PD11 & Acronis TI 2016 for Mac: not creating snapshots

Hi, I'm trying out a copy of Acronis True Image 2016 for Mac in hopes of creating stateful image backups of my Windows VM. However, it's not creating snapshots for consistency, which is supposed to be the whole point of using Acronis, a Parallels partner. The ATI backup works, it's just not snapshot consistent.
Acronis log shows:

sudo -u admin /usr/local/bin/prlctl snapshot {6c521447-25f2-43b4-b53d-b387d78cabe3} -n "Acronis Snapshot" -d "Acronis Snapshot"
2015-12-02T13:37:43.860 | 3 | 0x000 | 0x0000 | The command is available only in Parallels Desktop for Mac Pro or Business Edition.​

Huh? You're not supposed to need Pro or Business for Acronis snapshot support, it's supposed to work with any Desktop version. Am I doing something wrong?
Thanks

ATI 2016 for Mac build 6038 (latest)
PD 11.1.1 (latest)
Mac OS X 10.11.1 (latest)​

 

Opened Parallels support ticket#: 2209580

 

Parallels support responded that this is out of scope and I must talk to Acronis support.
My response:

Hi,

I believe that is incorrect. Parallels directly advertises within PD11 for Acronis TI and has actual software linkage between the two products (a button within PD11 settings to launch ATI). Since I am asking about compatibility of a Parallels Desktop-specific feature advertised by Parallels, it is indeed within scope of support.

Incidentally, Acronis support just told me:
"this is a known compatibility issue with Parallels Desktop v.11. Issue should be resolved in new update of True Image 2016 for Mac. For now as temporary workaround you can use Parallels Desktop 10."
https://forum.acronis.com/forum/104763#comment-314566

Which means Acronis confirms their product is NOT compatible with Parallels Desktop 11 snapshot-consistency, despite both Parallels and Acronis advertising it as such. You should immediately pull all ads for Acronis and issue a KB with this information. As of now, there is no backup software with snapshot-consistent support for Parallels Desktop 11.

Thank you,
dk​

I have also challenged Acronis support on this and have asked for an ETA.

 

Acronis has confirmed that this is indeed an issue specifically with PD11 because Parallels has inexplicably restricted licensing in v.11 to disallow "prlctl snapshot" command except for Pro and Business edition. This was not the case in PD9 or PD10. That is absurd. Parallels thinks only "pro" users need consistent VM backups? I haven't heard back from Parallels support, but have reached out again. I'm hoping this is just an oversight by the PD product team and they can tweak the license restriction in the next update.

 

Update: So I thought I'd temporarily switch to Carbon Copy Cloner and pause/resume my VM. Inconvenient, but at least I'd have consistent backups. But the same PD11 prlctl licensing restriction also breaks Carbon Copy Cloner pre/post clone scripts, unless you have Pro or Business! This is really ridiculous. It's almost like Parallels purposely is trying to stop us from being able to create proper backups. Why?

 

Update: Trying out PD11 Pro edition and ATI 2016 isn't working with that either, despite all prlctl functions being available. I no longer get an error about incorrect edition, but it never creates a snapshot, so the backup fails. To be fair, Acronis doesn't claim ATI works at all with PD11 any edition (only PD9/10), so I'm awaiting response from them on this.

Similarly, I tried Carbon Copy Cloner's Parallels Desktop pause/start scripts from https://bombich.com/kb/ccc4/performing-actions-before-and-after-backup-task and those don't work for me with PD11 Pro edition either. The scripts seem to work from terminal, but whenever applied to a CCC job, I always get an error "Could not read path: path = /Library/LaunchAgents/com.parallels.vm.prl_pcproxy.plist" even though that file isn't part of PD anymore (it used to be in older versions). I tried recreating the scripts in different ways, using the same concepts, but always get the same error no matter how I call prlctl.

So it seems something has changed with PD11 file structure that is causing problems calling prlctl. Or maybe it's that + El Capitan changes causing path issues for some reason I haven't figured out. (Note I've tried several ways of specifying command paths for CCC scripts, incl creating symlinks, but none has worked yet.)

My temp workaround is I setup an automator job to first run a CCC pause script, then run a manual CCC job, then run a CCC start script. Not ideal, since the stages aren't chained as tightly as built-in CCC, and also since I'd rather a snapshot-based solution than pausing the VM. But at least I have a consistent backup. And of course just to do this hackjob of a backup, I need PD11 Pro edition. Uncool.

I'm going to open a separate thread about the CCC scripts. Maybe someone else is using them with PD11.

 

Update: CCC scripts were failing because they use prctl pause, which doesn't seem to work anymore when the Mac display is asleep. Not sure if that's a PD11 problem or an OS X problem. But changing the scripts to use prlctl suspend is the workaround.

https://forum.parallels.com/threads/pd11-pro-prlctl-pause-doesnt-work-with-display-sleep.336208/

 

Update: CCC prctl pause scripts are working fine now. I fixed my own scripting error. (The console errors I mentioned earlier are irrelevant and can be ignored.) Acronis is still garbage, but CCC works great.