Replacing External RAID

[francisbrand]

Hi,

I've been using Drobo 5N & 5D for backup destinations. Recently the 5D had to be retired and I am using a 2012 Pegasus R4. I am looking to replace it as I am concerned about its age (this is for a small business). I have been looking at Synology NASs as a replacement - specifically the DS1621+. I can find very little information on people using this as the primary backup destination for Retrospect Backup 17 (single server license). Will they work together?

Cheers,

 

Francis

[DavidHertzberg]

francisbrand,

I think on the Forums we're now supposed to say "Get a Drobo", since Retrospect Inc. was acquired in June 2019 by StorCentric—which is also the parent company of Drobo (genuflects in the direction of San Jose CA 🤣  ).  However at the moment you can't get a Drobo—because of some kind of supply chain hangup, which—I have it on excellent recent insider authority—is a reason the release of Retrospect 18.0 has been postponed until 2Q 2021.

So here's the most recent thread in the Retrospect Forums discussing backing up to a Synology NAS—model number not specified.  Its OP says backing up to it is working fine; the thread concerns a problem with getting a -2265 error in connection with Grooming.  The last post in the thread, by the OP on 9 February, says "I guess at this point I need to upgrade to [Retrospect Mac] v17.5.x and hope that fixes this issue unless the group has any other suggestions."  Note that the cumulative Retrospect Windows Release Notes say, for the 17.5.0 Engine, "Grooming: Fixed issue where grooming fails under certain scenarios (#8700)"—which probably also applies to Retrospect Mac since the Engine is the same under the GUI hood for both variants.

Here's the Knowledge Base article for NAS backup, re-titled in 2020 to "How to Set Up Drobo for Retrospect Backup".  However the article existed in much the current form—but discussing the NAS in brand-independent terms—before the acquisition; it's now merely had some Drobo-specific information added within it, and the YouTube video "Retrospect for Mac: Setting up a NAS as a Backup Destination" linked to within it has now merely had the audio edited to add the term "Drobo".  (That illustrates the new  "get a Drobo" mindset of Retrospect "Inc.".)  If your "backup server" is booting Mojave or Catalina or Big Sur, pay attention to the "Full Disk Access on macOS Mojave and Catalina" section of the KB article.

Since it probably was some years since you set up a NAS as a destination, you may want to review a 2020 thread about that starting with this post by me.  The main take-away from that thread (you should, per my P.S.s, ignore anything I said about the uniqueness of the "marker" file) is that your backups need to be—directly or hierarchically—stored inside a folder named "Retrospect".  In the third paragraph of this post further down that same thread, I quote another Forums expert as saying "The Retrospect folder can exist as a top level folder on any HDD connect [sic] directly to the Backup Server either internally or externally. On an SMB share (e.g. Samba on a NAS) the Retrospect folder must reside in a share folder ....".  That means you can't rely merely on the NAS share folder being named "Retrospect", as one administrator did.  And use SMB 2 or 3; SMB 1 isn't supported anymore.