Acronis Backup

Cloud

Support Training: Troubleshooting

and contacting Acronis

© Acronis, 2018. All rights reserved. 1

Training agenda
This is Part 2 of support training for Service Providers. It contains overview of Tier 1
troubleshooting for Acronis Backup Cloud and covers following topics:

• Self-service: Documentation / Knowledge Base / Forum

• Support tools

• Escalating issue to Acronis

• Troubleshooting guidelines

This training does not substitute user guide with full product functionality description and hands-
on experience with the product, which are required for effective product support.

© Acronis, 2018. All rights reserved. 2

Tier 1 support prerequisites
• Storage technologies (HDD, SSD, RAID) and storage systems (SAN, NAS,
DAS...)
• File systems (used in Windows, Linux, Mac OS X and ESXi)
• Windows (XP and higher, Server 2003 and higher), Linux, Mac OS X
architecture understanding: boot process, security principles, OS
management (services, disk management, device management), etc
• Active Directory and domain environments
• Networking (TCP/IP, familiarity with protocols like VPN, NFS, CIFS, SMB)
• Troubleshooting and support for Windows Server 2003-2016
• Experience with virtualization platforms: VMware vSphere, Microsoft Hyper-V
and Virtuozzo
• Experience with database and applications support (Exchange, SQL, AD,
Sharepoint)
• Experience with mobile applications support

© Acronis, 2018. All rights reserved. 3

Tier 1 minimal troubleshooting steps

Find out exact Review UG and

software KB to understand
behavior or error what the expected Learn product functionality
message behavior shall be

Review training
Search for the
content for
known issues in
KB or Forums
troubleshooting Find known issues
guidelines

Collect necessary Reach out to

Troubleshoot Try available
Collect troubleshooting using suggested solutions and
logs and Customer
Troubleshooting Service &
information and escalate tools workarounds
Tools outputs Support

© Acronis, 2018. All rights reserved. 4

SELF-SERVICE

• Documentation
• Knowledge Base
• Forum

© Acronis, 2018. All rights reserved. 5

Documentation for Acronis Backup Cloud
User guide is available for download in both Management
Portal and Backup Management Console:
• Help / About > Partner’s and User guide (PDF)

On support documentation page

(http://www.acronis.com/en-us/support/documentation/)
you will find:
• Online documentation
• Administrator’s guide
• User guide

© Acronis, 2018. All rights reserved. 6

Knowledge Base
Acronis Knowledge Base (kb.acronis.com) is a main
resource for official information about
• product functionality
• product limitations
• known issues
• troubleshooting techniques
• support tools and usage
• other relevant support information

Acronis Backup Cloud articles are all listed and

grouped by topics at https://kb.acronis.com/acronis-
backup-cloud

Troubleshooting articles for all Acronis products are

listed at https://kb.acronis.com/dst

© Acronis, 2018. All rights reserved. 7

KB search rules
Bad search example:
There are a few simple rules to enhance search
results in the Knowledge Base:

Use quotation marks for the exact match

"write error" Good search example:
"0x00070004+0x00070004+0x01E50018+0x00040004
+0x00040004"
This way you will receive the article containing the
exact word combination or exact SER-code you are
looking for

Use product filter

After typing search request and before running search,
select product to show only relevant results

© Acronis, 2018. All rights reserved. 8

Acronis Service Provider Forum
At https://forum.acronis.com/ login with your Acronis My Account credentials (not Acronis Backup Cloud login)
Here you can read the latest support news: https://forum.acronis.com/digests-and-support-best-practices
To create new account go to https://account.acronis.com/
On Acronis Forum you can get in touch with, and receive information from:
• Acronis Service Providers Support Team
• Development Team
• Other Service Providers

© Acronis, 2018. All rights reserved. 9

Datacenter availability
Check current Acronis datacenter status at https://cloud-status.acronis.com
Login with your partner credentials

© Acronis, 2018. All rights reserved. 10

Support FAQ
Troubleshooting kit:
https://kb.acronis.com/backup-cloud-known-solutions FAQ For Customers
General and Installation
How to install an agent? https://kb.acronis.com/content/55052
General FAQ https://kb.acronis.com/content/49028
What devices and environments are supported? https://kb.acronis.com/content/59277
Which ports should be open in firewall? https://kb.acronis.com/content/47189
What if my backup to cloud fails? https://kb.acronis.com/content/56049
Technical FAQ: https://kb.acronis.com/content/49028 How to update the software? https://kb.acronis.com/content/56313
What do icons in the interface mean? https://kb.acronis.com/content/59019
How secure is my data? https://kb.acronis.com/content/14188

