Acronis Report Finds Higher Backup Failure Rates Overnight, Especially on Fridays
Summary
Acronis says analysis of about 960 million backup jobs from H2 2025 found elevated failure rates overnight and on Fridays, especially for full backups at 02:00. It recommends spreading schedules, timing by backup type and improving monitoring.
Key points
- Acronis analyzed approximately 960 million backup job executions from H2 2025, using data center-local time.
- The report identifies Friday 01:00 as the worst hour-day combination, with an 11.12% failure rate; the 02:00–05:00 window averaged 7.01%.
- Full backups at 02:00 had a reported 21.61% failure rate, compared with 3.97% at 06:00.
- Failure rates varied by backup type: custom policies at 14:00 had a 2.61% rate, while always-incremental backups performed best at 16:00, at 5.13%.
- The report says 23:00 was the busiest scheduling hour, averaging 185,693 jobs per day, versus 78,765 at 05:00.
- Off-hours errors were led by SpaceQuotaReachedHard and MemoErrorVssWriterFail; the report characterizes many failures as requiring human intervention.
- Recommendations include spreading jobs across hours, scheduling according to backup type, and monitoring failures during business hours and higher-risk periods.
Article Details
- Publisher
- Acronis
- Report Period
- H2 2025; October 2025 is used for some scheduling statistics
- Scope
- Acronis backup-job failure rates and scheduling patterns, analyzed in data center-local time and by backup type.
- Sample Size
- Approximately 960 million backup job executions; October scheduling averages cover 52,109 tenants.
- Key Statistics
- Across the analyzed H2 2025 telemetry, the 02:00–05:00 window averaged a 7.01% failure rate, compared with 6.59% during 18:00–23:00.
- Full backups at 02:00 had a 21.61% failure rate, compared with 3.97% at 06:00.
- Friday 01:00 was the worst hour-day combination, with an 11.12% failure rate.
- In October 2025, 23:00 averaged 185,693 jobs per day versus 78,765 at 05:00, a 2.4× peak-to-valley ratio.
- Custom policies at 14:00 had a 2.61% failure rate; always_incremental jobs performed best at 16:00 with a 5.13% failure rate.
- Recommendations
- Spread schedules across hours rather than concentrating jobs at default evening times; consider 06:00–16:00 local time where workloads allow.
- Use backup-type-specific schedules: full backups at 06:00 or 13:00–16:00, incremental backups at 16:00, and custom policies at 14:00.
- Provide monitoring during business hours and configure automated alerts for failures during higher-risk overnight windows.
- Treat Friday as the highest-risk day; consider moving non-critical backups off Friday evenings and monitor Friday jobs through Saturday morning.
- Define separate scheduling policies for different backup types rather than applying one schedule to all.