Rothgarr Posted June 24, 2008 Report Share Posted June 24, 2008 We recently switched from Windows to the Mac platform. However, we need all of our Macs to run Windows XP inside Parallels. My Mac runs Retrospect while all the other Macs have the client installed. I have it set up so that the entire hard drive of every Mac gets backed up. But every morning, Retrospect's log file is completely polluted with errors which appear to be related to Win XP and Parallels What's the proper way to back up Win XP in Parallels? I want to make sure everything gets backed up on everyone's computer. Do I need to install the Retrospect client software in everybody's copy of Win XP and treat them all as separate computers? Ideally, having everybody shut down Windows at night would not be the ideal solution. Thanks! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Mayoff Posted June 24, 2008 Report Share Posted June 24, 2008 You use Retrospect for Windows top do the backups and a Retrospect Client installed on each XP system. Each XP system is treated as it's own computer. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Rothgarr Posted June 24, 2008 Author Report Share Posted June 24, 2008 Got it. So each computer then has two clients installed on it? I just want to make sure because I think we have a limited number of client installs available. I may need to buy a bunch more if we do need to have two clients on each computer. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Mayoff Posted June 24, 2008 Report Share Posted June 24, 2008 Yes, and I would exclude the XP Image from the Macintosh client backups. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Rothgarr Posted June 24, 2008 Author Report Share Posted June 24, 2008 Got it. Thanks. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
CallMeDave Posted June 24, 2008 Report Share Posted June 24, 2008 every morning, Retrospect's log file is completely polluted with errors which appear to be related to Win XP and Parallels - What are some representative examples of these errors? Dave Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
jcasello Posted September 10, 2008 Report Share Posted September 10, 2008 do you have suggestions for the network adapter settings in parallels to be sure the clients are found when using DHCP? thanks Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
rhwalker Posted September 10, 2008 Report Share Posted September 10, 2008 (edited) more important is to keep port 497 open in the firewall. DHCP is not used to find clients. If you mean that the clients are using DHCP and their IP addresses are moving about, and that you want to add clients by IP, consider DHCP static maps by MAC address so that the clients stay at the same IP. Edited September 10, 2008 by Guest Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
pbartoli Posted September 15, 2008 Report Share Posted September 15, 2008 Sorry if I jump into the conversation, but I'm facing somehow the same problem, Backing up Win XP under Parallels. I didn't completely understand how to do it. Right now I use Retrospect 6.1 on OSX 10.4.11. I understand I should install the client in WinXP/Parallels and backup as a Windows client, while excluding the Windows partition from the Mac backup. Is it all I need to do? Thanks Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
rhwalker Posted September 15, 2008 Report Share Posted September 15, 2008 You may need to open up the Windows firewall for port 497. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Rothgarr Posted September 24, 2008 Author Report Share Posted September 24, 2008 (edited) It's been a long while since I first started this topic but I'm back onto this subject... As recommended above I installed the Retrospect Clients within each install of Windows XP (all running inside Parallels) on everyone's computer here. We have older client software (version 5.6 client for Win XP) but my Mac which is running Retrospect 6.1 can see them just fine. So basically every computer has two copies of Retrospect Client installed. So the Clients list in Retrospect basically looks like: Neil-Mac Neil-XP Alex-Mac Alex-XP Geddy-Mac Geddy-XP etc... My question now is... how do I go about telling Retrospect (6.1 for Mac) to back up everyone's entire Mac EXCEPT for the directory containing their C Drive for XP? (since the "...-XP" version of the clients above will be backing Windows up). Thanks! Edited September 24, 2008 by Guest Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
rhwalker Posted September 24, 2008 Report Share Posted September 24, 2008 (edited) Simple. Just add a selector with the proper path name exclusion (which is exactly what Robin suggested above, and you seemed to agree). Of course, unless you are going to have selectors for each machine, you need to have the XP C Drive file in the same place (path) on each one. Russ Edited September 24, 2008 by Guest Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Rothgarr Posted September 24, 2008 Author Report Share Posted September 24, 2008 (edited) Interesting... So I created a new Selector called "Ignore Windows" and it's set to Exclude Folder Name that Matches "Microsoft Windows XP". I can't confirm yet that the path to each install of Parallels/Windows is the same but I do know that the enclosing folder is named consistently. Can't wait to see how that works out tonght. Thanks! EDIT: I actually updated the Selector so that the Folder Path Name Does Contain "Documents/Parallels" since I know at least that part would be consistent on each user's computer. I'm not sure if that partial path will work but I think it should cover all bases regardless of if someone has XP installed or Vista, etc. Guess I'll find out tonight. Edited September 24, 2008 by Guest Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
