Owners and credentials

This section explains the concept of owner and the meaning of a backup plan’s (or task’s) credentials. 

  Plan (task) owner

A local backup plan owner is the user who created or last modified the plan.

A centralized backup plan owner is the management server administrator who created or last modified the centralized policy that spawned the plan.

Tasks, belonging to a backup plan, either local or centralized, are owned by the backup plan owner.

Tasks that do not belong to a backup plan, such as the recovery task, are owned by the user who has created or last modified the task. 

  Managing a plan (task) owned by another user

Having Administrator privileges on the machine, a user can modify tasks and local backup plans owned by any user registered in the operating system.

When a user opens a plan or task for editing, which is owned by another user, all passwords set in the task are cleared. This prevents the “modify settings, leave passwords” trick. The program displays a warning each time you are trying to edit a plan (task) last modified by another user. On seeing the warning, you have two options:

  • Click Cancel and create your own plan or task. The original task will remain intact.
  • Continue editing. You will have to enter all credentials required for the plan or task execution. 
  Archive owner

An archive owner is the user who saved the archive to the destination. To be more precise, this is the user whose account was specified when creating the backup plan in the Where to back up step. By default, the plan’s credentials are used. 

  Plan's credentials and task credentials

Any task running on a machine runs on behalf of a user. When creating a plan or a task, you have the option to explicitly specify an account under which the plan or the task will run. Your choice depends on whether the plan or task is intended for manual start or for executing on schedule.

Manual start

You can skip the Plan’s (Task) credentials step. Every time you start the task, the task will run under the credentials with which you are currently logged on. Any person that has administrative privileges on the machine can also start the task. The task will run under this person’s credentials.

The task will always run under the same credentials, regardless of the user who actually starts the task, if you specify the task credentials explicitly. To do so, on the plan (task) creation page:

  1. Select the Advanced view check box.
  2. Select General -> Plan’s (Task) credentials -> Change.
  3. Enter the credentials under which the plan (task) will run.

Scheduled or postponed start

The plan (task) credentials are mandatory. If you skip the credentials step, you will be asked for credentials after finishing the plan (task) creation.

Why does the program compel me to specify credentials?

A scheduled or postponed task has to run anyway, regardless if any user is logged on or not (for example, the system is at the Windows “Welcome” screen) or a user other than the task owner is logged on. It is sufficient that the machine be on (that is, not in standby or hibernate) at the scheduled task start time. That’s why the Acronis scheduler needs the explicitly specified credentials to be able to start the task.

Owners and credentials