Queue up Immediate Backups?

[x509]

If I am running an immediate backup, and then try to run a second immediate backup that uses the same target dataset, I get an error.  What I want to be able to do is queue up that second immediate backup.  Is there some way to accomplish this goal?  If not, I'm heading over to the Retrospect site and submitting a feature request.

[DavidHertzberg]

🙄x509,

Reading this gave me a strong feeling of déja vu.  And sure enough, I found this thread from last August, with your final post in that thread urging jhg to submit a feature request Support Case.  I guess either he/she didn't submit it, or it got turned down.😕

On this question, my position is still exactly as I expressed it in the second paragraph of the post above yours in that thread.  "However I suspect that Retrospect Tech Support's answer will be along the lines of 'it's already the way we'd like it to be'.  Their explanation would be that anyone who submits two Immediate operations whose destination is the same Backup Set is more likely than not to have made an error."  The rest of that paragraph can be read as a testimonial to how much easier it is to get Retrospect Mac to do what you want, because in early 2009 the still-EMC Iomega engineers made a momentous decision to do away with Immediate operations and instead have a Run button for a Script—if necessary a New script created a second ago via the GUI—generate an operation using it that is scheduled immediately.  In the personal example I cited in that paragraph, "I added  a Repeat Never schedule of the same script 2 minutes later"—which took 15 seconds in Retrospect Mac.  Maybe you can sneakily achieve the same result in Retrospect Windows by creating the script equivalent of your Immediate operation, and then creating for that script two run documents with different names per pages 237-238 of the Retrospect Windows 16 User's Guide.  The indented paragraph under item 5 on UG page 238 says "When you open several run documents at once, the scripts associated with them will run in alphabetical order by script name, regardless of the run document file names."  (If you want non-identical operations—with different Sources but the same Destination, create one run document for each operation but be sure they have different script names.) 😁

The fact that doing this in Retrospect Windows requires at best a sneaky workaround illustrates a fact that the EMC engineers rethought in 2008: The old Retrospect GUI targets a 1990s scripting-virgin user.  The fact that they decided to retain this old GUI in Retrospect Windows must IMHO have been at least partially a reaction to the administrator consternation produced by the new GUI in Retrospect Mac 8—but that consternation also was caused by bugs and limitations in the Mac 8.0 release.  It's abundantly clear that Retrospect Inc. management and staff has regretted this decision ever since; I got confirmation of this in a Support Case response 2.5 years ago that said Retrospect Inc. was delaying updating the non-"What's New" chapters of the UGs pending "a UI overhaul in the works".   That they are now hell-bent on that UI overhaul is evident in my two posts responding to kidziti's suggestion 1 in his OP in a recent Product Suggestions—Windows thread.  Remember that StorCentric top management has publicly promised (4th paragraph here)  a Retrospect "backup server" version that will run on a Drobo device, and you can bet your bippy that the GUI for that will not be like the current GUI for Retrospect Windows. 🤔

Therefore I suggest you not bother to submit a feature request Support Case. 🙄  Clearly the next non-bug-fix release will be Retrospect 17.0 in March 2020; expect it to contain a  greatly-enhanced version of the non-Web non-Management Retrospect Console that will look much like the Retrospect Mac GUI ( this KB article shows the more-enhanced 16.5 Web Console).  Thus, if it includes script scheduling—which the 16.6 Preview doesn't, IMHO the separate class of Immediate operations will be a thing of the past.  In the meantime, try what I suggested in the last three sentences of the second paragraph in this post. 😁

[x509]

OK.  As part of my "2020 workflow" I will create run documents per your suggestion.

As always, I appreciate your suggestions.