Retrospect 17 and low-end users

[rfajman]

It's not clear to me what's in Retrospect 17 for me, a simple user of the Desktop/Professional version with just two clients in my own office.  I'm on 16.6 now.  I think I asked the same question about 16.0 (maybe it was 15).  I held off upgrading for quite a while.  Eventually I did upgrade after some upgrades added things that I could use.  Right now, though, I don't see it with 17.

[Lennart_T]

Don't try to fix what isn't broken.  

If Retrospect is doing everything you need it to do, there is no reason to upgrade.

[rfajman]

Yes, of course.  However, the reason that I asked the question is that new features can be added that would be useful to me.  For example, I am using the cloud backup that was added relatively recently.  It's also possible that important bugs could be fixed.

[DavidHertzberg]

rfajman,

I looked at your posting history, which you can get to by first clicking the green circular icon containing 'R' (in your case) to the left of any of your posts and then clicking "See their activity".

You asked this question for both Retrospect Windows 15 and Retrospect Windows 16.  Your were also at one time talking about using ProactiveAI scripts, which were substantially speeded-up for finding the next-available source computer in Retrospect Windows 17.0.0.

BTW, cloud backup is a feature added in Retrospect Windows 12; that's 4 major releases ago..  For some of us, March 2016 isn't "relatively recently". 🤣

P.S.: If you're not using Proactive (and you're almost certainly not using Remote Backup), the new feature that would be useful to you might be added in 17.5.  As I said in this post in another thread, it looks as if Product Management decided "there's no possibility certain new major features are going to be ready in another week, so let's 'quick-ship' a 17.0 release containing bug fixes plus the three new features that are ready—and then follow up ASAP with a 17.1 or 17.5 release with  the other new features."  You may not appreciate one future major new feature, which IMHO will likely be a rewrite of the 1990s-designed and klunky built-in GUI for the Retrospect Windows "backup server".  But lots of other administrators have complained about that GUI, so they'll probably feel a new one—which ditches Auto Launching and ditches a separate GUI for Immediate operations—is an improvement.  It would end the need for two greatly-different User's Guides for the Windows and Mac variants of Retrospect.  The real reason IMHO: similar-look GUIs will aid a variant of the "backup server" running on (beefed-up) Drobo hardware (and possibly other Linux-based NASes)—which StorCentric's top management has said it wants, controlled by a GUI Console running similarly on Windows or Mac machines on the same LAN and connected to the "backup server" via a NAS webserver.

Edited May 24, 2020 by DavidHertzberg
P.S.: If you're not using Proactive, the new feature that would be useful to you might be added in 17.5—but it might not make you happy..

[x509]

If there were improvements in the UI of the client, as well as its performance, then I would have a solid reason to upgrade now.  Otherwise I'll wait until 17.1 or 17.5, whatever its called.

Any idea of when that upgrade might be released?

[DavidHertzberg]

On 5/24/2020 at 4:45 PM, x509 said:

If there were improvements in the UI of the client, as well as its performance, then I would have a solid reason to upgrade now.  Otherwise I'll wait until 17.1 or 17.5, whatever its called.

Any idea of when that upgrade might be released?

Disclaimer: Anything I may say about the intentions of Retrospect "Inc." in this or any other post is merely the result of "reading the tea leaves", the "tea leaves" being documentation and public announcements supplemented by an occasional morsel from Retrospect Sales.  I have never been paid a cent by Retrospect "Inc." or its predecessors, and I pay for my upgrades. Any judgements expressed are—obviously—mine alone.

x509,

The x.5 release of major version x is usually in late August or early September, and includes new Retrospect features.  The fact that 17.0.2, consisting of bug fixes for big installations, was released in mid-May means IMHO there isn't going to be a release 17.1; I'd love to be proven wrong in this.

My information is that engineers are hard at work on the variant of the "backup server" running on (beefed-up?) Drobo hardware  (and possibly other Linux-based NASes), because it sounds as if that's the main reason StorCentric bought Retrospect Inc..  If OTOH you're looking for improvements in the Client programs that would overcome the -530 problem and difficulties with Windows 10, my feeling is that Retrospect "Inc." engineers won't be allowed to put in that effort until StorCentric management sees the Drobo variant of the "backup server" operating in 17.5 trying to backup Windows "clients"—and realizes that there are serious Client problems for some administrators.

So my expectation is that we won't see the kind of upgrade you—and for that matter  I personally—want until the release of Retrospect 18.0 in March 2021, or possibly a release 17.6 in December 2020.  Sorry to be so pessimistic. 😒

 

Edited June 8, 2020 by DavidHertzberg
Question mark after parenthesized "beefed-up" in first sentence of 3rd paragraph; another administrator questioned whether current Drobos are fast enough.