CallMeDave Posted September 24, 2008 Report Share Posted September 24, 2008 Just add a selector with the proper path name exclusion Another way, which I prefer, is to create a selector based on the Mac's Finder Labels. Retrospect for Mac is savvy about these little gems, and they can be easier to use then path based descriptions. The default names of Finder labels are Red, Orange, Yellow, Green, Blue, Purple and Gray. But you can, of course, name them anything you want; Retrospect will see the names on any machine it connect to. But no matter the label name, the order will always be the same. So if you configure the Finder labels on the machine running Retrospect to have Gray="Do Not Backup," you'll see that wording in the Selectors configuration box, too. You can go to each client and modify the Finder preferences for each one so that Grey has new wording, but even if you don't, anything labeled with the Grey color will be excluded. I make a selector that includes Item, Folder and Enclosing Folder, just to maximize effectiveness. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Rothgarr Posted September 25, 2008 Author Report Share Posted September 25, 2008 Thanks for the additional tip, Dave. I'll keep that in mind as I'm setting up my scripts. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Rothgarr Posted October 6, 2008 Author Report Share Posted October 6, 2008 (edited) I wanted to follow up and thank everyone in this thread who helped me. Our backups are going much smoother with your suggestions. The last thing I need to figure out is why one of the PC clients won't show up in the Configure Clients window (the three Macs here are all running Parallels with XP installed). The three Mac clients all show up. But only two of the three Win XP Retrospect clients show up in Retrospect in the window where you can look for running Mac, Windows, and Linux clients. If I'm browsing the network from my Mac's desktop I can see that virtual PC. But for some reason that one won't show up in Retrospect. The Mac Retrospect Client running on that third machine DOES show up, though Any tips or tricks I should try to get that third Parallels/XP one to show up? Edited October 6, 2008 by Guest Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
rhwalker Posted October 6, 2008 Report Share Posted October 6, 2008 (edited) open port 497 in the Windows firewall. See my post above for suggesting this previously. Edited October 6, 2008 by Guest Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Rothgarr Posted October 6, 2008 Author Report Share Posted October 6, 2008 Thanks rhwalker. The other clients didn't require this and I had actually tried this previously per your suggestion with this particular computer and it unfortunately didn't work. I tried it again just now and it still didn't work. However, since your idea had me in the Windows Firewall control panel I did try something else... instead of opening a port I tried "Add Program" and pointed to retroclient.exe and that did the trick! Thanks. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Rothgarr Posted November 18, 2008 Author Report Share Posted November 18, 2008 (edited) Thanks again for the previous help. Unfortunately, I am now experiencing extremely slow backups that take days to back up three computers. As an refresher: - We have three Macs that all also run XP in Parallels. - My Mac runs Retrospect, the other two Macs and each XP install has the client (so 5 clients in addition to my Mac). - We backup to external hard drives connected to my computer. Both my Mac and the Time Capsule back up quickly enough. But as soon as it gets to having to back up one of the C Drives on one of the other Macs the backup slows to a crawl (averaging about 8 MB/min). The C drive I'm looking at now is 16GB. As you can see, this will take a VERY long time... Any tips or things I can look for to help speed things up? Copying files back and forth is MUCH faster. It's just backing up that takes forever... Thanks! Edited November 18, 2008 by Guest Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
newmac Posted February 4, 2009 Report Share Posted February 4, 2009 Hi I used labels to exclude the virtual machine. However Retrospect continues to back up a 17GB file called "winxp.hdd.0.___. I cannot find the file and don't know how to exclude it. Any ideas. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
jpatel83 Posted February 26, 2009 Report Share Posted February 26, 2009 So We have the same issue... We all have Mac's with parallels running. i understand that we can install retrospect on the parallels image, though what if the image is not running? how would you go about it then? or rather must of our parallels run as host only networking, so they dont have an external ip that the retrospect is able to get to. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
rhwalker Posted February 26, 2009 Report Share Posted February 26, 2009 So We have the same issue...We all have Mac's with parallels running. i understand that we can install retrospect on the parallels image, though what if the image is not running? Then the client running in Parallels would not be seen, and the Windows box won't get backed up. how would you go about it then? You've got two choices. Either start the Parallels VM prior to the backup (you could do that with an appropriate "trigger script" in the Retrospect Event Handler), or you could back up the entire Parallels VM image (big file) each time. The advantage of using the Windows client in the Parallels VM is that an incremental backup can be done of the Windows files in the Parallels VM rather than always backing up the huge Parallels VM image. Russ Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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