Multiple Servers Accessing Same Media Set?

[ferthalangur]

We are evaluating Retrospect 8.1 for Mac and wondering whether it is possible for two Retrospect Engines to both access the same Media Set.

 

We will have two physical locations, each with a dedicated backup server running Retrospect Engine. What we want to do, for disaster planning purposes, is to occasionally cross-copy a Media Set from one location to the other. We would like to use the incremental Copy features built into Retrospect, so that updating the remote copy of the Media Set does not copy the entire backup set over the Internet -- just the updated files.

 

Is this at all possible?

 

_rob_

[rhwalker]

In a word, no.

 

What you are groping about for might be possible in the future, but not now. I suspect that it's one of the reasons that disk-based media sets are split into such small (optical media-sized) chunks.

 

Also, the media set database has no locking, and assumes exclusive access. Grave disorder will happen if two engines try to grope about in the media set at the same time.

 

When/if FTP (or whatever) support is added back in a future version of Retrospect, it might be possible to cobble together some hacks to do what you want, transferring pieces of the media set. However, if your media set has grooming activated, such that the media set is periodically compacted (groomed) to take out unneeded files, then everything changes, and everything might get duplicated to the replica.

 

Russ