Why is retrospect such a pain to use?

[bilbus]

No remote install tool - Come on how hard is it to make one every other backup software has one! Installing from group policy/sms is great but not if you have to have install script installed to deploy it.

 

Backing up just the C drive - Ok you can do volume selecters ... but i orgnise my backup clients into folders then drag those client drives into souce groups. I have to do twice as much work. If you could just set a global option to backup only C drives that would be a big help.

 

Run as a service - are you kidding me? how do you not have this???? I have to hope my proactive backup runs inside of a rdp session. Ok great temperary workaround but no solution.

[mmsadmin]

If you set up a service account and then configure the security preferences, you can have it automatically run under the service account without any intervention. This is essentially the same as running as a service.

 

I agree about the remote tool. I am used to being able to manage my backups from a client workstation. I hate having to log into the console or even remote into the server to manage my backups.

 

Also, I prefer the Veritas backup style selectors for choosing what to back up. I find it very difficult to manage the volumes , subvolumes and groups using retrospect. I would very much like to see an upgrade in this area.

 

The exchange agent could also use some improvement. For example, when selecting all exchange mailboxes to back up, the program should automatically be able to remove disabled or deleted mailboxes from the backup set, and add new mailboxes automatically, to prevent errors and having to continuously update this portion of the backup set. It is unreasonable to expect someone to have to update their backup routine every time a user is added and/or removed from Exchange.

 

To be honest, the only thing I really do like about Retrospect is the restoring feature. The snapshots feature makes it very easy to find what you want to restore. But the snapshots screen could also use some improvement. Being able to sort by snapshot date would be a major improvement, because sometimes it's even hard to find which snapshot you want with all the folders listed in there from the sloppy volume selection tool.

 

In summary, if Retrospect had a Veritas style interface while retaining the snapshot technology, EMC would probably see a huge boost in business sales.