Anybody 7.7 -> 7.6

[markmaytum]

I can't wait for these showstoppers to be fixed so I'm going to spend the foreseeable future downgrading to 7.6. I still have my config75.

 

From what other posters have said, 7.6 can't work with 7.7 catalogs and I'll need to downgrade all the clients. My new Win7 boxes won't be able to be backed up. I can work around that. Anything else I'm missing or any tips anyone cares to share?

 

TIA

[Mayoff]

An update to 7.7 should be released early next week, if you can wait.

[jwright]

Supposedly, a patch for 7.7 is coming out next week. Not sure if you can wait, but it might be late next week before you get everything rolled back to 7.6! :-/

 

You could try replying to this post:

http://forums.dantz.com/showpost.php?post/133914/

 

I think "railes" is the only person that posted that he rolled back to 7.6. He might have some details that he could share.

 

Good luck!

 

Jeff

Edited January 21, 2010 by Guest

[railes]

I did drop back to 7.6 Multi Server. I backup 3.5 TB of data every weekend which takes about 24 hours. So when I switched up to 7.7 my long backups started crapping out towards the back end - logical for a memory leak. This did not happen every time - I thought the problems were stemming from the extra large data set I was backing up and an under powered server. So I continued using 7.7 for a few weeks until I came to the forum here and saw the memory leak issue that was then confirmed by an EMC tech.

 

Since the tech told me about 10 days ago there was no ETA for a fix, I decided to drop back.

 

Not easy to do since the 7.7 catalogs are not backwards compatible. Which means when my tape rotation brought me back a 7.7 tape set, since I had 7.6, the older program would NOT allow me to erase or work with the 7.7 tapes. When I tried to erase the tape, Retrospect would ask for a catalog and I would point it to the 7.7 catalog and it would tell me that it was not the correct catalog. So I could not erase my tapes to reuse them. Luckily I had HP Tape Tools utility which allowed me to erase a tape once it was loaded in my LTO3 drive. This past weekend I had to erase 6 tapes manually, one by one, loading them in Retrospect and then erasing them with HPTT.

 

So dealing with with the 7.7. catalogs in 7.6 has been painful. But at least I am getting full backups out the door.

 

Even though there is a patch coming, I will wait a week after that arrives to see if that comes to us bug free before going back to 7.7

[jwright]

Thanks for the details!

 

I will reluctantly apply the patch when it comes out. I figure I am over-due for a successful patch. :-)

 

Jeff

[markmaytum]

thx railes,

 

those are my thoughts exactly. I need to get backups out the door right now. I'm only backing up to disksets so I thought I'd recycle my oldest one (or two) to use in 7.6 and leave my newest sets intact in case of emergency.

 

What I'd *really* like to hear from someone is that they've successfully backed up the newest client versions for 7.7(mac 6.3.028 and win 7.7.106) with 7.6. I already downgraded my test server at home and I can backup my mac laptop (6.3.028) with no errors. Haven't tried a full restore tho!

[Ramon88]

What I'd *really* like to hear from someone is that they've successfully backed up the newest client versions for 7.7(mac 6.3.028 and win 7.7.106) with 7.6. I already downgraded my test server at home and I can backup my mac laptop (6.3.028) with no errors. Haven't tried a full restore tho!

We have two new Windows 7 machines using 7.7.106 client that we backup using 7.6.123 Multi Server (on Windows 2008 Server STD x64).

 

It works but not always. We keep getting -519 and -539 errors every day or so. The other times it works normally. Those two machines are entirely different hardware, so I have a strong feeling it's a Retrospect bug.

 

Be warned though, as restoring directly to a Windows 7 client is not working properly. It seems to work, but if you check you'll find out it didn't restore every file (had up to 60% or so missing). Restoring files to a non-Windows 7 environment does however work. So it is semi useable, taking those issues into account.

 

We do not use any Retrospect optional modules, like SQL- or Open File backup. So I have no way of knowing if these work like advertised.

 

As for the OSX clients, so far we didn't update them beyond 6.2.234 so I can't tell you. But we have begun Snow Leopard upgrades and might need to update to 6.3.028. But so far it seems 6.2.234 works with Snow Leopard.

[rhwalker]

As for the OSX clients, so far we didn't update them beyond 6.2.234 so I can't tell you. But we have begun Snow Leopard upgrades and might need to update to 6.3.028. But so far it seems 6.2.234 works with Snow Leopard.

(1) make sure you read the: Retrospect Snow Leopard compatibility statement

 

(2) There are no Release Notes or Read Me for the 6.3.028 Retrospect Mac client, so no one has a clue what it does or why it was released.

 

Russ

[Ramon88]

Russ,

 

Thanks, so far we've only updated two machines with Snow Leopard and are currently testing other software to see if everything is compatible (not everything is so it seems).

 

Concerning your comments about the 6.3.028 client. I totally agree. I think EMC's Product Downloads & Updates page is flawed when it comes to mixed environments. I think I have mentioned it a couple of times before, but they don't seem to be convinced they should solve those mysteries.

 

Did you already had a chance to test 7.7?

[markmaytum]

We have completely restored a bricked macbook pro 10.6.2, using the 6.3.028 client and 7.7 server:

 

1) Cloned our golden master OS 10.6.2 a new HD and installed in the mbp.

 

2) Installed retrospect client 6.3.028 on the mbp.

 

3) Did a full restore from the 7.7 server.

 

According to the user, their mbp was at exactly the state it was before it died (catastrophic HD failure).

 

[markmaytum]

That turned out to be not too difficult - we re-installed 7.6, still had our old config files. Made a new disk set and catalog to use temporarily (I hope) with 7.6. It's been running since late last night. Today, the scripts are churning through the connected laptop with no problems. Note: we haven't rolled back *any* of the clients. We have quite a few W2k3 and W2k8 servers on the 7.7 client and macs on the 6.3.028 client. No errors so far.

 

I assume if things go pear-shaped, I can quit 7.6, fire up 7.7 and restore from one of the backups it made sporadically over the past few weeks.

[rhwalker]

We have completely restored a bricked macbook pro 10.6.2, using the 6.3.028 client and 7.7 server:

 

1) Cloned our golden master OS 10.6.2 a new HD and installed in the mbp.

 

2) Installed retrospect client 6.3.028 on the mbp.

 

3) Did a full restore from the 7.7 server.

 

According to the user, their mbp was at exactly the state it was before it died (catastrophic HD failure).

Well, there's some minor manual cleanup that needs to be done (see the Retrospect Snow Leopard Compatibility Statement) and also the compressed system files are uncompressed.

 

Russ