ACE Virtual Environment Protection 3 — Questions and Answers
Question 1: When deploying Acronis Agent for VMware as a Virtual Appliance, which protocol does it use to communicate with the ESXi host for VM data access?
- NFS over TCP/IP
- VMware VADP via NBDSSL or SAN/HotAdd transport (Correct answer)
- iSCSI direct to the VM disk
- SMB 3.0 over the management network
Correct answer: VMware VADP via NBDSSL or SAN/HotAdd transport
The Acronis VA uses VADP with transport modes including NBDSSL (encrypted network), SAN, or HotAdd depending on the storage configuration.
Question 2: An administrator wants to protect 50 VMs across two VMware clusters with Acronis. What is the recommended deployment to ensure both clusters are covered?
- Install one Acronis Agent for VMware VA and point it to both vCenter clusters
- Deploy one VA per cluster so each VA has direct HotAdd data access to local storage (Correct answer)
- Install an in-guest agent in every VM
- Use one Windows-based Acronis agent on a physical server
Correct answer: Deploy one VA per cluster so each VA has direct HotAdd data access to local storage
Deploying one VA per cluster ensures HotAdd transport is available, which is the fastest and most efficient data path for local datastore access.
Question 3: Which Acronis feature is used to automatically adjust VM backup schedules to avoid peak production hours based on observed load patterns?
- Backup throttling
- Backup scheduling with maintenance windows (Correct answer)
- Active Protection
- Continuous Data Protection (CDP)
Correct answer: Backup scheduling with maintenance windows
Maintenance windows in Acronis backup plans restrict when backups run, preventing resource contention during business-critical periods.
Question 4: A technician needs to restore only a single file from a VMware VM backup without restoring the entire VM. Which Acronis capability enables this?
- Full VM restore
- Granular file recovery from VM backup (Correct answer)
- Bare-metal restore
- Cross-platform migration
Correct answer: Granular file recovery from VM backup
Acronis supports granular file-level recovery from VM backups by mounting the backup archive and browsing the guest file system.
Question 5: In Acronis, what is the 'HotAdd' transport mode benefit compared to NBDSSL when backing up VMware VMs?
- HotAdd encrypts data at the block level
- HotAdd attaches the VM's virtual disks directly to the backup appliance, avoiding network overhead (Correct answer)
- HotAdd compresses data before writing to backup storage
- HotAdd supports only thick-provisioned disks
Correct answer: HotAdd attaches the VM's virtual disks directly to the backup appliance, avoiding network overhead
HotAdd temporarily attaches the source VM's virtual disks to the Acronis VA, enabling direct SCSI reads that bypass network bandwidth constraints.
Question 6: Which Acronis setting controls how many simultaneous VM backup tasks the Acronis Agent for VMware will run concurrently on a single ESXi host?
- Backup window
- Maximum number of simultaneously backed-up VMs (Correct answer)
- Deduplication ratio
- Replication concurrency
Correct answer: Maximum number of simultaneously backed-up VMs
The concurrent VM backup limit setting on the Acronis agent prevents too many simultaneous snapshot operations from overloading the ESXi host.
Question 7: What happens to a VMware VM snapshot created by Acronis after a successful backup job completes?
- It is kept indefinitely for future incremental backups
- It is automatically deleted and the disk is consolidated (Correct answer)
- It is converted to a full backup archive
- It is stored in the Acronis backup vault as a restore point
Correct answer: It is automatically deleted and the disk is consolidated
Acronis removes the temporary VMware snapshot and consolidates the delta disks back into the base VMDK after backup data has been transferred.
ACE Virtual Environment Protection 3
When deploying Acronis Agent for VMware as a Virtual Appliance, which protocol does it use to communicate with the ESXi host for VM data access?