What dictates Destination in Activities > Proactive?

[fredturner]

I've been wondering this for a long time now, but have never figured it out or gotten around to asking here. So, I have a site w/ numerous clients, all added to a Proactive script that has 3 sets for its destinations: Alpha, Bravo, and Charlie. When I look at Activities > Proactive > Destination column, I see 1 of these 3 sets next to each entry. However, I may have Set Bravo connected (like now), yet some of the clients show the Destination as Set Alpha. Why? So, even if the client is in need of backing up (every 24 hrs) and says Destination is Set Alpha, since I have Set Bravo connected, it won't back up. Some questions about this aspect of the Proactive scripts:

 

1. How is Retrospect determining the set it lists under Destination?

2. Is there any way to manually change the set (w/o some crazy cheat or workaround, I mean)?

3. Is there any way to "nudge" Retrospect to go ahead and back up a client when I know it is now connected, active, and has a suitable backup set available***?

 

*** = I just watched it take 20+ minutes to start backing up a machine that hadn't backed up in weeks, despite clicking Schedule and setting it for the current time. In the meantime, another overdue spare MacBook that I woke up to also back up went back to sleep. Just seems like this should be quicker, or at least able to be hurried along while I'm in the Console.

 

Thanks,

Fred

 

P.S. This is on v13 Multi Server, but also occurs on many other installations I support from v10.5 thru v13.

[Lennart_T]

Your setup should work. I don't know why it doesn't.

You could try to shut down the Retrospect Engine (System Preferences) and then start it again after you connected a new destination.

 

3. Retrospect polls the client one by one, in order. So if Retrospect just missed the client in question it may ver well be 20 minutes before it is checked again. 

How many client do you have?

[fredturner]

Your setup should work. I don't know why it doesn't.

You could try to shut down the Retrospect Engine (System Preferences) and then start it again after you connected a new destination.

 

3. Retrospect polls the client one by one, in order. So if Retrospect just missed the client in question it may ver well be 20 minutes before it is checked again. 

How many client do you have?

 

 

That is an excellent question! ...and leads to another question/suggestion: Why is there no way (or at least no easy/obvious way that I've found) to find out how many clients you have logged in? I had to count one screen's worth and then page down and multiply. I get around 50 clients. I just don't understand why it takes SO LONG to get started on WAY OVERDUE clients.

 

It can list all of the ones that are online in a matter of seconds when you go to Add or Locate. Why can't it do _that_ fast scan once every couple of minutes and say, "Hey, there's John's MacBook Pro...it's been 11 days since I've backed him up...nothing else is running and I have a valid backup disk...I'll start NOW!" Instead, I can have John's MacBook Pro jumping up and down and frantically waving its arms at the Retrospect server, but by the time the server has decided it might want to check John's MBP out, John's MBP has gone to sleep or left the network.

 

I can just sit and check on it regularly for a period of a couple of hrs while I'm onsite, and it picks up hardly any clients when they are there and needing backup. I even try to help it along by clicking Browse on a client disk or doing a Refresh on the client. But it just sits there w/ its fingers in its ears. It'll eventually get to them, but I can't imagine how awful it'd be in a truly large setup. All of this "dead air" is wasteful time-wise and leads to clients getting missed.

 

Why isn't the Engine more aggressive and active??

[Lennart_T]

Go into Configure-->Licenses (I think it's called that) and see how many clients you have used.

 

With 50 clients it polls each about every 50 minutes or so. So if John's MacBook Pro just was checked when it was turned on and connected, it will be 49 minutes before it will be checked again. And that is provided no other clients need backups, too. 

 

If I were you, I would divide your clients into two scripts with a Media set each. With 25 clients for each script, it will get back to John's MBP twice as fast (on average).

[derek500]

My understanding of Proactive Backup with multiple destinations is that it will back up each client to the destination with the oldest backup. So from client to client it will show a different destination depending where the oldest backup lives. In the Media Set tab of the proactive script, what's checked off indicates to Retrospect what media you will be backing up to. If the "media" isn't physically available, Retrospect will wait for you to add another member to the media set, because that's what you've told it you want to do.

 

If you have multiple backup destinations, but they aren't connected, you should uncheck them in the Media Sets tab of the script. When you reconnect a destination, make sure that destination is checked in the Media Sets tab. Having the media set checked off indicates to Retrospect that you want to back up there, so if the media isn't physically available it will wait for you to reattach it or add another member...  if you don't want it to back up to that set, just uncheck the box. Lets say you have 3 media sets and want to take one offsite - just uncheck it but leave the other two checked in Media Sets and the Proactive script will automatically rotate each client between the two available destinations. If you only want it to use one of the two, you'll need to uncheck the other one. It will decide client by client where the oldest backup is, and which media set needs to be next for that client.

 

I only have one destination available at a time, and with my Proactive script running backups start pretty much as soon as a machine hits the network without any interaction from the console - unless the script is busy backing up a different client.

 

FWIW I don't have multiple destinations available at one time, so it's possible I've misstated how things work - this is just my understanding from being familiar with Retrospect for many years.