NoelC Posted September 22, 2019 Report Share Posted September 22, 2019 I have recently purchased Retrospect Desktop. That opened up my ability to click "Disaster Recovery". However, when I do in the dialog I see something I didn't expect: Looks like an extra cost option to restore to dissimilar hardware. Clicking the [ Purchase... ] button did not yield any useful information. It just shows me an "Upgrade Wizard" page that describes what I already have, a license for " Retrospect Desktop v.16 for Windows". Maybe I blocked a script or something. Frankly, this capability is what I thought I was going to get with " Retrospect Desktop v.16 for Windows". How much is the extra charge for this option? -Noel Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
DavidHertzberg Posted September 22, 2019 Report Share Posted September 22, 2019 NoelC, If you used the Product Configurator to purchase your license for Retrospect Desktop, it has a checkbox for "Do you plan to restore to different hardware?". I just now tried the Configurator for a Windows Desktop, and the Add-On for Dissimilar Hardware Restore Disk-to-Disk Edition adds US$239 to the price. I call it the "soak the (presumed) rich installation" policy, and Dantz Development Corp. introduced that policy before it was purchased by EMC in 2004. Nobody on these Forums works for Retrospect Sales, so you should contact that organization to find out how to upgrade. "Making your system bootable on different hardware" is discussed on pages 328-337 of the Retrospect Windows 16 User's Guide. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
NoelC Posted September 22, 2019 Author Report Share Posted September 22, 2019 I get it. These are all user to user forums then. I did not use that tool. Nor do I want to pay for ongoing support, and from what I can see Dissimilar Hardware Restore only bundles with ASM? Ah well, live and learn. Double the original sale price for that add-on is steep if you ask me. The ability to restore to [a rebuild of] my existing hardware and recover from accidental deletions is really what I need anyway. Should I get a new system I'll want to set up the OS afresh anyway. Thinking back, I have in the past restored a Windows Backup to dissimilar hardware exactly ONCE. It was convenient under very specific circumstances. In that particular case the machine had just failed and I bought a newer machine of the same lineage (both were Dell Precision models, 2 years apart). So much of the design was similar that the OS figured out how to enable the needed drivers and I was off and running in a few hours. That system ran well for years after. -Noel Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
DavidHertzberg Posted September 23, 2019 Report Share Posted September 23, 2019 NoelC, It turns out that what you really want to look at is the Online Store. Under Add-Ons are two different lines: "Dissimilar Hardware Restore Disk-to-Disk BDD16R1WN | BDD16R1WC" at US$239 without ASM (that's the price in the Configurator; it's probably the BDD16R1WN sales code), and "Dissimilar Hardware Restore Desktop BDH16R1WN | BDH16R1WC" at US$99 without ASM (it's probably the BDH16R1WN sales code). The difference between the BDD and BDH sales codes seems to be whether you purchased your basic Retrospect license as Disk-to-Disk or Desktop; from your OP it sounds as if you did the latter. Again, contact a human being in Retrospect Sales; he/she would like to sell you something, to make StorCentric management happy. If I worked for Retrospect Product Marketing, it seems I would have to receive supplementary "soak the (presumed) rich installation" indoctrination. IMHO the Dissimilar Hardware Restore Add-On was designed for offices where Suzy only gets a new machine when her existing machine dies of extreme old age, so there is no way the office's management could have "bought a newer machine of the same lineage". Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
x509 Posted September 23, 2019 Report Share Posted September 23, 2019 On 9/22/2019 at 8:35 AM, NoelC said: I have recently purchased Retrospect Desktop. That opened up my ability to click "Disaster Recovery". However, when I do in the dialog I see something I didn't expect: Looks like an extra cost option to restore to dissimilar hardware. Clicking the [ Purchase... ] button did not yield any useful information. It just shows me an "Upgrade Wizard" page that describes what I already have, a license for " Retrospect Desktop v.16 for Windows". Maybe I blocked a script or something. Frankly, this capability is what I thought I was going to get with " Retrospect Desktop v.16 for Windows". How much is the extra charge for this option? -Noel Noel, I have the impression that even without this extra cost option, you can restore to "moderately" dissimilar hardware. Windows 10 apparently has advanced capabilities for re configuring itself if you move a Windows install to a new system. I suspect that Windows has no problem if you are doing an Intel-to-Intel or AMD-to-AMD move, as long as the target hardware is same or newer generation than the source hardware. It's worth a try before you shell out all that extra money. I am editing this message to add the point that "moving" a Windows install sometimes means installing a new motherboard. On this website, you can see lots of threads where people discuss how they can replace their motherboard without doing a fresh install of Windows: https://www.tenforums.com/ x509 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Nigel Smith Posted September 23, 2019 Report Share Posted September 23, 2019 15 hours ago, NoelC said: Dissimilar Hardware Restore only bundles with ASM? IIRC, Desktop can have it without ASM, Server requires ASM. 18 hours ago, DavidHertzberg said: I call it the "soak the (presumed) rich installation" policy, Slightly unfair. As a Mac user you've probably forgotten (or maybe never knew) the pain involved moving a Windows install between different hardware. It would only take one or two uses for a business to cover the cost of the add-on and, realistically, business is the target market. And not just for "restores", also for migration from old to new machines. I wouldn't bother with it as a home user, but if time was money... Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
