Acronis Cyber Files and Files Connect End of Life: MSP Guide

Acronis Cyber Files and Files Connect End of Life: An MSP Replacement Guide

Acronis Cyber Files and Acronis Files Connect reached end of life on 31 December 2025. Extended support is available until 31 December 2026, so MSPs are working to a defined window rather than an open-ended one.

If you manage either product for customers, three actions matter now: inventory every affected environment, evaluate replacement platforms against your own managed-service model, and run a pilot migration with one representative customer before committing to a wider plan.

What has Acronis announced?

Acronis has published lifecycle dates for two specific products.

Source: Acronis Cyber Files and Acronis Files Connect End of Life.

Both products were sold under earlier names. Acronis Cyber Files was previously Acronis Files Advanced, and Acronis Files Connect was previously ExtremeZ-IP. Those names still appear in customer documentation, purchase records and installed deployments, so an environment described as Files Advanced or ExtremeZ-IP falls under the same notice.

One notice covers both products, but they may perform different roles in a customer environment, so treat each as its own migration scenario. This article deals with the file- sharing and managed-service side: multi-customer administration, commercial control, deployment choice and migration tooling. RushFiles can be evaluated against those requirements, including where you are scoping an Acronis Files Advanced replacement. Product-specific access, client and protocol requirements should be checked separately during discovery.

The notice applies to these two products, not the wider Acronis portfolio. Licensing terms, renewal dates and support entitlements vary between contracts, so confirm each affected customer's position directly with Acronis before building a schedule around it.

What should MSPs do before extended support ends?

Many MSPs are planning several migrations rather than one, because each environment was configured for a different business. One may run a flat structure with a few external collaborators, another may have department-level permissions, mapped drives and strict data location requirements.

That variation is why the inventory comes before the platform decision. Work through five areas for every affected customer.

Users and roles

Record every active account, the role it holds, whether the user is internal or external, and which accounts hold administrative rights. Note dormant accounts that need not be migrated.

Shares and permissions

List each share, its purpose and who holds read, write or ownership rights, including permissions granted as one-off exceptions that may not appear in documentation.

Folder structure and data

Capture the top-level structure, data volume, largest folders and any paths referenced by other systems, scripts or shortcuts.

Separation and ownership of customer environments

Confirm how each customer is separated today, who owns the tenancy, and where administrative boundaries sit between your team and the customer's IT staff.

Deployment and hosting requirements

Record data residency requirements, any commitment to on-premise or private hosting, and any customer policy limiting where data can be stored.

The inventory then drives three decisions: which platform fits, which customer makes the best pilot, and what the migration test plan contains.

Planning several customer environments? Download the Acronis File Sync & Share Replacement Planning Workbook.

Moving the files is only part of the migration

Copying data is often the predictable part of an MSP file sharing migration. Problems often appear in everything surrounding the transfer.

Incorrect role mapping can create immediate access and administration problems, from external collaborators holding internal privileges to administrative rights sitting with more accounts than the customer intended.

Flattened permission logic causes trouble in two directions: files once restricted to one department become visible more widely, or staff lose access to folders they use daily.

Changed folder structures break links, shortcuts and saved paths, which can make the new platform feel harder to use.

Customer assignment and separation should be validated during the pilot, particularly when several environments are being prepared in parallel. A missed deployment requirement can also place a customer with a data residency obligation in the wrong location.

Define acceptance criteria before the pilot starts. A practical set covers: every intended user logs in with the correct role, a sample of shares shows the same access rights as the source system, folder structure matches the agreed target, users and shares sit in the correct customer environment, and the customer's testers confirm daily tasks work.

What should an MSP look for in an Acronis file-sharing replacement?

Set the criteria before you look at products. For an Acronis file sharing replacement in a managed-service context, five points are worth agreeing first.

Multi-customer management. Administer separate customer environments from one platform rather than each in isolation.

Control of service packaging and the customer relationship. Define the service, set retail pricing, handle billing and remain the party the customer deals with.

Deployment choice. Some customers accept SaaS. For others, on-premise may be the only workable option.

Migration tooling. Bulk user creation and structured data upload can reduce manual migration work and should be evaluated alongside the platform's features.

Ability to test a representative pilot. Prove the model on one real environment first.

Why consider RushFiles as the replacement platform?

RushFiles is worth evaluating if you want file sharing to stay inside your own managed-service model rather than becoming something your customer buys elsewhere.

It lets MSPs create and manage separate customer environments from one reseller platform, with the MSP controlling service packaging, retail pricing, billing and the customer relationship. RushFiles runs as SaaS or on-premise, which matters when customers in the same portfolio have different hosting requirements.

For user migration, CSV import supports importing users in bulk, creating users with Admin, Internal or External roles, defining whether users can create shares, creating private shares during import, and importing users into a specific company.

For data migration, the bulk upload tool works from a share-based folder structure. It matches folders to shares, creates shares that do not already exist, keeps the folder structure intact, and controls overwrite behaviour for remote, local or newer files. RushFiles does not claim automatic feature parity with every Acronis configuration. Each environment should be assessed on its own feature, access and deployment requirements, and configuration work is to be expected. More detail is on the Acronis file sync and share replacement page and on file sharing as a managed service.

Start with one customer environment

If you are still mapping which customers are affected, start with the Acronis File Sync & Share Replacement Planning Workbook.

If you already have a specific Acronis Cyber Files or Files Connect environment in mind, request a migration-planning call to assess it as a potential pilot.