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
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.
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 6 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 6, and then upgrade to Acronis Cyber Protect 16.
Important
- 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 funcitonality, 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 (Builds 37391, 37427, 37482)
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, please refer to 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.
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
- [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.