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Acronis, Inc.
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media@acronis.com.sg Original article on Let's Talk Computers website
Listen to Acronis, Inc.'s May 13th, 2006 interview using:
Restoring Backups on Dissimilar Hardware
Complete Transcript of Stephen Lawton — Acronis Interview on Let's Talk Computers May 13th 2006Alan: Your workstation motherboard just failed, and you have to get this computer up and running just as soon as possible. But this could be a really big problem. Our guest today is Stephen Lawton, Director of Marketing with Acronis. And welcome back to LET'S TALK COMPUTERS, Stephen. Steve: Thank you so much. It's great to be back. Alan: If you a hard drive that fails and you just have to restore it just like it was, that's easy. But say, the motherboard goes out and you have to buy another motherboard or you have to bring in a whole new computer from scratch, that is a big problem, isn't it? Steve: Windows does not like moving from one machine to another. The operating system believes that it could be an illegal installation. So, moving from one hardware platform to one motherboard, one nic, video card to another set, can be a real pain. Alan: Because everything is being stored in the Registry that Microsoft has developed, just has all this information if you don't get it exactly right, even if you move everything over from one computer to the other computer, especially with XP or Windows 2000, it starts to boot and you get this wonderful "Blue Screen of Death". If you've ever had this "Blue Screen of Death", you know why they call it that, because at that point there's not a whole lot you can do, is there? Steve: There really isn't a lot that you can do with that. Microsoft is not very forgiving when you move to new hardware. It's really critical that you have a plan, a policy in place before this kind of a disaster strikes, (that you have a way of moving you data, your operating system, all your programs from one physical machine to another). Alan: If you've been using the new Acronis True Image 9.1 Workstation, you won't have to worry about this any more. Steve: We have an option that you can add to the workstation product called, Acronis Universal Restore. This is a $29.99 option that allows you restore your image to dissimilar hardware. What's different about the way we do it and the way some other companies do it is that you can add this option at any time. Even if you've made a purchase of Acronis True Image workstation, without buying the Universal Restore, if you have a system failure and you need to move to the system, you can add that later. Some of the competitor products require that you have their version of Universal Restore already in the image, so if you lose an image with their product and you don't have their version of Universal Restore, you image is basically worthless. You can't restore it at all. Alan: Speaking about restoring images on System Restore, people think that, "If I have a Windows XP, because it has a System Restore, it's going to work just the same way. I can just move it over to another machine and restore it." I can't do that, can I? Steve: No, you can't System Restore will assume that it's got the same hardware. And when it finds different hardware, the initial response from the software is that this is an illegal copy of the software and it won't run. Sandra: So, if this is the whole premise, you never know what kind of system — because they're not going to be identical, are they? Steve: You might buy multiple systems with the exact same model number the exact same time from a system hardware manufacturer. You might buy five systems. They could very easily have different hardware on the inside. And moving from one machine to another is almost the same as moving from one vendor's machine to a different vendor's machine. Alan: People have the misconception that if it's the same model number and it's like consecutive serial numbers, they're going to be identical inside. I used to work for an electronic place that built TV sets. As these sets are going down the line, the serial number is put on way back, stamped on the chassis and as it's going down the line they may run out of certain key components and they have to pull these off and it may be months before they get those components back again. Steve: It's the same way with computers, you might have different network cards, different video cards; your motherboard, itself might be different. Because vendors do change motherboards as technologies change as they get better deals. Alan: It gets even worse because even though it could be the identical motherboard, it could have different bios upgrades. It could have different drivers for the cards. It could have a video card that has a different ROM upgrade in it. Steve: And when it comes to the average consumer, they don't want to know this detail. All they want to know is, "How can I get my machine up and running as quickly as possible with the least of downtown?" Alan: I think you hit the nail on right on the head. People think that, "as long as I'm backing up my machine and using some reputable company's backup software, everything's going to be fine. As far as I'm concerned, it's how long it's going to take me to 'get up and running' after I have a system crash? If I have to reinstall the operating system and then put on the backup software, that's going to take a long time", and I don't want to do it that way. Steve: At Acronis, we look at backup a little differently than a lot of other companies do. People talk about having backup strategies. Virtually every company has some type of backup strategy. We're more concerned, not with the backup, but with the restore. How long does it take for me to have a working machine? That's the key. We think that that's something that every IT manager can relate to. It's not the backup; it's the restore. From that perspective we look at restoring your data, restoring your operating system, restoring your programs, all of your configuration files. That's the number one concern. We have two ways of allowing users to restore very, very quickly. One is with having the Universal Restore capability. The Universal Restore is only available with our corporate products. The Acronis True Image Workstation, and Acronis True Image Server Product. It is not available with Acronis True Image Home. That's an important distinction. Although the price difference between the Acronis True Image Home and Workstation is very minimal. By having this Universal Restore capability, you can bring that image to any other hardware. The other way we