Backup configuration
FAQ For Service Providers How to configure backup? https://kb.acronis.com/content/55064
What data can be backed up? https://kb.acronis.com/content/59281
General
How to backup a mobile device? https://kb.acronis.com/content/59292
How to brand web site URL? https://kb.acronis.com/content/58275
Where to backup? https://kb.acronis.com/content/59283
How to brand support options? https://kb.acronis.com/content/59180
How to backup to second location? https://kb.acronis.com/content/56193
How to upload customer’s backup to Cloud Storage? https://kb.acronis.com/content/56070
How to physically ship backup to the datacenter? https://kb.acronis.com/content/57604
Managing quotas and notifications
Recovery operations
How to turn on/off notifications? https://kb.acronis.com/content/59043
How to restore files? https://kb.acronis.com/content/55088
How to modify user quotas? https://kb.acronis.com/content/55538
How to restore disks? https://kb.acronis.com/content/55912
How to download files from Cloud Storage? https://kb.acronis.com/content/57596
How to recover to another computer? https://kb.acronis.com/content/55912

© Acronis, 2018. All rights reserved. 11

SUPPORT TOOLS

• Error messages and statuses

• Collecting logs
• Troubleshooting tools

© Acronis, 2018. All rights reserved. 12

Support steps
1. Login to the datacenter with your personal/support login:
https://cloud.acronis.com/

2. Find the user in the Management Portal:

• Use user login
• Use group name

3. Login to Backup Management Console from Customer group:

© Acronis, 2018. All rights reserved. 13

Backup health monitoring
Partner administrators can monitor backup health and backup statuses of all managed Customers
Backup health shows 7 days history for backup activities and mark it in green for successful, red for errors,
orange for warning activities and gray if there were no backups
Backup status shows current state of EUC. If at least one machine in a EUC has error status, the EUC
status will be error too

© Acronis, 2018. All rights reserved. 14 14

Agent status monitoring
Search by machine
name, status, user
account, backup time

Backup Monitor shows

current agent status

Machine is online/offline Backup progress and status

© Acronis, 2018. All rights reserved. 15

Backup statuses
Warnings – operation did not fail, but some activities did not
succeed, so the backup might be unavailable or unsuitable for
restore; backup was cancelled by the user or by the silent mode
option
Error – operation failed

When you click on the backup status Warnings or Error, it

opens the Activities pane on the respective activity

Details button will show the full error message, or you can
download the error log.

© Acronis, 2018. All rights reserved. 16

Error lookup in Knowledge Base
Open the warning or error message and click on
Support:
If KB contains a similar error message, follow
instructions of the article to confirm and solve the issue
Alternatively use KB search to look for similar issues
following general KB search rules

© Acronis, 2018. All rights reserved. 17

Reading the error message
Error message consist of several field sets of error information, stacked
in one message. Each filed set corresponds to a particular software
module which gave the error
LineInfo

How to process the error message:

Start reading the error message from bottom field set to top, since the
corresponding failed module gives the most user-relevant error message
Always read several field sets to have a complete understanding of the
message

KB search-relevant information in each field set:

Message: User-readable description of the error
LineInfo: unique ID for the error message
Process name Build number
Last field set
Troubleshooting-relevant information:
Fields: contains the process name, which gave the error and the build
number

© Acronis, 2018. All rights reserved. 18

COLLECTING LOGS AND
SYSTEM INFORMATION

© Acronis, 2018. All rights reserved. 19

View and collect agent logs from web console
To view the logs for a specific machine:
• Login to the Backup Management Console
• Select the machine
• Click on activities
• View details or download the XML log

© Acronis, 2018. All rights reserved. 20

Collect agent system information from web console
To collect System Information from an
online agent:
• select it in the backup management
console
• Go to activities
• Click on Collect system information
• Agent will collect the required info
locally, zip it and will push it to the web
console for download (no size limits)

