control or empty characters.
  • [ABR-374002] The error "invalid token: Authorization token expired" might appear on the first login into the web console after awakening the system where the Acronis Management Server runs from hibernation or sleep mode.
  • [ABR-370529] The error "The source location selected for replication does not exist or is not available" occurs in rare cases when you try to create a backup replication plan.
  • [ABR-362927] On rare occasions, the schedule settings of a backup replication plan may appear empty in the web console UI if certain retention rules have been set in this plan.
  • [ABR-359214] User is automatically logged out from the web console after 24 hours, even though the "Log out inactive users after" option is disabled.
  • [ABR-281270] The web console UI does not provide instructions on what to do if the x86 (32-bit) components are missing on the management server and that additional download is required.
  • [ABR-239156] Exporting or replicating backups to an Acronis Storage Node-managed backup vault fails with the error "The source location selected for replication does not exist or is not available.” if the backup file name contains spaces or non-Latin characters.

Backup and recovery

  • [ABR-367610] Recovery of file-level backups may fail if the recovered folder contains hundreds of thousands of files (around 500,000).
  • [ABR-354085] An incremental backup can be created by a protection plan with the "Always full" backup schema if you run this plan manually after switching the web console to "Simple" view in the "Devices" list.
  • [ABR-352241] The error "Invalid item key" appears if you try to change the "Backup source" selection (for example, change the selection rule from [BOOT+SYSTEM] to [DISK 1]) of a protection plan that is applied to a group of devices that includes sub-groups.
  • [ABR-302969] The error "Communication with cred-store service (host: '127.0.0.1', port: '30667' has failed." appears when you try to create a protection plan after changing the users for Acronis Management Server and/or Acronis Service Manager services.
  • [ABR-374025] Updated scheduler version.

Applications support

  • [ABR-370220] The recovery of mailboxes or mailbox items may get stuck on the "Preparing for recovery" stage if the backup contains tens of Exchange databases and more than a thousand mailboxes

Virtualization

  • [ABR-357214] The VLAN ID is not properly set for Hyper-V vSwitch after recovery of an entire Hyper-V host back to the original machine if there was a NIC teaming configured on the host and the Hyper-V vSwitch was configured on this teaming with a VLAN ID.

Tapes management

  • [ABR-371208] Backup replication of only the last backup from a Managed vault to tapes may fail with the error "Backup kind mismatching. Initially created as INC but now become as FULL."

Known issues

This section describes known issues and provides solutions where possible.

Installation and upgrade

  • [ABR-306021] Off-host data processing plans fail with a timeout error after 12 minutes if several backups/locations are selected in the same plan.
  • [ABR-218875] If Acronis Cyber Protect 15 is uninstalled without using the "Remove the logs and configuration settings" option and installed under a new user, the creation of new backup plans fails with the error "Windows error: (0x80070005) Access is denied."
    • Solution: Uninstall Acronis Cyber Protect 15 without using the "Remove the logs and configuration settings" option, and then install it and specify the user account that was used for the initial installation.
  • [ABR-217534] When the backup agent is installed by using an HTTP proxy, it still requires that the hostnames of Acronis Cloud servers (for example "baas-fes-us3.acronis.com") are resolved properly from the agent side, even if DNS redirection is set up within the proxy server.
  • [ABR-178648] Installation and/or an update may fail if the previous installation was interrupted by a reboot or crash of the system (non-graceful reboot/shutdown).
  • [ABR-142841] The Acronis Cyber Protect Appliance (All-in-One) ISO cannot boot on EFI systems.
    • Solution: Use BIOS.

Common

  • [ABR-334079] After agent deletion (unregistration) from the management server, the Activities performed by this agent remain in their most recent state and may appear as hanging/stuck.
  • [ABR-228827] Backups that are removed via the Data Recovery (Web Restore) console remain visible in the Cyber Protect service console while browsing the backup location.
    • Solution: Refresh the service console.
  • [ABR-208735] Deleting backups from Acronis Cloud storage fails with the error "Invalid operation on read-only object." after the trial period has expired.
  • [ABR-207057] The Bulgarian language is unavailable in Acronis Bootable Media for MAC.
  • [ABR-196710] The storage usage is duplicated if shares with duplicate names are registered as backup locations on the same network (shares rotation scenario).
  • [ABR-184900] Local backup usage is not reported for backups stored on a network share with enabled deduplication.
  • [ABR-178648] The installer does not remove/update old libraries if the previous update was interrupted.
  • [ABR-125081] In an agentless VM backup, when the protection plan is applied to multiple VMs, the e-mail notifications that are sent after the backup contain the hypervisor host name instead of the VM name.

Acronis Storage Node, Acronis Storage, and data catalog

Installation note: The Agent for Windows is installed at all times with Acronis Storage Node. The agent is required to browse the location contents.
  • [ABR-247219] The incorrect error message "The specified user name or password for remote resource is incorrect." is shown when the connections limit (ClientConnectionLimit + BackupQueueLimit) is reached for a managed vault.
  • [DF-132] Recovery/Download of an item from the catalog fails with the error "Unknown location: [name]" after the backup location name was changed.

Virtualization

  • [ABR-325255] It is impossible to license a Microsoft Hyper-V or VMware ESXi cluster with mix of Perpetual and Subscription licenses. You must use licenses of the same type at all times.
  • [ABR-325255] It is impossible to license a Microsoft Hyper-V or VMware ESXi cluster with a mix of the Perpetual and Subscription licenses. You must use the same type of license at all times.
  • [ABR-320149] The recovery of backups for machines that contain both IDE and SCSI drives to Scale Computing VMs produces VMs that miss one disk (the non-system SCSI disk is not restored).
  • [ABR-308847] A single Standard Virtual Host license cannot be used to protect both the Hyper-V host itself and hosted VMs at the same time. An additional license is required, when it should not be.
  • [ABR-234935] Duplicated activities appear in the Activities summary widget after the backup of a virtual machine running on a Hyper-V cluster.
  • [ABR-234935] The number of email notifications is equal to the number of Hyper-V cluster nodes for one VM backup activity.

Tapes management

  • [ABR-143151] It is not possible to specify any tape set when configuring a backup replication plan to tape because the tape-related options are missing.

Applications support

  • [ABR-122309; ABR-127970] Information about application items is missing from the data catalog for backups stored on locations that are managed by Acronis Storage Node.
  • [ABR-74984] The "Next backup" time is not displayed for a machine that only has application-level protection plans applied to it.