Advanced scheduling settings

The following advanced settings are available when setting up a daily, weekly, or monthly schedule in a backup policy. 

  Use Wake-On-LAN

When this setting is enabled, Acronis Backup & Recovery 10 Management Server will use the Wake-On-LAN (WOL) functionality to wake up turned-off registered machines when a backup, cleanup or validation is scheduled to start. If the backup task on each machine starts with a delay (see the next setting), the management server will wake up the machines according to those delays.

Before using this setting, make sure that you have enabled Wake-on-LAN on the registered machines. The machine’s basic input/output system (BIOS) configuration, network adapter configuration, and the operating system configuration must allow waking up the machine from the powered-off state—also known as the S5 or G2 power state. 

  Distribute start time within the time window

When this setting is enabled, the backup task on each registered machine will start with a specific delay from the start time set in the policy. This distributes the tasks’ actual start times within a time interval.

You may want to use this setting when creating a backup policy for backing up multiple machines to a network location, to avoid excessive network load.

Delay values range from zero to the specified maximum delay value, and are determined according to the chosen distribution method.

The delay value for each machine is determined when the policy is deployed to the machine, and remains the same until you edit the policy and change the maximum delay value.

The conditions, if any, will be checked at the task’s actual start time on each machine.

The following examples illustrate this setting.

Example 1

Suppose that you are deploying a backup policy with the following schedule to three machines:

Run the task: Daily
Once at: 09:00:00 AM

Distribute start time within the time window
Maximum delay: 1 Hour(s)
Distribution method: Random

Then the task’s start time on each machine may be any time between 09:00:00 AM and 09:59:59 AM—for instance:

First machine: Every day at 09:30:03 AM

Second machine: Every day at 09:00:00 AM

Third machine: Every day at 09:59:59 AM

Example 2

Suppose that you are deploying a backup policy with the following schedule to three machines:

Run the task: Daily
Every: 2 Hour(s) From: 09:00:00 AM Until: 11:00:00 AM

Distribute start time within the time window
Maximum delay: 1 Hour(s)
Distribution method: Random

Then the time of the task’s first run on each machine may be any time between 09:00:00 AM and 09:59:59 AM; the interval between the first and the second run is exactly two hours—for instance:

First machine: Every day at 09:30:03 AM and 11:30:03 AM

Second machine: Every day at 09:00:00 AM and 11:00:00 AM

Third machine: Every day at 09:59:59 AM and 11:59:59 AM

To specify advanced settings

  1. Connect to the management server or to a machine registered on it, and then start creating a backup policy or a backup plan.
  2. In How to back up, select the Simple, Tower of Hanoi, or Custom scheme, and then click Change to specify a schedule for the scheme.
  3. Under Run the task, select Daily, Weekly, or Monthly.
  4. In the Advanced settings area, click Change.
  5. To enable the use of the Wake-On-LAN functionality, select the Use Wake-on-LAN check box.
  6. To distribute the centralized backup tasks’ start times, select the Distribute start time within the time window check box and then specify the maximum delay value and the distribution method.

Advanced scheduling settings