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Has Anyone Gotten Anywhere With The Asm Renewal/v9 Upgrade Mentioned By Robin?


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Just wondering if anyone has heard anything from anyone on this. Email to sales@retrospect.com wasn't responded to, so I'm wondering if anyone is even manning that account. I even emailed Robin directly but got no response other than an out-of-the-office auto-reply. Things seem to be squirrelier and squirrelier here.

Edited by demani
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Just wondering if anyone has heard anything from anyone on this. Email to sales@retrospect.com wasn't responded to, so I'm wondering if anyone is even manning that account. I even emailed Robin directly but got no response other than an out-of-the-office auto-reply. Things seem to be squirrelier and squirrelier here.

 

I called 3 times and left 3 messages :o (1 with support and 2 with sales) and received no call back. I did say in another post I would email support however I did not. Im done with this software as an option in our business for now. I do periodically (1 a year maybe) review any new, updated software, so we will see where were at in a year and if Retrospect is willing to return calls.

 

YMMV, this is just a single persons experience here, and may not have given the new company time to set up I guess. I see others are getting call backs.

 

edit:

I called asking questions about the option Robin mentioned. I have 2 servers and would have to re-purchase 2 server editions so I wanted to ask some questions regarding renewing our ASM which I let run out after the first year (Ver. 8), as I saw there was not much help from support (well no fixes to some issues I - and others - were dealing with)

Edited by cpguru21
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I too was in this situation. I had called and left a message (no response) and e-mailed to sales@retrospect.com and never got a reply. When I finally submitted a web ticket, I got a response in less than a day. After a couple of back-and-forths to submit info about my expired (6 mo ago) I received a new license code for 9 with the 'suggestion' that I renew my ASM. Other than the lack of response to phone and e-mail this has been an ok experience.

 

Also, my experience with 9 is much better than 8.2. Proactive backups (primarily what we do) run much more reliably then they did in 8.2.

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  • 2 weeks later...

Well the good news (and on topic) is that I had no issues with this process.

 

The bad news is that 9.x was a bit of a nightmare for us (worse then 8.2).

 

I had a help ticket open 1262852 which was closed for “no response” even though I did respond the day Retrospect asked me. Their last response included “we do not have another suggestion at this time“ which I guess meant the trouble shooting was over.

 

Anyway as this was “closed” on 01 Dec, we moved forward with the the conversion to PresSTORE and I’m not looking back.

 

For example:

 

Retrospect took some 12 hours to back up 3 machines.

 

PresSTORE did the same machines in 77 minutes.

 

No changed hardware (only the software changed).

 

The only difference was we had reduced what Retrospect backed up to fit in the 12 hr window while the office was “empty”. With PresSTORE I added everything back in to see how much we could get done in the given window!

 

So whereas Retros[ect only backed up the data volumes with the OS volumes left to weekend scripts, PresSTORE backs everything up Boot volumes, data volumes, everything, every night.

 

Yes the interface is different and I need to educate users to swap tapes based on bar codes instead of admittedly easier to read names like “Wednesday 1”, but happy to accept that for markedly improved performance.

 

Will get even better when the library upgrades from LTO3 to LTO5 next month.

 

Good luck to Retrospect, but I’m afraid my 19 year or so use of the product is now at an end.

Edited by Gibsonm
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Well the good news (and on topic) is that I had no issues with this process.

 

The bad news is that 9.x was a bit of a nightmare for us (worse then 8.2).

 

I had a help ticket open 1262852 which was closed for “no response” even though I did respond the day Retrospect asked me. Their last response included “we do not have another suggestion at this time“ which I guess meant the trouble shooting was over.

 

Anyway as this was “closed” on 01 Dec, we moved forward with the the conversion to PresSTORE and I’m not looking back.

 

For example:

 

Retrospect took some 12 hours to back up 3 machines.

 

PresSTORE did the same machines in 77 minutes.

 

No changed hardware (only the software changed).

 

The only difference was we had reduced what Retrospect backed up to fit in the 12 hr window while the office was “empty”. With PresSTORE I added everything back in to see how much we could get done in the given window!

 

So whereas Retros[ect only backed up the data volumes with the OS volumes left to weekend scripts, PresSTORE backs everything up Boot volumes, data volumes, everything, every night.

 

Yes the interface is different and I need to educate users to swap tapes based on bar codes instead of admittedly easier to read names like “Wednesday 1”, but happy to accept that for markedly improved performance.

 

Will get even better when the library upgrades from LTO3 to LTO5 next month.

 

Good luck to Retrospect, but I’m afraid my 19 year or so use of the product is now at an end.

 

One side note- you can make your own bar code labels and leave space at the top for a handwritten real text label. I made several hundred, and they read as well as anything the manufacturers are using, though I admit the permanent vinyl ;labels are not as thick as the ones that came with my autoloader (though definitely more durable than the paper ones that come with the tapes).

 

And I do see incredible slowness when the scanning is going on (20 files per second on a dedicated quad 2.8Ghz machine that is showing tee RetroEngine running 350-380%, and in over an hour only 6GB has been scanned (and ~700k files). Simply unacceptable.

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