Acronis Backup for Windows Server Essentials - Installation Guide - Manual (Page 11)

11 Copyright © Acronis International GmbH, 2002-2014
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When installing Agent for VMware (p. 7). The licenses will be consumed later, when a backup of
the specified virtual machines starts. One license will be required for each host where a virtual
machine is selected for backup.
Checking licenses
An Acronis agent connects to Acronis License Server every time the agent service starts and then
every 1–5 days, as specified by the agent configuration parameters. If the agent is unable to connect
to the license server, it initiates an alert. The agent keeps working without the license server for 1–60
days (as specified by the configuration parameters). After that, the agent stops doing backups
(except for cloud backups) until a successful license check is completed.
If the agent connects to the license server but does not find the acquired license, it tries to acquire
another license. If no license is available, the agent stops doing backups (except for cloud backups)
until a license is successfully acquired.
By default, the agent tries to connect to the license server every day and keeps working without a
license server for 30 days.
1.4.1 How many licenses do I need?
Assume that your company network includes a server and five workstations running Windows. All
the machines are backed up by the administrator who prefers setting up and monitoring backups
from a single place. Therefore, you consider licenses for Acronis Backup Advanced. The cost of a
license for a workstation is less than for a server.
To protect all the machines, you need:
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Five Acronis Backup Advanced for PC licenses
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One Acronis Backup Advanced for Windows Server license.
1.4.2 Licensing for virtual machines
The licenses for virtual environments enable backing up a physical host and an unlimited number of
hosted virtual machines.
You can install the product into the guest systems, back them up from the host, or combine both
methods. Any Acronis Backup agent, including Agent for Exchange, Agent for SQL, and Agent for
Active Directory, can be installed without additional licenses.
For a VMware vSphere or Microsoft Hyper-V cluster, you need as many licenses as there are nodes in
the cluster.
The following table enables you to define which license is required for your virtualization platform.
License name Virtualization platform
Acronis Backup Advanced for VMware Any supported platform developed by VMware (ESX,
ESXi, VMware Workstation, VMware ACE)*
Acronis Backup Advanced for Hyper-V Any supported platform developed by Microsoft
(Hyper-V, Windows Virtual PC)*
Acronis Backup Advanced for RHEV Red Hat Enterprise Virtualization
Kernel-based Virtual Machines (KVM)
Acronis Backup Advanced for Citrix XenServer Citrix XenServer