Fresh installs/two diff OS partitions/Retro9 + Retro 6.1

[oslomike]

Hello,

Will this work you think??

 

I am finally getting around to redoing the backup machine here at work and I would like to consolidate my Retrospect 6.1 backup machine and my Retrospect v9 machine all into one machine.

 

Partition 1. Retrospect v6.1 on one partition with Leopard running which will be mostly used for a SONY AIT-2 (firewire interface) and an older Exabyte Mammoth LT drive (SCSI 1 interface via ATTO UL5D card).

 

Partition 2. Retrospect v9 with Snow Leopard OS running an LTO-5 tape drive with an ATTO SAS card. For this install, I wanted to do a fresh install and then add the catalogs that have been created in my present v8 Retro. It's not a problem to remake all the scripts and so on, but I'm just not clear if I can simply add the catalogs that have been created in v8 into v9 by using the "locate" function?? Is that possible?

 

 

Another question I have is if it's possible or even smart moving the retrospect files and at the same time doing an upgrade from v8 to v9?

 

Thanks in advance!

 

Mike

[twickland]

What you're considering should work fine, including locating the catalogs. To avoid having to constantly reboot your backup computer, I'd try running Retro 9 under Leopard to see if you experience a significant performance hit. (You'll still need to stop the Retro 9 engine while running Retro 6, and vice versa, in order to be able to access your tape drives.)

 

As with any major change to your system or setup, you should be sure to have a good backup in place first.

[oslomike]

Hi Tim!

Thanks for that info. I didn't know I could have both programs running on the same machine. I would definitly llike to do that. Are there any hidden things I should know about or consider before I upgrade to v9. Can I then after upgrading to v9 , install v6.1?? I am running snow leopard which might throw a wrench in the spokes.. Any wisdom here is greatly appreciated.

Thanks!

mike

[twickland]

Upgrading from Retro 8 to Retro 9 is a snap, as both versions use the same catalog and configuration formats. We've found Retro 9.0.2 to be much more stable and considerably less buggy. In my opinion, Retro 8.0 and 8.1 were alpha versions of the new Retrospect format, while 8.2 and 9.0.0 were beta versions; I'd consider 9.0.1 the first real release version.

 

Retro 6.1 is not qualified for running on Snow Leopard. That being said, we successfully run 6.1 on a Snow Leopard machine, but use it only for restoring document files from older backups. (Currently, and probably forever, the only way to migrate from a v6 backup set catalog to a v9 media set catalog is by rebuilding the catalog from the media, a tedious task for larger backup sets.) You may be able to run backups with 6.1 running on Snow Leopard, but in this configuration, I'd use it only cautiously for backing up documents; certainly not any system files and probably not applications either.

 

If you want to continue using Retro 6.1 to run backups, I'd recommend sticking with Leopard on your backup machine.

 

The order in which you install the two versions is irrelevant; it's just that they can't run at the same time, since whichever one is running first will commandeer your tape drives, preventing the other version from seeing the drives.

[oslomike]

Hi Twickland!

I will only be using the 6.1 to restore and rebuild some backup sets. I won't be backing up anything to those sets any more. So, I might try my luck with 6.1 on Snow Leopard.

Thanks!

mike

[oslomike]

HI Twickland! You still around?

I was just now getting to install the v6.1 on this alreqady running v8 machine and the installer is asking if its OK to install rosetta. Is this going to mess anything up with my existing v8 install?

 

I'm installing in on Snow Leopard and it will only be used for recataloging and restoring of older tapes. No backups to the old system at all.

 

Thanks in advance.

Mike

[twickland]

Rosetta is Apple's emulation software that enables applications compiled for PowerPC machines to run on an Intel machine. The request to install is coming from the OS, not Retrospect. You need to install it to run Retro 6 (because it is PowerPC-based); Rosetta will have no effect on Retro 8 or any other Intel or Universal application software.

[oslomike]

Thanks twickland!!

[Monafly]

I recently had to do revert back to a dual install (RS10 and RS6). The 'upgrade' to RS10 looses the ability to back up Windows 2000 machines! A support request determined this, as the website incorrectly noted that the older 7.1.xx client would still work with Win2000 but the newer client no longer would. I have a couple of legacy scientific instruments that can't be upgraded past Win2000, so I had to reinstall RS 6 to continue to back them up. Fortunately I still had the RS6 license codes.

 

My setup: Mac mini w/OS 10.6.8 Using external disk (file) backups. I had to first install RS6 then RS10 to get both of them to play together, but once done in that order everything is running fine. I can use the same external drives for destinations from both RS and RS10 since the actual backup file destinations are unique for each version.