For offline agents use AcronisInfo:

http://kb.acronis.com/content/2707

© Acronis, 2018. All rights reserved. 21

TROUBLESHOOTING
TOOLS

© Acronis, 2018. All rights reserved. 22

Common Tools
Tool name When to collect How to collect Link Size of the log

AcronisInfo / System – From web console

Any issue with agent http://kb.acronis.com/content/2707 1MB ÷ 100MB
Information – Run script
Connection Verification
Connectivity issues Run script and capture screenshot https://kb.acronis.com/content/47678 ~100KB
Tool
Issues with scheduled Run script and work in CMD, capture
Scheduler Manager https://kb.acronis.com/content/1859 ~100KB
operations screenshot
https://www.acronis.com/personal/vss-
Acronis VSS Doctor Run the tool and save TXT file ~10KB
Issues with VSS snapshots: diagnostic-free-tool/
– File and disk backup
– From CMD and capture screenshot
VSSADMIN – Application backup https://kb.acronis.com/vsslog ~5KB
– Run script
– Hyper-V VM backup
DiskShadow From CMD and capture screenshot https://kb.acronis.com/content/45472 ~100KB
– Crash
– Lockup From UI
Process Monitor https://kb.acronis.com/content/2295 20MB ÷ 500MB
– File access issue *zip after creating
– Performance issue
From UI
Wireshark / tcpdump Connectivity issues https://kb.acronis.com/content/1763 10MB ÷ 500MB
*zip after creating
From CMD
Procdump (Windows) https://kb.acronis.com/content/27931 50MB ÷ 500MB
– Crash *zip after creating
– Lockup From CMD
Strace (Linux) https://kb.acronis.com/content/37659 50MB ÷ 500MB
*zip after creating

© Acronis, 2018. All rights reserved. 23

Connection verification tool
Verifies connection to cloud servers via specific ports:
Download the Connection Verification Tool from https://kb.acronis.com/content/47678 to the machine
Open the Command Prompt and run the tool with the following parameters*:

>msp_port_checker.exe -u=user@email.com -p=Password

*Skipe the –p parameter to enter the password with prompt

**Usage examples for other tools are available in Appendix

© Acronis, 2018. All rights reserved. 24

Cloud backup speed benchmark
Test maximum upload/download speed to the cloud storage:
https://cloud-wr-us2.acronis.com/speedtest/index.html
(see for all datacenters: https://kb.acronis.com/content/59690)

Confirm real backup speed from the backup activity:

Speed = Bytes saved / Duration

Example:
2.89 GB / 33 min = (2.89 * 1024 * 8) Mb / (33 * 60) sec = 12 Mbps

Upload / download Backup / Recovery time

speed 100 GB 500 GB 1 TB
1 Mbps (0.125 MB/sec) 9.5 days 47.5 days 95 days
8 Mbps (1 MB/sec) 28.5 hours 6 days 12 days
20 Mbps (2.5 MB/sec) 11.5 hours 2.5 days 5 days
50 Mbps (6.25 MB/sec) 4.6 hours 22.8 hours 2 days
100 Mbps (12.5 MB/sec) 2.3 hours 11.5 hours 1 day

© Acronis, 2018. All rights reserved. 25

Acronis VSS Doctor
Diagnose and fix issues with VSS using a free tool by Acronis:

https://www.acronis.com/personal/vss-diagnostic-free-tool/

✓ One-click diagnostic of all VSS components

✓ Automatically collects data from scattered sources into a single
report
✓ Easily spots the weak places in the VSS infrastructure
✓ Generates a report with the results of the tests performed
✓ Fixes issues with one-click when a pre-defined solution is
available

© Acronis, 2018. All rights reserved. 26

ESCALATING ISSUE TO
ACRONIS

© Acronis, 2018. All rights reserved. 27

Acronis Customer Service & Support
24x7 Support in English
• End Users have to contact their Service Provider for any
assistance. Service Providers in their turn may reach out
to Acronis Customer Service & Support 24x7. Service is
provided according to the following guidelines in English
only:
http://www.acronis.com/en-
us/support/serviceproviderguidelines/

Customer Service & Support Portal

• Acronis maintains special Customer Service & Support
portal for Service Providers to contact Support:
http://www.acronis.com/en-us/support/

© Acronis, 2018. All rights reserved. 28

Acronis Customer Service & Support
Contacting Customer Service & Support:
• In order to access Acronis Customer Service & Support
portal, Service Provider has to log in to their account on
Acronis website, click on the tab labeled “Support”, press the
“Contact Support” button and go through the special support
wizard:
http://www.acronis.com/support/contact-us.html

• The support wizard will ask what type of the issue Service
Provider experiences, what type of the product and exact
product name they use. Based on the answers provided it will
offer best support contact options available, including e-mail
and phone.

