scsctech Posted September 14, 2011 Report Share Posted September 14, 2011 (edited) Ive been dealing with the horrible bugginess of retrospect 8 since its inception over at EMC. Since then only 2 updates have been released and this thing still isnt running reliably the way it should. 1. I have dozens of clients that report as unprotected even though they backup (ive tried removing them and recreating them) 2. On a daily basis I have to "check up" on the system to make sure scripts are running (which many times they are stuck) 3. More & more commonly I have found that the disk media sets show up as having no members (repairing & rebuilding only works on occasion) 4. The admin console hangs for minutes at a time while the software chugs along trying to figure out what its next step is. 5. Catalog out of sync errors can be a huge headache too, only being solved by recycling the media set. We have been using retrospect for over 10 years, but I think it may be time to cut ties and move along. Edited September 15, 2011 by SCSC_TECH Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
henry-in-florida Posted September 16, 2011 Report Share Posted September 16, 2011 (edited) Having problems on backup (been there too and feel your pain my friend) is one thing. Just compare that to the fun you'll have if/when you actually need to restore a drive or find a file... You could start another topic on that. Oops! I just started one, FWIW.. Edited September 16, 2011 by henry-in-florida Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
19bd3e5d-4ebe-42bf-94cf-8beab90be175 Posted September 17, 2011 Report Share Posted September 17, 2011 I must admit, I am VERY disappointed in the quality of the software. I was running Retrospect 6 server on an old Xserve G4. But it was getting slow counting up 3,000,000+ files on the document management server. So I figured it's time to upgrade to Retrospect 8 and move everything to a 16 core INTEL processor xserve. It should fly along now - right? WRONG. It's just as slow, if not slower than before. My hardware is 5 times newer. I've gone from G4 to Intel. And yet it's a complete dog of a product. Took me two weeks just to add all the80 odd Mac clients to it. It's appalling. It can't even sort report columns into the right date order. Maybe that's something to do with me being in the UK. But heck, most software can sort by date easily enough. It gets stuck, I have to stop the engine and restart the engine. The server admin client drives me up the wall because it constantly forgets I've added the server, my server is at 192.168.111.251, fire up again and it's changed that to 192.168.1.251. It's really really bad quality software now. I've tried to find one benefit. OK, found one, I can now backup LION clients. That's it. Other than that, it's slower, crashes when version 6 didn't. I guess Roxio bought this software and don't actually have any programmers who really know it. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
f30e6e60-a263-4d69-8f60-c92703669308 Posted September 19, 2011 Report Share Posted September 19, 2011 Having problems on backup (been there too and feel your pain my friend) is one thing. Just compare that to the fun you'll have if/when you actually need to restore a drive or find a file... Happily, this turned out to be a simple case of user error! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
f30e6e60-a263-4d69-8f60-c92703669308 Posted September 19, 2011 Report Share Posted September 19, 2011 I guess Roxio bought this software and don't actually have any programmers who really know it. Actually, the lead programmers for Retrospect 5/6 worked at Dantz when it was sold to EMC, and were there when Retrospect 8 began development. And they were there when EMC sold the product to Sonic, and remained when that company sold the software to Roxio. If you goal is to get some input from other users that might make your experience more acceptable, starting with some descriptions of exactly what you are doing is a good place to start. If you're just venting, that's fine, but it won't do much to help with your backups. my server is at 192.168.111.251, fire up again and it's changed that to 192.168.1.251 Do you have DNS on your LAN? Does your LAN have some sort of routing between those two subnets? What machine are you running the Console application on? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
137491C9E13D8DE1E040000A2A666149 Posted September 23, 2011 Report Share Posted September 23, 2011 It's amazing that this is still an issue. My company bought a new Xserve with RAID, and Retrospect 8.2 A YEAR AGO. We could not get a good backup no matter what we tried and Roxio tech support couldn't fix the problem. Finally I just asked for a copy of version 8.1, which they gave me, and we've had no problems since. There have been no 8.2 updates in a year? Are they working on it at all? Kent Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
f30e6e60-a263-4d69-8f60-c92703669308 Posted September 23, 2011 Report Share Posted September 23, 2011 Are they working on it at all? Yes, they are. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
cf87ab84-c226-4c03-9f9b-e87a74698b95 Posted September 28, 2011 Report Share Posted September 28, 2011 (edited) There have been no 8.2 updates in a year? Are they working on it at all? Yes. Expect an update in "Early July 2011". Seems like that's getting REAL close... Edited September 28, 2011 by fhturner Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
prl Posted September 28, 2011 Report Share Posted September 28, 2011 Yes. Expect an update in "Early July 2011". Seems like that's getting REAL close... Or alternatively, "very soon" after 23 August. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
