bobbodavis Posted May 24, 2012 Report Share Posted May 24, 2012 This has been requested time and time and time again - but I've never seen a response. If the ideal way to run Retrospect is to combine several computer backups into a single backup set, in order to take advantage of file level "deduplication", having the ability to delete multiple snapshots at one time is a MUST! Has anyone working for Retrosepect ever tried to remove snapshots for an old system that is grouped into a backup set with other computers? It is time consuming, tedious, and quite silly really. Everytime we retire a computer (maybe 2-3 times a week), I have to sift through 30-40 old snapshots and remove them one by one. This is painstaking slow and a real waste of time. It takes 1-2 minutes just to get the confirmation as to whether you really want to delete the snapshot and then another couple of minutes to "forget" the snapshot. I had 120 systems all set to their own backup scripts/sets and it was annoyingly slow to get through the entire list and "catch" all of the systems on a regular basis. But, when a system was removed, I could easily recycle the entire backup set and free up valuable server space. Support mentioned they did not recommend a setup like that though and stated combining systems into backup sets was the proper way to go about it. So I redid the whole thing and now have 12 backup sets with 10 clients each. Unfortunately, every time I replace a client with a new system (hardware refresh) I have to be able to clean out the old snapshots one-by-one to free up the old storage space because Retrospect won't groom them out - it will just hold as many old copies as your grooming policy states. This methodology hardly seems like an enterprise solution and this feature has been requested by numerous people, time and time again. Retrospect, if you're listening, please add this capability in a future (and hopefully near) update. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
bobbodavis Posted May 24, 2012 Author Report Share Posted May 24, 2012 Is there at least a way to have retrospect groom out backups after XX amount of days? You can tell it to groom XX amount of backups, but say you only have 5 backups, but they're 120 days old. Is there anyway to automatically groom everything that's older than 60, 90, 120 or 180 days? That would be a decent alternative to not having the ability to remove multiple snapshots at one time. At least over time, they would eventually groom themselves out. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
bobbodavis Posted June 6, 2012 Author Report Share Posted June 6, 2012 bump - are there any Retrospect admins reading the forums? Any plans to incorporate the ability to delete multiple snapshots at the same time when there are sytems sharing the same backup set? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Mayoff Posted June 7, 2012 Report Share Posted June 7, 2012 deleting multiple shapshots is on the feature list for the future. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
doc.bt Posted November 13, 2012 Report Share Posted November 13, 2012 We are waiting for this feature for many years now and it´s still not implemented in version 8! That's absolutely disappointing!!! 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
sowen222 Posted November 14, 2012 Report Share Posted November 14, 2012 We are waiting for this feature for many years now and it´s still not implemented in version 8! That's absolutely disappointing!!! Totally agree, this is very frustrating. I purchase upgrades in the vain hope that old bugs and long-requested features will finally be resolved, but all we ever seem to get is a marketing release (i.e. we need more money, so let's release the same product with a new major version number and a couple of things that sound cool but are in fact useless). Nobody requested InstantScan (certainly not the way it's implemented, which is as "instant" as an oil company is "green"). The base of this product is good, which is why I stick with it, but why oh why can't they do some major, much-needed improvements? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
dan.jordan Posted August 9, 2013 Report Share Posted August 9, 2013 The last post to this thread is almost a year old but I'll pipe up long enough to say that in the nearly year since then this capability hasn't made it off the feature list. I've been requesting this change for six or eight years (since whenever this thing was owned by EMC). Sowen222, your final sentence has pretty much been my position for years, but how long does a guy have to wait for an appreciable improvement to the basic product in return for the years of renewing the maintenance and support contract? The product has been out of Roxio's hands for, what, three years now, and still no evolution I can discern in the meat and potatoes functionality of this product. Sure, support for virtual is nice, but I'm still stuck without an efficient, practical way to do manual grooming of multiple snapshots in a manner that is sane. Fortunately the boss has approved our getting into Microsoft DPM 2012 (we presently divide backups between DPM 2007 and Retrospect). My eye is on the prize of migrating our Retrospect stuff into the big, new DPM 2012 server we'll soon be acquiring. This particular donkey is about done chasing after the Retrospect carrot. It's a shame, too: the base product is good. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
bobbodavis Posted September 11, 2013 Author Report Share Posted September 11, 2013 I don't understand it either. We ask, and ask, and ask and ask, but are not heard. This seems like a simple fix (maybe not in the actual code) but the implementation should be a standard feature - especially at the latest server license price points. It wasn't there in version 6, not in 7, and now not in 8 (or any of the implementations inbetween) I sure hope it makes the next release - there are a lot of other backup solutions out there these days... I'm just saying. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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