© Acronis, 2018. All rights reserved. 29

Acronis Customer Service & Support
Emergency Contacts:
Service Providers may also use direct contacts to reach out to Acronis in case of emergency, e.g. critical
issues, problems accessing Customer Service & Support portal, etc:

E-mail: mspsupport@acronis.com

Phone: Region Phone number Region Phone number

US +1 888 223 45 87 Singapore +65 3158-9823
Canada +1 888 864 43 81 Hong Kong +852 5803 2291 (English only)
UK +44 203 514 70 44 Russia +7 (499) 969 80 31
Europe +49 892 109-33-61 Argentina +54 (11) 50789771 (English only)
Japan +81 (3) 451 023 13 (English only) Malaysia +60 154 877 08 81
Australia +61 (1800) 354 401 Indonesia 000 (800) 100-9474
South Africa +27875502262

If you choose to call us, the best way to proceed is to first submit a ticket with details by e-mail and then
provide the ticket number to support engineer on the phone

© Acronis, 2018. All rights reserved. 30

Information required for escalation
Split different issues in separate requests (you will get a support case number for each request)
Description:
• Explain the issue and the symptoms Example:

• Provide steps to reproduce the issue Description:

• Describe the desired outcome you expect from the product – VM backup to Cloud fails with error “No backup items
were resolved”
– I applied backup plan “Entire machine to cloud” to
several Hyper-V VMs. One of them now fails with this
Logs: error message
• Provide error message and screenshots associated with the issue (if any) – Backup should be successful

• Provide the system information from all agents/storage involved Logs:

– Full error message: “Message: No backup items were
resolved: ('52B8CE23-E46F-F076-332F-
Additional information 2D634E002F19','mms::vm::machine') GXT: The item
provider has skipped the report of an item with key
• Provide user account login '('52B8CE23-E46F-F076-332F-
• Provide device name 2D634E002F19','mms::vm::machine')'.”
– System information attached
• Provide environment details (OS, network configuration etc.)
Additional information:
– User login: end-user-test
– Hyper-V host: Win2008.test.com; VM: Temp-
VM.test.com
– It’s a Hyper-V cluster with HA, VMs should be able to
migrate from one host to another

© Acronis, 2018. All rights reserved. 31

CERTIFICATION EXAM

You are now welcome to pass the Service Provider

Support certification exam!

© Acronis, 2018. All rights reserved. 32

Certification Exam
Acronis is committed to provide world-class
support to its Service Providers and their End
Users:
To ensure high quality support to End Users and get
free support from Acronis, Service Provider must pass
Tier 1 certification thus completing the support training
course
Support certification is individual and valid for 18
months. All Acronis Certified Service Providers shall
have a minimum of two individual certified employees

Certification exams are available at:

https://kb.acronis.com/MSPtraining

© Acronis, 2018. All rights reserved. 33

APPENDIX

• Support tools usage examples

© Acronis, 2018. All rights reserved. 34

Application processes
Process name (Windows) Process name (Linux and Mac) Component Functionality
Backup, replication, restore operations,
service_process.exe service_process Agent
validation
Manages tasks and processes on the
mms.exe mms Agent
machine
schedule (Linux)
schedul2.exe Agent Executes scheduled tasks on certain events
schedwrapper (Mac)
cron (Linux) schedhlp notifies about logon/logoff
schedhlp.exe Agent
launchd .plist (Mac) cron/launchd triggers scheduler
Provides a possibility to connect with local
agent.exe agent Agent
Management Console
Shows tray notifications about Agent tasks
MmsMonitor.exe - Tray Monitor
and program status

<Backup_Agent_[version]>.exe <package name> Installer Installation

systeminfo.exe systeminfo System Report Collects System Report

© Acronis, 2018. All rights reserved. 35

Collect agent system information manually
Windows
Use AcronisInfo tool from http://kb.acronis.com/content/2707

Linux/Mac from the shell:

a) Run the following command with root privileges:
#acrocmd sysinfo --loc=/full_path_to_report/file_name
Where /full_path_to_report/file_name is the desired existing location and filename
to save the Linux System Report.
Once the command is finished, you will see a "The operation completed
successfully" message.

b) Run a bash script to collect this information directly:

#/usr/lib/Acronis/BackupAndRecovery/systeminfo
The report will automatically be saved to the /var/lib/Acronis/sysinfo/ directory.