can do it is we now have the ability in Acronis True Image Workstation to edit the image. And this is a little different. Because if you're going to be taking this image and restoring it to different hardware, one of the ways we allow you to do that, you can mount your image as a virtual disk and let's say you only know what hardware you're going to, you can add the drivers in that new hardware into the image. When you save the image the new information is actually saved as an incremental image. You restore it to the new hardware; you're restoring the new drivers, along with the old image. Alan: This is something you don't see in other backup software. I think you're of the first ones that do that. Steve: Frankly, I don't know anybody that does that. It gives you a way of adding information to an image before you're actually restoring the image to the new hardware. Alan: As an IT Professional, it would be a nightmare. They would have to restore a computer system and find out that hardware is going to be changed, be a different controller card, different disk drives, different motherboard, different video card, any of those are going to trip up restoring and it's so important to get this machine running just as soon as possible. Steve: There are different reasons why you might be restoring to different hardware. Let's say it is a natural disaster. You're restoring this server to a remove site. You don't know what hardware's over there. In a case like that the Universal Restore is the ideal way of restoring the system. But, if you're moving from one system to another within a company and the IT Department has the ability to add the new drivers beforehand, that's just one less step they have to do later. We don't think restoring the data is the primary need. What makes this easiest for the IT Manager? In this case, putting drivers into an incremental image makes it easier to restore even workstations or a server. Alan: When you're backing up a computer system, a computer system consists of the operating system; it consists of the data and the operating system, you probably want to back up that drive completely all the time. But data, you don't want to have to back it up, back it up, it's a whole lot easier if you do something like incremental that means just backing up what changes. Steve: There are different ways .of looking at backing up data. You may want to back up data with an incremental and let's see, do your main backup on Sunday. On Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday you might do incremental images, but on Thursday you might say, "Look, I don't want to manage a lot of incremental images. I'll make a differential backup. By that way you're baking up all the changes that have been made since you left full backup. And you can use combinations of incremental and differential backups to have different restore to points. It's easier to manage; you can go back to any date and restore your changes to a certain point in time. For an IT Manager in a company or the home user who has a home business, being able to go back to a point and time is critical. And being able to manage how many backups you're dealing with is really important, as well. You set policies and you can even set the policies directly in the software to automatically do incremental on certain dates and differentials on other dates. Alan: The other thing that is so important when you're backing up your computer system is, not having to shut down your computer system to back up your computer system. Steve: If you have to boot out to DOS and be unproductive, that just adds to profits. You can't do that. Think of a company that has 2,080 employees. That's a magic number, 2080. If they have to stop their work for one hour a week, then there are 2080 working hours per person, per year. That means that you are actually losing 52 man-years of work if your employees are not productive for one hour a week. That is an enormous amount of money. Alan: Sure, it is. You're talking backup strategy; you're looking at return of investment. Every minute that you're down is going to be costly. And talking about getting back up as fast as possible, you actually have a boot image. We build a CD with our actual backup and we plug this in and it boots us up and restores, all in one operation. Steve: Indeed, so. While, you can boot directly from the image, that's also new in the current version. That's called the Acronis Map Restore capability. You don't have to worry about having extra boot disks around. A lot of other companies require that you have a boot disk so you can get to your image. Gee, that's just one more thing that I have to remember, but if my image can boot itself and restore itself, that's outstanding. Sometimes, you might be restoring an image, but there might other work being done over a network. Let's say you have an image that's on a network drive and you're restoring over the network, you might have some priority work being done on that network. We also give you the ability to pre-determine how much CPU cycle, how much network bandwidth, literally how much disk time is spent restoring the image vs. the other work that's being done on the network. So, you have a more critical application running over your network, your image will not take the cycles away, (the network bandwidth) away from that priority application. Alan: And it's so important to make sure that you're backing up everything. Acronis True Image 9.1 Workstation will back up Windows 98, Windows NT, Windows 2000, Windows Me, XP, and also the 64 Edition, right? Steve: We now have the ability to back up 64 Bit Windows, creating either an image or file based. That is again, something that is becoming more important for when you think about future proofing you environment. And this is particularly true with financial institutions. This is the future for Windows, as we now have that support today. Alan: What are we looking at as far as the price of the Acronis True Image 9.1 Workstation? Steve: Acronis True Image 9.1 Workstation has a list price of $79.99. The Universal Restore option is an additional $29.99. Alan: Steve, if somebody's like to find out some more information about your new 9.1 Workstation, where would they go? Steve: They can visit us at www.acronis.com. Alan: Steve, I want to thank you for being our guest on LET'S TALK COMPUTERS and talking about your new Acronis True Image 9.1 Workstation and hope to have you back on the air again, talking about your Acronis True Image 9.1 Enterprise Server, real soon. Steve: Looking forward to it. Thank you very much for having me.
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