Acronis Certified Engineer (ACE) — Questions and Answers

Question 1: What is the primary objective of data protection in Acronis solutions?

Limit backup to local storage only
Ensure secure backup and recovery (Correct answer)
Allow users to overwrite files freely
Delete old backups automatically

Correct answer: Ensure secure backup and recovery

The primary objective of data protection in Acronis solutions is to ensure secure backup and recovery of critical data and systems. This encompasses not only creating copies of data but also protecting them from threats, ensuring their integrity, and enabling fast, reliable restoration in any disaster scenario. It aims for business continuity and data availability, minimizing downtime and data loss.

Question 2: What is the significance of FIPS 140-2 compliance in an Acronis deployment for US government environments?

It certifies the cryptographic modules meet US federal security standards required for sensitive data (Correct answer)
It disables all encryption features to comply with export controls
It enables Acronis to use NSA-approved compression only
It means Acronis can back up government systems without a license

Correct answer: It certifies the cryptographic modules meet US federal security standards required for sensitive data

FIPS 140-2 certification means Acronis's cryptographic modules have been validated to meet US federal standards, which is often mandatory for handling government sensitive data.

Question 3: What is the role of a self-signed certificate in a standalone Acronis Management Server deployment?

It is not supported; only CA-signed certificates work
It provides stronger encryption than CA-issued certificates
It is used only for agent-to-agent communication
It authenticates the server locally without requiring an external certificate authority (Correct answer)

Correct answer: It authenticates the server locally without requiring an external certificate authority

Self-signed certificates allow a standalone Acronis server to authenticate itself locally without a third-party CA, though browsers will show warnings since it's not trusted by default.

Question 4: A VMware backup fails with 'snapshot consolidation error.' What is the most likely root cause?

The VM has no network adapter configured
Residual snapshot files left from a previous failed backup causing delta disk chain issues (Correct answer)
CBT is not supported on this version of ESXi
Acronis quota exceeded on the backup storage

Correct answer: Residual snapshot files left from a previous failed backup causing delta disk chain issues

Leftover delta VMDK files from a prior failed snapshot cause consolidation errors when Acronis attempts to take a new snapshot.

Question 5: Which Acronis Cyber Protect feature continuously tracks changes at the block level and captures them more frequently than scheduled backups to minimize data loss?

Continuous Data Protection (CDP) (Correct answer)
Incremental backup
Always-on backup
Differential backup

Correct answer: Continuous Data Protection (CDP)

Continuous Data Protection (CDP) captures every write to protected volumes in near real-time, reducing RPO to seconds.

Question 6: After bare metal recovery with Acronis to dissimilar hardware, a Windows system requires re-activation. What is the most likely cause?

Windows activation detected significant hardware changes and requires re-validation of the license (Correct answer)
The Acronis bootable media version was incompatible with the backup format used
Universal Restore was not enabled during the recovery, corrupting the activation data
The backup was created using an expired Acronis Cyber Protect license

Correct answer: Windows activation detected significant hardware changes and requires re-validation of the license

Windows ties product activation to a hardware fingerprint; restoring to significantly different hardware causes Windows to detect the change and require re-activation against Microsoft's servers.

Question 7: What does the Acronis Network Discovery feature do?

Monitors real-time bandwidth consumption
Automatically discovers unprotected machines on the network (Correct answer)
Scans machines for open vulnerabilities
Maps all active firewall rules

Correct answer: Automatically discovers unprotected machines on the network

Acronis Network Discovery scans the local network to automatically find machines that are not yet covered by a protection plan.

Question 8: What is a fundamental principle of Monitoring & Alert Configuration in Acronis Certified Engineer?

Using outdated methods
Working without guidance
Ignoring guidelines
Following established standards and best practices (Correct answer)

Correct answer: Following established standards and best practices

Following established standards ensures quality and consistency in Monitoring & Alert Configuration.

Question 9: What is a fundamental principle of Security & Encryption Protocols in Acronis Certified Engineer?

Working without guidance
Following established standards and best practices (Correct answer)
Ignoring guidelines
Using outdated methods

Correct answer: Following established standards and best practices

Following established standards ensures quality and consistency in Security & Encryption Protocols.

Question 10: An Acronis administrator wants to integrate Acronis Cyber Protect with Microsoft Azure AD for single sign-on. Which configuration section in the web console is used?

Settings > Notifications > Identity Providers
Settings > Users > SSO
Settings > Acronis Agents > Federation
Settings > Security > SAML Configuration (Correct answer)

Correct answer: Settings > Security > SAML Configuration

SAML-based single sign-on with Azure AD is configured under Settings > Security > SAML Configuration in the Acronis web console.

Question 11: Which port does Acronis Cyber Protect Management Server use by default for HTTPS web console access?