bioheath Posted September 28, 2011 Report Share Posted September 28, 2011 Yes, they are. I have no doubt that they are. Unfortunately, instead of fixing the bugs as they come up (8.X.1, 8.X.2, 8.X.3, anyone?), the development team's style seems to be to hoard their bug fixes as if they were treasure until they release the next 8.X version of the product. While an 8.X.X release might not take long to churn out, apparently an 8.X release (fixing every bug under the sun) does take a long time. Meanwhile, the day to day users are suffering through it trying to make the best of it all. This doesn't seem to bother the development team. I don't actually expect any 8.2 fixes at all. They will probably move right along to 8.3 (or maybe 9.0 if they need cash) and then start gathering bug reports to fix in the next milestone release (in 2014 or so). Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
137491ABC7D58DE1E040000A2A666149 Posted September 29, 2011 Report Share Posted September 29, 2011 Yes, they are. Then will you please ask them to provide the user community with some status updates, and their best guess as to when we might see a new release? Thanks. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
333feccd-9a8f-41de-b767-7e44c655d720 Posted October 24, 2011 Report Share Posted October 24, 2011 (edited) I find this thread depressing as I REALLY REALLY wanted Retrospect to be usable at the facility I work in. Like many core users, I have used Retrospect on the Mac for many years. I have been a loyal defender. It is frustrating that in a market with very few viable alternatives, it seems to rely on this loyalty. It seems like the frequent change in ownership in recent years has taken it's toll and it is not a product that has been given any development budget or road-map, to fit into today's changing IT enviroments. I for one am finding it very difficult to soldier on with a product that just doesn't work the way I need it too. BTW My number 1 gripe (by far) is performance. For example A terminal RAID-RAID copy running at over 400MB/s through Retrospect can only manage 60MB/s on the same 8-core Mac! WTF !?!? This 60MB/s is also seems to be the threshold of our LTO5. At least it's consistently slow! This problem does not seem to affect Retrospects main competitors - BRU + Prestore. Ironically, the PC Retrospect V7.5-7.7 are flawed, but vastly superior. Go figure Im running Retrospect workgroup 8.2 on Intel 8-core MP with 4Gb fibre + 6Gb SAS. What a waste. Edited October 24, 2011 by mark4 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Kcaldera Posted November 15, 2011 Report Share Posted November 15, 2011 Ive been dealing with the horrible bugginess of retrospect 8 since its inception over at EMC. Since then only 2 updates have been released and this thing still isnt running reliably the way it should. 1. I have dozens of clients that report as unprotected even though they backup (ive tried removing them and recreating them) 2. On a daily basis I have to "check up" on the system to make sure scripts are running (which many times they are stuck) 3. More & more commonly I have found that the disk media sets show up as having no members (repairing & rebuilding only works on occasion) 4. The admin console hangs for minutes at a time while the software chugs along trying to figure out what its next step is. 5. Catalog out of sync errors can be a huge headache too, only being solved by recycling the media set. We have been using retrospect for over 10 years, but I think it may be time to cut ties and move along. I have problems 2,3,4, on a weekly bases, so I too am checking on the backups almost every day. I have found a common list of solutions to "unstick" Retrosuck from those issues... Start by restarting your Retrosuck server... Rebuild and repair your media sets or catalogs... Completely recycle the media set and reboot Retrosuck. Remove and re-add client and reboot Retrosuck again. If all else fails, walk away as it will magically start working in a couple hours, or repeat the above steps the next day. Unfortunately with Retrosuck 9 being out, Retrosuck 8 will be left lame and half dead by the way side. Thousands of dollars spent on a product that never worked, and was never fixed. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
5152babf-1f77-4e2f-9b4b-fd397afed652 Posted November 15, 2011 Report Share Posted November 15, 2011 And yet again Retrospect 8 spent nearly 24 hours grooming and screwing a catalog. So now it'll be another 20 hours or so to rebuild the catalog. If that works, which it may not. If I have to scrap yet another backup, I'll not be remaking it with Retrospect 8. And I will not be buying 9 to maybe fix the features I already paid for. I'll use something else instead. This is my simple setup at home. As for the companies I have running on 8, well, that's going to be harder to find a decent replacement for but I'm not going around this loop any further. As for my rebuild, I'll know when it's finished because I'll start getting error messages about the backups of the single client I have on my system. Network failures or something. At least these are flagged errors and not the deadly silent ones I sometimes discover lurking. Not exactly set it and forget it, is it? It might be interesting to see if 9 gets fixed with updates or if they go straight to a chargeable upgrade to 10 in a few years. Between the proven attitude of the new company and the very disturbing signs over recent years of the products future viability I think the final decision may not be in their hands. This must be it's last chance, shame it's off to such a shaky start. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
twickland Posted November 16, 2011 Report Share Posted November 16, 2011 And I will not be buying 9 to maybe fix the features I already paid for. You might try using the free trial period for Retro 9 to see if the issues have been fixed to your satisfaction. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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