Bardel Posted January 8, 2015 Report Share Posted January 8, 2015 Hey fellow retrospecters, What I'm trying to achieve sounds terribly easy, but i repeatedly failed. I do backups of around 20 machines (Win&Macs) on an external Raid drive thats connected by Firewire to the mac mini that runs Retrospect Server. I have 2 of those Raid drives. One is connected and taking backups, the other one's off site for safety reasons. From time to time I want to swap in the one i have off site with the one that's connected. Since there is usually a few months (no fixed schedule) in between swaps it's okay to have the freshly swapped in drive being overwritten or recycled. What I've tried: Creating a mediaset with two media (which resemble my raid drives Backup A & Backup B ). All 20 Scripts point to that mediaset. Doesn't work. If i swap drives, the script calls for new media. Is there a way of swapping raid drives without having to manually switch the mediaset to backup to in all 20 scripts? I've watched most youtube tutorials around that topic but it seems they all cover slightly different scenarios somehow... Many many thanks in advance! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Lennart_T Posted January 8, 2015 Report Share Posted January 8, 2015 Why do you have 20 scripts? Why not 20 sources in one script? Swapping drives every few months sounds risky. In case of fire (or theft, flooding, hurricane etc) you risk to lose a "few months" of work. If you create proactive scripts, they should use whatever destination is available. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Bardel Posted January 8, 2015 Author Report Share Posted January 8, 2015 Yeah it's risky but at the moment there's no other way.. I have proactive scripts for the laptops that are not always here. the other computers are scheduled to have their backups done one after another. as far as i can see, there's no way to schedule individual sources in one script. so my main problem is how to handle the mediasets so it's no hustle to exchange them.. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Lennart_T Posted January 8, 2015 Report Share Posted January 8, 2015 the other computers are scheduled to have their backups done one after another. as far as i can see, there's no way to schedule individual sources in one script. What is the problem? Retrospect should work all the sources in a script one after another. Anyway, in order to make the drive exchange painless, there are only two ways: Option 1: All scripts must be proactive scripts. Option 2: Schedule your disk exchanges firmly: Schedule script 1 for every (backup) day on odd months (or week) for destination disk 1. Schedule script 2 for every (backup) day on even months (or week) for destination disk 2. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Bardel Posted January 8, 2015 Author Report Share Posted January 8, 2015 will i have to bring in every raid drive as a mediaset or as one mediaset with 2 media? For the process of swapping: how do i "disconnect" the drives in Retrospect? I usually disconnect them in the finder. Is that sufficient for retrospect to know that one is gone and the other one takes its place? so confusing. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
twickland Posted January 8, 2015 Report Share Posted January 8, 2015 If you want to back up to two different drive volumes, you need to have two media sets. If the media for the scheduled destination media set is unavailable, Retrospect will normally sit and wait forever until the media is available. To avoid this, you can set a media request timeout in Retrospect's main preferences. Unless you are using different rules for your backup sources, it would be simplest to include all your sources in the same script, as Lennart suggests. If you don't know when each media set's media is going to be available, I would create two schedulers in your backup script: one to back up to Media Set A at the desired backup time, and a second to back up to Media Set B beginning a few minutes later. If you have set a media set timeout in Preferences, here's what will happen: on the days where only Media Set A is available, the first backup will run, and the second will time out because Retrospect can't find Media Set B; on the days where only Media Set B is available, the first backup will time out because Retrospect can't find Media Set A, and the second will run normally. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Bardel Posted January 9, 2015 Author Report Share Posted January 9, 2015 cool. I'll try that. Thanks a lot one more question: will the media action be set to "Recycle" in order to replace instead of adding backups? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Lennart_T Posted January 9, 2015 Report Share Posted January 9, 2015 one more question: will the media action be set to "Recycle" in order to replace instead of adding backups? The media action should be set (by the operator) to "Recycle" to recycle the media (erase the contents and start over). Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Bardel Posted January 9, 2015 Author Report Share Posted January 9, 2015 that's what i needed to know. Thanks Lennart! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Monafly Posted January 9, 2015 Report Share Posted January 9, 2015 You might consider 'grooming' instead of 'recycle' so that you retain copies of at least some backups on the alternate media set. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Bardel Posted January 13, 2015 Author Report Share Posted January 13, 2015 What do you mean by grooming? is that an option somewhere? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Lennart_T Posted January 13, 2015 Report Share Posted January 13, 2015 Grooming is a way to delete the oldest backups, while retaining newer. Please check the manual for details. I use it myself, excellent feature. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Bardel Posted January 13, 2015 Author Report Share Posted January 13, 2015 ah okay. haven't stumbled upon it yet. Sounds logical! I'll give it a spin. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Lennart_T Posted January 13, 2015 Report Share Posted January 13, 2015 Schedule a groom script. I run it every weekend. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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