SvSAN and Acronis Cyber Protect Cloud

Backup Methodologies

Typically backup vendors reference "3-2-1".

https://www.backblaze.com/blog/the-3-2-1-backup-strategy/#:~:text=You%20may%20have%20heard%20of,least%20one%20copy%20off%2Dsite.

https://www.veeam.com/blog/321-backup-rule.html

https://www.acronis.com/en-us/blog/posts/backup-rule/

Introducing SvSAN alongside backup ensures an even further resilient architecture is implemented with HA and SvSAN synchronous mirroring.

Use cases

The value proposition being:

1. SvSAN's hardware flexibility to build your own appliances to the use cases correct right size due to potential supply chain issues

2. Software based solutions

3. Eliminating single points of failure (SPOF) and connectivity (SPOC)

4. Creation of immutable, deduped, compressed and dual authorized backups to protect against critical data loss and ransomware attacks

The Acronis agent for VMware is deployed to the local ESXi hosts, and grants the cloud portal the access it needs to the virtual environment.

Setup and Administration

The Acronis Cyber Protect Cloud console is hosted by Acronis and the only components that require any installation are the onsite agents used for communication between onsite virtual infrastructure and the central cloud console.

Devices in Acronis can be virtual machines, as well as other endpoints including laptops, desktops, and any other devices that need some sort of threat protection or file and data services. For certain types of endpoints, specific access and remote administration controls can be put in place, for example creating rescue media for workstations and servers.

Agents and Plans

Like many backup and recovery applications, the onsite portion of the process is taken care of by an onsite agent, which can be either a virtual appliance (details below) or installable on a windows server. Using a Windows server allows locally attached storage to be used as a backup repository, including the use of SvSAN-provided mirrored block disks.

Agents, once installed execute protection plans as defined in the Acronis Cloud Protect platform. The onsite agent has no gui, rather it registers to the cloud console, and is managed from there.

Agent plans therefore are the defined backup plans that will apply to the workload, in this case our virtual machines, but in production Acronis deployments will likely include all workstations, mobile devices and other periphery devices in use by the organisation.

Creating Agent Plans

Plans consist of various features that are licensed by Acronis, including Backup, Disaster Recovery, Security and filtering, anti-virus and more. Some screenshots of various settings below

Adding Devices

Plans can only be applied to devices and workloads assigned into the system. For VMwware environments, this is done by way of installing a local Agent Appliance onsite, which then registers against the cloud.

ESXi Appliance is downloaded and installed/configured to connect back to this tenancy.

Deployment steps detailed below:

Once deployed, it simply needs an IP address and connection details to your Acronis tenancy.

Add ESXi login details for the VCenter or host with target VMs.

Virtual Appliance supports registration by credentials only, and does not support 2 factor authentication. As this was setup for the main tenancy, the agent will need to be manually registered:

1. Generate registration token for your tenant:

Sign in to the service console by using the credentials of the account to which the machines should be assigned.
Click All devices > Add.
Scroll down to Registration token, and then click Generate.
Specify the token lifetime, and then click Generate token.
Copy the token or write it down.

2. Use "register_agent" utility (the utility is present in /bin directory):

Open the Virtual Appliance VM console in your hypervisor client UI and press Ctrl+Shift+F2 to switch to command line interface.
Execute this command:
register_agent -o register -t cloud -a <your-datacenter> --token <token>
where <your-datacenter> is the datacenter address displayed in browser when you log in to Cyber Protection console, e.g. https://au1-cloud.acronis.com
<token> is the registration token generated in step 1.

Once registered, the VMs will appear under "Devices" in the Acronis portal and can have protetion plans activated against them.

Applying a disaster recovery and backup plan

When devices are not on the local network, an onsite agent is required that will connect the remote infrastruture to the cloud using VPN services.

Once downloaded, the VPN appliance requires only some basic configuration to log into the customer tenancy in the Acronis Cyber Protect Cloud portal.

Selecting Virtual machines to apply the protection plan

Disaster Recovery

Whie the virtual machines are backed up to the cloud, if/when there is a failure of hardware on site, the hardware that was running the protected workloads, these machines can be recovered directly from the cloud, utilising the private VPN connection app that was deployed previously, to allow the VM running in the cloud to communicate as if it was on site.