Avid and LTFS

[Craigo5000]

So I see v12 offers this with a small paragraph stating Avid project support? There isn't really any further details on what it does though?

 

Can someone enlighten me as I look after 10 Avid suites in a post production environment and the ability to archive in LTFS also sounds great!

[DavidHertzberg]

As to what Avid support does, see this Knowledge Base article.  It's not clear whether "the file system where Retrospect is running" means the file system of the Retrospect "backup server" itself, or whether it can also be the file system of a client that the "backup server" can see.  I'd appreciate it if someone who has past experience using Retrospect with Avid can enlighten us; I'm not sure whether what Retrospect Windows 12 can do with Avid is actually an improvement on what was available with previous versions.

 

As to running an Archive script in Retrospect Windows 12 onto an LTFS Backup Set, Craigo5000 won't be able to do it; you can only Duplicate.  Read this post (and preceding posts in the same thread—which Craigo5000 started in October 2015) and follow the link to that Knowledge Base article in it (I don't want to repeat myself).

[DavidHertzberg]

A more-careful search using the Forums' Advanced Search feature revealed this thread.  It turns out that Retrospect Mac as late as version 12.5 could not see Avid ISIS volumes, but Retrospect Windows 10.5 could recognize them as network shares (although the OP in that thread said they were not supposed to be network shares)—which meant they had to be mounted by "... 'Volumes Database', ... click 'My Network...' then 'Advanced...' and enter the location of the share in the //<servername>/<sharename> or //<server.ip.address>/<sharename> format" per post #2 in this thread.  

 

Post #3—by Mayoff—in the thread linked to in the first sentence of the preceding paragraph says that Retrospect Inc. was planning to add Avid ISIS support in the next release of Retrospect Mac (which would have been Retrospect Mac 13).  The "What's New" chapter in the Retrospect Mac 14 User's Guide, which is identical to the one in the Retrospect Windows 12 UG, implies that that plan slipped by one major release—which is BTW confirmed by the Retrospect Windows 12 Release Notes.  My educated guess is that, if you use the Avid utility referred to in the last paragraph of the KB article linked to in the first sentence of post #2 in this thread, you probably don't need to setup a network share for an Avid ISIS device in either Retrospect Windows or Retrospect Mac.  However my further educated guess is that you have to run the Avid utility on the "backup server" machine itself, so that the Retrospect Engine and Console can see the Avid ISIS device in order to incorporate it in scripts.

 

Again, I bow to any further enlightenment from more-knowledgeable administrators.