Retro 8: Disk set vs file; proactive; slow backup speed

[mduke]

I'm playing with the 30-day free demo of Retro 8 on Leopard server (10.5.8). Am wondering what the advantages of disk set versus file are (always used file in Retro 6).

 

Also, what am I missing about Proactive? I'm not seeing where I can effect this, or is this something that strictly works in the background with no admin intervention. Yah, I should do more research online, I suppose, but since I'm still demo'ing, I was hoping for an quick answer on that, since there's nothing in the "Retro 8 Getting Started" pdf about this, other than a general overview statement.

 

Finally, I notice that backups seem to be rather slow (often as low as 48Mb/M), this despite doing it on a Quadcore MacPro, 8G RAM, over T100 (University campus) network, all on machines in the same subnet (same building, too). Perhaps Disk Set would be faster, I'm wondering. If so, certainly worth trying that out.

[rhwalker]

Yes, it's very slow, that's a known issue and EMC is believed to be working on that. Another update expected mid-May with lots of fixes.

 

Regarding Disk vs. File, you need to unlearn everything you knew from Retrospect 6.x. Use Disk now, hard to see any reason to use File any more with the new design.

 

As to the Proactive stuff, did you glance at the Users Guide?

Retrospect 8 Users Guide

 

Russ

[mduke]

Just getting around to reading the guide now. If the guide doesn't explain the differences and why to use "disk," can you tell me why?

 

Thanks for the info on the upgrade. Maybe I'll wait for that to come out before I actually purchase 8 (just beta testing the demo for now, but right off it seems to work a helluva lot better than 6, hallelujah, and is much more intuitive as well).

Edited April 14, 2010 by Guest

[rhwalker]

If the guide doesn't explain the differences and why to use "disk," can you tell me why?

For starters, from the Getting Started Guide:

 

Improved Backup to Disk

 

Retrospect has always been able to backup to hard disks attached to the Retrospect server, but Retrospect 8’s disk handling abilities are greatly improved, due to the introduction of the vastly more flexible Disk Media Set. This new type of Media Set allows you to combine multiple disk volumes, including direct and network-attached hard disk drives, removable cartridge drives, and even flash media, into a single destination for your backups. You can now specify the amount of space on a disk that is allowable for use by a media set.

From the Retrospect 8.1 Read Me:

 

Key features of EMC Retrospect 8

 

Disk Media Sets allow grouping of multiple direct- and network-attached disk resources into a single backup destination, with complete support for spanning backups across multiple disks. Disk Media Sets replace Removable Disk Backup Sets.

 

Periodic grooming of Disk Media Sets recovers space on the backup media by removing outdated files. Users can choose how many past backups to save.

 

Russ