8080
8443
9877 (Correct answer)
443

Correct answer: 9877

The Acronis Cyber Protect Management Server web console listens on port 9877 by default for HTTPS connections.

Question 12: After upgrading Acronis Backup Agent, backups to a NAS destination begin failing with 'access denied' errors that did not occur before. What is the most likely cause?

The NAS share permissions do not support the new SMB version negotiated by the agent
The NAS firmware is incompatible with the new agent version
The backup plan schedule was corrupted during the upgrade process
The agent service account credentials were reset to defaults during upgrade (Correct answer)

Correct answer: The agent service account credentials were reset to defaults during upgrade

Upgrades can reset the Acronis Agent service account back to the Local System account, losing access to network shares that required specific domain credentials.

Question 13: During Acronis bare metal recovery, if the target hard drive is larger than the source drive, what option does Acronis provide?

A partition alignment error occurs that must be corrected manually after recovery
The restoration fails and requires source and target drives to be identical in size
Acronis offers to proportionally resize partitions to fill the larger disk or retain original sizes (Correct answer)
Only the used sectors are restored and the remaining capacity becomes permanently inaccessible

Correct answer: Acronis offers to proportionally resize partitions to fill the larger disk or retain original sizes

When the target disk is larger, Acronis allows proportional resizing of partitions to utilize all available space, or restoring at original sizes while leaving the remaining disk space unallocated.

Question 14: An Acronis backup plan uses AES-256 encryption with a password. A brute-force attack is attempted on the archive. Approximately how many possible AES-256 key combinations exist?

2^256 (approximately 1.16 × 10^77) (Correct answer)
2^128 (approximately 3.4 × 10^38)
2^512 (approximately 1.34 × 10^154)
2^64 (approximately 1.8 × 10^19)

Correct answer: 2^256 (approximately 1.16 × 10^77)

AES-256 has a keyspace of 2^256 possible combinations, making brute-force attacks computationally infeasible with any foreseeable technology.

Question 15: A healthcare organization using Acronis Cyber Protect must comply with HIPAA's security rule. Which encryption configuration best satisfies HIPAA requirements for backup data?

File-level password protection without full archive encryption
AES-128 with a shared group password known to all IT staff
AES-256 encryption with individual access-controlled keys and documented key management procedures (Correct answer)
No encryption required if storage is physically secured in a HIPAA-compliant data center

Correct answer: AES-256 encryption with individual access-controlled keys and documented key management procedures

HIPAA requires appropriate technical safeguards for ePHI; AES-256 with access-controlled keys and documented key management procedures satisfies encryption addressable specifications and audit trail requirements.

Question 16: Which network component in Acronis Cyber Protect acts as the transport layer for moving VM backup data from an ESXi host to remote cloud or tape storage?

Acronis Storage Node
Acronis Backup Gateway
Acronis Agent for VMware (Virtual Appliance) (Correct answer)
Acronis Management Server

Correct answer: Acronis Agent for VMware (Virtual Appliance)

The Acronis Agent for VMware deployed as a Virtual Appliance (VA) on the ESXi host handles data transport from the host to backup destinations.

Question 17: Which Acronis Cyber Protect feature scans backup images for malware before restoration to prevent reinfecting systems during recovery?

Vulnerability assessment
Backup validation
Forensic backup
Safe Recovery (Correct answer)

Correct answer: Safe Recovery

Safe Recovery in Acronis scans backup images with an anti-malware engine before restoring them, ensuring a clean recovery point is used.

Question 18: When Acronis Cyber Protect performs a cloud VM recovery to AWS, what format is the backup image converted to for compatibility?

VHD (Virtual Hard Disk)
AMI (Amazon Machine Image) (Correct answer)
VMDK (VMware virtual disk)
ISO (optical disk image)

Correct answer: AMI (Amazon Machine Image)

Acronis converts the backup image into an AMI (Amazon Machine Image) format compatible with AWS EC2 for cloud recovery.

Question 19: Which protocol does Acronis use for secure data transfer between agents and the cloud?

TLS/SSL (Correct answer)
FTP
HTTP
SFTP

Correct answer: TLS/SSL

Acronis uses TLS/SSL encryption to secure all data transfer between agents and cloud infrastructure.

Question 20: Which Acronis security protocol prevents a backup agent from being spoofed by a rogue server on the same network segment?

Certificate pinning — agents validate the management server certificate fingerprint against a stored expected value (Correct answer)
IP whitelisting of the management server address
Requiring the agent to re-enter its registration key hourly
AES-256 encryption of backup payloads

Correct answer: Certificate pinning — agents validate the management server certificate fingerprint against a stored expected value

Certificate pinning ensures that even if a rogue server presents a valid-looking certificate, the agent rejects it unless the fingerprint matches the pinned expected value from initial trusted registration.

