general question

[RickCebu]

All,

 

 

 

I am looking into the Retrospect product and am wondering if anyone here who is a more veteran user can give us a general idea if our needs can be addressed by Retrospect, given our circumstances.

 

 

 

Here is our situation:

 

We are on Novel LAN with Windows 2000 desktop. We have tape backups of our entire office done regularly by our remote headquarters staff.

 

However, we have a need for some users who need to do regular backups at their own convenience.

 

They have large files they save to their local drives since their granted network home drive sizes are limited.

 

We need to backup these files.

 

 

 

Individual local tape or CDRW drives are out of the question due to cost, end-users with limited technical savvy, limited support staff, etc...

 

We cannot install programs directly on the servers since these are ultimately maintained by HQ staff, who restrict the local LAN staff

 

from installing software.

 

 

 

Can a dedicated workstation on the network be setup and used as a the host or pseudo-"server" to which the CD-RW drive can

 

be connected and be accessed by the users?

 

 

 

If all this is possible, is it a fairly simple operation to install? Is it reliable and easy to use for support

 

staff and especially for end-users. In general, what does the end-user need to do when they decide they want something

 

backed up to CD-RW.

 

 

 

I do not have any experience with a CD-RW drive on the network and am wondering how easy/realiable it is under Retrospect.

 

 

 

I apologize if this seems to be a inquiry that maybe more suited to sales but I wanted feedback from the end-users who

 

have real-world experiences. The sales information on Dantz's web-site did not address these specific concerns.

 

 

 

Any positive or negative feedback is appreciated. Thanks to all.

 

 

 

-Rick

 

Network Admin.

 

Chicago

[lv2ski]

>>>Can a dedicated workstation on the network be setup and used as a the host or pseudo-"server" to which the CD-RW drive can be connected and be accessed by the users? >>>

 

 

 

No. Retrospect cannot do this. You have to backup to the device that is on the same machine that Retrospect is installed on or send the data to a network drive (not device). The only option if you want your clients to initiate backup would be to put Retrospect Express on each of their machines so that they could run their own backup.

 

 

 

 

[galeran]

Here's what I'd do, Rick.

 

 

 

Get a PC (your "dedicated workstation on the network") running Retrospect Workgroup Backup. Doesn't have to be running W2k Server; W2k Pro is fine.

 

 

 

Install the Client on each client machine/workstation.

 

 

 

Create a single backup set to CD-R.

 

 

 

Create a script for *each* client to back up the appropriate files to this common backup set.

 

 

 

Have each user run his or her script when needed. Just select it from the "Run" menu and insert disks as needed.

 

 

 

If the users won't have physical access to the Retrospect Backup machine, you could use a remote control program like VNC (http://www.uk.research.att.com/vnc/) to let users run the scripts from their own desktops.

 

 

 

If you have someone on staff who's very good with Windows 2000 Scripting (I bought the book but haven't had time to read it!), I'll bet there's even a way to call a Retrospect script from Visual Basic for Applications. This could even be called from a little web server you could host on the machine (W2K Pro comes with a limited version of IIS5... can run ASP, Perl, PHP, etc.). But I'd probably use VNC unless letting these users have access to everyone's backed up files was a big security concern. Plus then they can see the reqeusts for media on their screen...

 

 

 

Note that CD-Rs don't hold a lot, so if the users don't have physical access to this machine, someone will probably have to be nearby to switch disks anyway. (And that someone might also wind up being the recipient of a lot of "please run my backup script" requests.)

 

 

 

You would need to be running a Retrospect-supported protocol on your network. TCP/IP is a good choice, I think. Not sure if Retrospect clients would do Novell by itself.