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Acronis has a very strong pedigree for hard disk imaging and it now puts its expertise to solving the knotty problem of workstation backup. The latest True Image Echo Workstation delivers a complete network backup and recovery solution that can be managed remotely from a central console, allowing administrators to stay in complete control of all imaging tasks.

The main components of this solution are a console for handling all remote management, a backup server for storing workstation images and a group server, which provides functions such as job scheduling, plus monitoring and deployment of tasks to workstations. A licence server is also required for validating deployment of workstation components.

For testing, we opted to install all the main services on a Boston Supermicro dual 3GHz Xeon server, running Windows Server 2003 R2. After loading the console, you point it at the system running the group and backup server components that you want to manage and then you can start pushing the software to selected clients. It's a simple enough process, as you can add clients individually, load multiple systems from a text file or query an Active Directory domain controller via LDAP. We called up a collection of XP Professional SP2 and Vista clients, and were able to deploy the workstation agent to them in a few minutes.

The agent runs as a couple of local services on each client, and allows the management console to handle all disk imaging and data recovery tasks. In this scenario, the user has no interaction with the software at all, but you can allow them to run local imaging and recovery jobs by deploying the full Workstation product to their system. Group tasks streamline image creation, while incremental backups for multiple systems and setup is a smooth process, as you select the systems from a list, pick which drives or partitions you want to image and choose the backup server to store them on.

Masses of other features are available as archives can be password protected, four compression levels are available and task priorities along with network bandwidth usage can be customised. The task can then be scheduled to run at regular intervals or, for example, when the workstations start up or available disk space drops below a specified threshold. The Secure Zone option allows you to designate a local partition on each client that cannot be accessed by the OS or any other application for securely storing image files. The Startup Recovery Manager accesses this partition at bootup when the F11 key is pressed, and it loads a standalone version of Workstation for easy system and boot partition restoration.

Recovery options from the console are extensive, as you can restore selected partitions or choose from a list of files and folders in an archive and restore them to their original location or a new local destination. Another useful feature is the ability to convert an archive file to a virtual disk and Acronis supports all key vendors, including VMware, Microsoft and XenServer. Users running Workstation can also access archives exported from the backup server to a local location. These can be mounted as virtual drives with a letter assigned, allowing files and folders to be copied back using Windows Explorer.

There is a wide range of options for workstation backup currently available and hard disk imaging is proving to be an interesting alternative to the more conventional solutions. True Image Echo Workstation certainly offers some of the best imaging and data restoration tools currently available, along with good centralised management, making Acronis one of the top choices in this market today.

True Image Echo Workstation offers some of the best imaging and data restoration tools currently available, along with good centralised management, making Acronis one of the top choices in this market today.

Product: True Image Echo Workstation Supplier:
Acronis Tel: 0203 176 0340
Web site: www.acronis.co.uk
Price: £49.99 per workstation licence

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