Question 21: When configuring Acronis agents in a high-availability cluster, what network requirement is most critical?

IPv6 must be disabled on all nodes
All nodes must share the same MAC address
All cluster nodes must have consistent access to the management server and backup storage (Correct answer)
Each node must reside on a unique subnet

Correct answer: All cluster nodes must have consistent access to the management server and backup storage

High-availability clusters require every node to have consistent network access to both the management server and backup storage so failover operates seamlessly.

Question 22: Which skill is most important for Compliance & Licensing Requirements in Acronis Certified Engineer?

Avoiding feedback
Resisting change
Continuous learning and adaptation (Correct answer)
Working without training

Correct answer: Continuous learning and adaptation

Continuous learning ensures professionals stay current.

Question 23: What is Acronis Startup Recovery Manager (ASRM) and what problem does it solve?

An API endpoint for automating recovery workflow integrations
A monitoring daemon that validates backup health on a schedule
A cloud service that schedules recovery tasks remotely
A bootable component in the MBR that enables recovery at startup without external media (Correct answer)

Correct answer: A bootable component in the MBR that enables recovery at startup without external media

Acronis Startup Recovery Manager installs a bootable recovery environment in the MBR or system partition, allowing recovery mode to be launched at startup without a separate USB drive or disc.

Question 24: Which Acronis Cyber Protect feature can automatically start a backup when a user logs off a workstation?

Session backup
Event-based scheduling (Correct answer)
Logoff trigger
User-initiated backup

Correct answer: Event-based scheduling

Event-based scheduling in Acronis allows backups to be triggered by system events such as user logoff.

Question 25: A client's end users need to perform self-service file restores using Acronis. What feature should the ACE train them on?

The Acronis Management Console administrator panel
Acronis Self-Service Portal, which allows users to restore their own files without IT intervention (Correct answer)
The Acronis Backup command-line interface
The Acronis Bootable Media Creator

Correct answer: Acronis Self-Service Portal, which allows users to restore their own files without IT intervention

The Acronis Self-Service Portal empowers end users to restore their own files, reducing the burden on IT administrators.

Question 26: What is the recommended firewall rule for Acronis agents communicating with Acronis Cyber Cloud?

Allow only inbound port 80
Block all UDP traffic
Open all inbound ports
Allow outbound HTTPS port 443 (Correct answer)

Correct answer: Allow outbound HTTPS port 443

Acronis agents initiate outbound connections and require outbound HTTPS port 443 to communicate with Acronis Cyber Cloud services.

Question 27: A company requires that all backup encryption keys be centrally managed and rotated quarterly. Which Acronis capability supports this requirement?

Integration with external key management systems (KMS) or use of Acronis' built-in key management (Correct answer)
Encryption keys are embedded in each archive and cannot be rotated without full re-backup
Only the end-user device can manage its own encryption keys in Acronis
Acronis manages all encryption keys automatically in the management server database

Correct answer: Integration with external key management systems (KMS) or use of Acronis' built-in key management

Acronis supports integration with external KMS solutions and has built-in key management capabilities allowing centralized control and rotation of encryption keys per compliance requirements.

Question 28: What type of Acronis report helps administrators analyze backup job success rates over a defined period?

Backup statistics report (Correct answer)
Network topology report
User access history report
Hardware inventory report

Correct answer: Backup statistics report

The Acronis backup statistics report displays job success rates, failure counts, and trends over a configurable time period.

Question 29: In Acronis, what is the primary purpose of bootable media created with Acronis Media Builder?

To sync backup plans across multiple machines
To run backups on live systems
To deploy Acronis agents remotely
To perform bare-metal restore on systems that cannot boot (Correct answer)

Correct answer: To perform bare-metal restore on systems that cannot boot

Bootable media allows you to recover a system from a backup even when the OS is unbootable, enabling bare-metal restore scenarios.

Question 30: What protocol do Acronis agents use to register with the management server?

SNMP
FTP
Telnet
HTTPS REST API (Correct answer)

Correct answer: HTTPS REST API

Acronis agents register with the management server using HTTPS REST API calls, ensuring secure and standardized communication.

Question 31: How does collaboration enhance Security & Encryption Protocols in Acronis Certified Engineer?

Brings diverse perspectives and improves outcomes (Correct answer)
Reduces accountability
Creates meetings
Slows process

Correct answer: Brings diverse perspectives and improves outcomes

Collaboration brings together different viewpoints leading to better outcomes.

Question 32: In Acronis Cyber Protect, what is the recommended approach for backing up encryption keys themselves to prevent loss?

