Backup Server script questions

[robsedor]

I am a long time Retrospect 6 user and have been backing up our OS X Tiger file server to tape using a 5 day rotation script. (No clients are being backed up.) Our tape drive has failed and we have decided to rotate 2 1 TB firewire external drives instead. The drives will be rotated on an irregular schedule, so Retrospect's Backup Server script option looks like the best choice for our situation. I've tried to RTM, but am confused about a number of issues.

 

1. I plan to set up backup sets on the 2 drives -- "Disk1" and "Disk2". Should these be set up File backup sets or Removable disk?

 

2. When I take Disk 1 offsite and connect Disk 2 with blank media, will Retrospect perform a full backup on Disk 2 automatically? Or do I need to do a new media backup using a regular Backup script first?

 

3. When I return Disk 1 to the backup rotation and take Disk 2 offsite, will Retrospect do an incremental backup to Disk 1 and include all modified files since the last Disk 1 backup?

 

4. When my backup disks (sets) are full, do I simply erase the drives or do I need to do a regular Backup script recycle? If I use the Recycle option, will the Backup Server script run incremental backups moving forward?

 

Thanks,

Robert

[safreeds]

1. I plan to set up backup sets on the 2 drives -- "Disk1" and "Disk2". Should these be set up File backup sets or Removable disk?

 

I would create file backup sets. Each drive needs to have its own set. You can schedule Retrospect to write to a different backup set on each of your weeks

 

2. When I take Disk 1 offsite and connect Disk 2 with blank media, will Retrospect perform a full backup on Disk 2 automatically? Or do I need to do a new media backup using a regular Backup script first?

 

Since each drive needs to have its own backup set when you write to Disk 2 it's going to do a "full" the first time then just write incremental data from there on out.

 

3. When I return Disk 1 to the backup rotation and take Disk 2 offsite, will Retrospect do an incremental backup to Disk 1 and include all modified files since the last Disk 1 backup?

 

Retrospect will simply write the changes that have happened since the Disk 1 set was last connected.

 

4. When my backup disks (sets) are full, do I simply erase the drives or do I need to do a regular Backup script recycle? If I use the Recycle option, will the Backup Server script run incremental backups moving forward?

 

I would suggest gauging how long you can run each drive before it gets full.

 

As an example, let's say you have 500GB of data for your "full" backup. On subsequent incremental backups you back up ~10GB per day (just an example here). Given those numbers if you backup 5 days a week every other week you will fill the drive in approximately 4 months. (10GB/day x 10 (days a month since you are only backing up each drive 2 weeks out of the month) + 100 GB).

 

Your numbers will vary but you get the general idea. Once you know how much you need to backup and how big your daily backups are going to be you could schedule a recycle to happen before the drive becomes full. In the above example you could schedule a recycle to happen every other month to each of the drives and you wouldn't run out of space.

 

Hope this helps

[robsedor]

Thanks for the clarifications, ssafreed.

 

As a test, I did a normal backup to my empty backup set on Disk 1 and then ran the backup server script. The subsequent backup server incremental backups worked as you indicated in your post.

 

Robert