DavidHertzberg Posted September 23, 2019 Report Share Posted September 23, 2019 2 hours ago, Nigel Smith said: IIRC, Desktop can have it without ASM, Server requires ASM. Slightly unfair. As a Mac user you've probably forgotten (or maybe never knew) the pain involved moving a Windows install between different hardware. It would only take one or two uses for a business to cover the cost of the add-on and, realistically, business is the target market. And not just for "restores", also for migration from old to new machines. I wouldn't bother with it as a home user, but if time was money... You're right about Server Editions, Nigel Smith, but the OP says he licensed the Desktop Edition. As for the "soak the (presumed) rich installation" policy, which was instituted by Dantz before it was acquired by EMC, IMHO the recent failure of that "value pricing" policy in general is what led to the StorCentric acquisition. It appears business customers no longer needed to license Server Editions, because they were now using Linux machines as their servers. Retrospect Inc. put a yellow-colored note into the Windows 15.1 Release Notes saying "Linux Client: In a future update, Linux clients running on server-level Linux distributions will be treated as server clients". However, as I cautiously mentioned elsewhere on these Forums, the opinion of experts I solicited on the Ars Technica Linux forum was that it would be impracticable to distinguish server-level Linux distributions—which shot down extending the "soak the (presumed) rich installation" policy. I have never questioned Windows administrators' need for the Dissimilar Hardware Restore Add-On, just its different "value pricing" levels in the Online Store. 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Nigel Smith Posted September 23, 2019 Report Share Posted September 23, 2019 41 minutes ago, DavidHertzberg said: I have never questioned Windows administrators' need for the Dissimilar Hardware Restore Add-On, just its different "value pricing" levels in the Online Store. I'll leave my original reply in italics, below. But I'm losing my mind trying to work out what does what -- Retrospect's own pages seem to contradict each other: Single Server 5 includes "...Dissimilar Hardware Restore, making it possible to recover an entire boot volume—including the OS, applications, registry, and data—to a different physical computer..." while the DHR D2D add-on "...covers your Retrospect host server only." Implication: clients are covered by the base software, host server isn't. Single Server Unlimited includes "...Dissimilar Hardware Restore, making it possible to recover an entire boot volume—including the OS, applications, registry, and data—to a different physical computer" while the DHR Unlimited add-on "...extends to all Windows systems protected by your Retrospect host server, including end-user desktops and laptops." Implication: the host is covered by the base software, the clients aren't. Of course, they may have given very similar names to things which enable completely opposite use-cases... <Sigh> Probable garbage below... As I understand it (and I fully accept I could be wrong -- I *hate* trying to decipher licenses for any Windows software, since they all seem to be create to confuse!) those prices reflect different "abilities": DHR Desktop helps you to restore your *desktops* to different hardware -- applies to the Desktop for Windows product. DHR Disk-to-Disk helps you to restore your Retrospect host server to different hardware -- Single Server 5 already includes DHR Desktop functionality above Windows Server and Desktop, unlike the Mac and Linux OSs, really are different beasts -- and it's pretty standard across the industry to charge more for a WinServer-aimed product than WinDesktop. Whether that reflects a greater difficulty/cost in creating and maintaining the server product or is based on a willingness of businesses to pay more, I couldn't tell you. But if you think RS's pricing for this is bad, check out the competition. Better yet, have a look at Microsoft's Server OS licensing -- nightmare! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
DavidHertzberg Posted September 23, 2019 Report Share Posted September 23, 2019 I got tired enough of this question that I just phoned Retrospect Sales. Ian says the Dissimilar Hardware Restore Add-On is US$99 without ASM for a Desktop Edition license. Werner (whom I got when I phoned back because I had forgotten to ask Ian the question) says the Add-On functions the same no matter what Edition it is licensed for, so it works for any computer—"client" or "backup server"—backed up with Retrospect. My distinction between the well-budgeted NoelC and the starveling office denizen Suzy is correct. Ian personally used the Dissimilar Hardware Restore Add-On when he needed to temporarily replace his Windows laptop, which was in the repair shop, with a different-brand desktop—a one-hour restore. He licenses Desktop Edition. For those who didn't know (including me), the Disk-to-Disk Edition is the same as the Single Server Edition—except it has no tape destination capability and is therefore cheaper. Those running a single Windows Server machine (or macOS Server machine—if that's still detectable by Retrospect) on their LAN should take note. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Nigel Smith Posted September 24, 2019 Report Share Posted September 24, 2019 Thanks for that, David -- though to me it is still as clear as mud 😉 Luckily doesn't apply to us, with the way we use RS. DHR is definitely an "extra" -- RS's core task is to "restore what was previously on the client" while DHR adds "and then do whatever's required to make the new client bootable with its different hardware", so an automation of something you could do yourself. Talking to my PC-supporting colleague, he wouldn't bother with it unless we had frequent restores onto differing machines -- his example was a group of road warriors who have accumulated machines of different ages/models/makes over time and where a complete refresh onto standard Ghosted machines isn't worthwhile. I guess I've become the "boiling frog" -- I've spent so long looking at software that charges more because you're "Enterprise", looks cheap until you add per-TB usage costs, or seems good until you realise that *every* piece of functionality requires an extra-cost sub-licence, that now I just shrug and accept it. Thanks for giving me a shake-up! Now, if you could just turn the hot-plate off and lift me out of the saucepan... Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
NoelC Posted October 3, 2019 Author Report Share Posted October 3, 2019 Thanks for looking that up. I could probably cough up $99 for the add-on. I'll have to figure out how to buy it... Shouldn't that be easy? -Noel Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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