© Acronis, 2018. All rights reserved. 36

Agent system information contents
Windows Linux Mac
• %ProgramData%\Acronis – /var/lib/Acronis – /var/lib/Acronis
– /etc/Acronis – /Library/LaunchDaemons
• Product logs – /ust/lib/Acronis – /Library/LaunchAgents
• System logs and reports – Product logs – /Library/Application Support/BackupClient
– System logs and reports – /Library/Logs/DiagnosticReports
– Product logs
– System logs and reports
– Crash dumps

© Acronis, 2018. All rights reserved. 37

Scheduler Manager
A command line utility that allows you to manage scheduled tasks on Windows and Linux.
https://kb.acronis.com/content/1859
May be used to:
Main commands:
– Monitor scheduled tasks
– Detect deleted backup tasks that still run Get list – shows all registered tasks
Task N-N – points the cursor to the
– Detect single not running tasks
specified task
– Collect Scheduler log in case of an issue Task delete – deletes the task

Linux location:
• /usr/sbin/schedmgr
Windows location:
• C:\Program Files\BackupClient\BackupAndRecovery\schedmgr.exe

© Acronis, 2018. All rights reserved. 38

Scheduler on Mac
Scheduled tasks run on Mac in the following manner:

launchd .plist is created for this task in /Library/LaunchDaemons/

Example: com.acronis.3_1.plist, where '3' is the scheduler task
name

the created .plist is loaded into launchd. To check that it is loaded, enter in
Terminal:
sudo launchctl list | grep acronis

at appropriate time (after planned in .plist time interval has passed) launchd
triggers schedwrapper, which starts appropriate task

© Acronis, 2018. All rights reserved. 39

VSSADMIN
VSSADMIN is a 3rd party Windows-based monitoring tool that
displays all installed Volume Shadow Copy writers and providers and
helps in snapshot troubleshooting and analysis.
Major use cases for VSSADMIN include, but are not limited to:
– VSS writer failure
– Shadow Storage out of space
– VSS provider issue

https://kb.acronis.com/vsslog

© Acronis, 2018. All rights reserved. 40

DiskShadow
DiskShadow is a 3rd party monitoring tool that exposes the
functionality provided by Microsoft Volume Shadow Copy
Service (VSS) and helps in snapshot troubleshooting and analysis
Major use cases for DiskShadow include, but are not limited to:
– VSS writer failure
– VSS provider failure

https://kb.acronis.com/content/45472

© Acronis, 2018. All rights reserved. 41

Process Monitor Utility
An advanced file system and process monitoring tool that shows real-time file system, registry and process
activities (https://kb.acronis.com/content/2295)
Process Monitor can be used to track system and software activity to troubleshoot some product, system
or network issues, especially when it is necessary to track what particular application or process accesses
a file or a registry key.

Use cases:
• Process interruption or hanging
• System overload
• Issues with installation/uninstallation
• Locked file(s), Access Denied errors, etc.

© Acronis, 2018. All rights reserved. 42

Wireshark / tcpdump
A network traffic logger that captures all data coming to and from the
monitored network adapters.
https://kb.acronis.com/content/1763

Use cases:
- Connectivity issues (client is shown as
offline, while the machine is live)
- Backup failures (cloud is not accessible)
- Backup to cloud/network share interruptions

© Acronis, 2018. All rights reserved. 43

Procdump: collect process dumps on Windows
A tool that allows you to create dumps of the processes in any scenario that may arise while
troubleshooting issues with the agent hanging or crashing.
https://kb.acronis.com/content/27931 describes troubleshooting of application crashes in details.

Process crash (e.g. right upon starting, or they crash randomly):

procdump -e -w -ma <process_name or PID>

Running process (e.g. if there is a suspicion the process hangs or it is

necessary to understand why the service uses a lot of resources, etc.):
procdump -ma <process_name or PID>

© Acronis, 2018. All rights reserved. 44

Strace: collect process dumps on Linux
Strace should be collected when application exits abnormally or
causes the machine freeze.
How to install:
Debian-based OS: apt-get install strace
SLES: yast -i strace
RHEL/CentOS: yum install strace

How to run:
Depending on the environment (Agent for Linux or bootable media)
and the process (mms or service_process), follow the instructions in
the https://kb.acronis.com/content/37659 to collect the strace output.
© Acronis, 2018. All rights reserved. 45
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© Acronis, 2018. All rights reserved. 46