Rely on Acronis Support to recover keys using master decryption credentials
Maintain a separate secure, offline record of encryption passwords independent of the Acronis system (Correct answer)
Store the key in Active Directory and let Acronis retrieve it automatically when needed
Store them in the same encrypted backup archive they protect

Correct answer: Maintain a separate secure, offline record of encryption passwords independent of the Acronis system

Encryption passwords must be stored separately from the backups they protect — a secure offline record (such as a password manager or printed secure storage) is the recommended approach.

Question 33: In Acronis Cyber Protect, what happens to recovery points when a retention rule is triggered during a backup job?

Old recovery points are immediately deleted before the new backup starts
The new backup is created first, then outdated recovery points are cleaned up afterward (Correct answer)
Outdated recovery points are archived to tape before deletion
The backup job pauses and waits for administrator approval to delete old recovery points

Correct answer: The new backup is created first, then outdated recovery points are cleaned up afterward

Acronis applies the cleanup AFTER the new backup completes successfully, ensuring there is always at least one valid recovery point available even during the cleanup process.

Question 34: When an administrator runs a 'test failover' in Acronis Disaster Recovery, what happens to the production environment?

A snapshot is taken of all production VMs before the test
Production traffic is redirected to the cloud VM temporarily
Production workloads are paused during the test
The test runs in an isolated network so production is unaffected (Correct answer)

Correct answer: The test runs in an isolated network so production is unaffected

Test failover runs in an isolated environment within Acronis Cloud so that production workloads and networks remain completely unaffected.

Question 35: Which method does Acronis use to back up VMware vSphere virtual machines without installing an agent inside each guest VM?

Storage snapshot integration via SAN
Network-based backup using NBD transport only
In-guest agent backup via VMware Tools
Host-level agentless backup using vSphere APIs (VADP) (Correct answer)

Correct answer: Host-level agentless backup using vSphere APIs (VADP)

Acronis uses VMware vSphere Storage APIs for Data Protection (VADP) to perform agentless backups at the hypervisor level without agents inside guest VMs.

Question 36: What is the primary purpose of Acronis Active Protection?

Enhance video streaming capabilities
Improve website loading speeds
Provide cloud-based accounting tools
Detect and prevent ransomware attacks (Correct answer)

Correct answer: Detect and prevent ransomware attacks

The primary purpose of Acronis Active Protection is to detect and prevent ransomware attacks in real-time. It uses behavioral heuristics and artificial intelligence to identify and block malicious encryption attempts, protecting data and systems from damage. This proactive defense is crucial for maintaining data availability and integrity against evolving cyber threats.

Question 37: In Acronis Cyber Protect, which recovery time objective (RTO) scenario is best served by running a backup image directly as a virtual machine without full restoration?

Granular restore
Bare metal restore
File-level recovery
Instant restore (runVM) (Correct answer)

Correct answer: Instant restore (runVM)

Instant restore (runVM) lets you boot the backup image as a VM immediately, achieving near-zero RTO while full restoration completes in the background.

Question 38: What is a best practice for disaster recovery planning?

Rely only on RAID storage solutions
Use the 3-2-1 backup strategy (Correct answer)
Store all backups on a single local drive
Disable automated backup scheduling

Correct answer: Use the 3-2-1 backup strategy

A best practice for disaster recovery planning is to implement the 3-2-1 backup strategy. This involves keeping at least three copies of your data, storing them on two different types of media, and keeping one copy off-site. This strategy significantly increases data resilience and ensures recoverability even in severe disaster scenarios, providing multiple layers of protection.

Question 39: Which Acronis feature enables automatic scheduled delivery of reports to stakeholders via email?

Notification Relay
Report Scheduler (Correct answer)
Email Gateway
Alert Dispatcher

Correct answer: Report Scheduler

The Acronis Report Scheduler allows administrators to configure reports to be automatically generated and emailed to designated recipients on a defined schedule.

Question 40: A client's non-technical executive asks 'Why do we need Acronis if we already have Windows Server Backup?' What is the BEST response?

Explain that they are required by law to use Acronis
Tell them to consult their IT team and end the conversation
Explain that Acronis provides faster recovery, centralized management, cloud storage, cybersecurity integration, and granular reporting that Windows Server Backup lacks (Correct answer)
Agree that Windows Server Backup is sufficient for most needs

Correct answer: Explain that Acronis provides faster recovery, centralized management, cloud storage, cybersecurity integration, and granular reporting that Windows Server Backup lacks

Acronis offers capabilities far beyond Windows Server Backup including centralized management, cloud storage, integrated anti-malware, and advanced reporting.

Acronis Certified Engineer (ACE)

The ACE certification validates proficiency in deploying and managing Acronis backup, disaster recovery, security, and cloud solutions. It tests hands-on skills across backup operations, bare metal recovery, encryption, compliance, and audit reporting.

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