Filed under: Enterprise, Software
Retrospect 8 for Mac ships, backup admins do dance of joy
You can find Mac applications that have been around longer than Retrospect, but not many that have the same ratio of copies installed to jobs/sanity saved. The venerable backup tool, now in its third decade and published by EMC Insignia (original developer Dantz was acquired a few years back) has been revitalized in version 8, now shipping, with scores of features that bring it to reasonable parity with the Windows version of the app.
The new Retrospect, which EMC previewed at Macworld Expo, breaks the administrative UI away from the underlying backup engine and allows backup managers to control multiple instances of the tool from one console. Simultaneous execution is supported now, along with advanced disk-to-disk backups, faster catalog rebuilds, single-write/multi-read operation, improved networking and tape drive support, and media & catalog cross-platform compatibility with the Windows 7.6 version. Video tutorials for the new v8 are here.
Retrospect 8, for the moment, only runs on Intel machines but can be used to back up PowerPC clients (PPC support is coming in a near-term update, the company says). Pricing starts at $129US for the Desktop edition with support for 3 client machines (a maintenance plan adds $120), and ranges up to $1700 for the Multi-Server, Unlimited Client version; there are also Single Server 20-client and unlimited client licenses available at intervening price points. Upgrade pricing is available through the EMC site.
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Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
drshdw said 12:41PM on 3-23-2009
Pricing is cheaper if you buy through 3rd party vendors. Much cheaper.
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SubGenius said 1:32PM on 3-23-2009
I always found Retrospect to be craptastic at best.
Every version was buggy and every new version fixed the previous bugs and added new ones.
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VZ1W said 1:41PM on 3-23-2009
We use a program called Restored for our backups and it works flawlessly. It takes super fast incremental backups and doesn't require any weekly full backups. It's also much cheaper than Retrospect. You can download from http://www.alpcorp.com/restored
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Bogey said 2:37PM on 3-23-2009
In case you missed it, this is an Apple focused blog-site - "Restored" is for Windows. I don't see a Mac version there.
rocco said 2:46PM on 3-23-2009
thanks for the link to a "seemless backup for Windows" application
I moved our company away from Retrospect years ago when Dantz/EMC seemingly abandoned the application. I finally got tired of the relentless corrupt catalog's and switched to BRU. After a little learning curve, its light years ahead of Retrospect.
Jinto said 2:01PM on 3-23-2009
woah! Gigantic picture, for a blog post/ the way it is formatted.
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Eric said 8:04PM on 3-23-2009
I hate retrospect, ever since it wiped out a backup because it couldn't contact a server I have jumped ship. Netvault wasn't much better but it was a hodgepodge of hardware and software. I LOVE my Revinetix system, faster, cheaper and easily expanded and very reliable.
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Randall Crocker said 2:00PM on 4-21-2009
I agree. Others can check out the Revinetix Total Disk Backup Appliance at http://www.revinetix.com There is a great case study on the Revinetix website about Juan Diego High School that uses the Revinetix Disk2Disk2Disk backup solution to protect their network of Apple Mac computers.
Navarro Parker said 1:35PM on 3-25-2009
I moved away from Retrospect about 5 years ago when a drive took a dump and it couldn't get a bootable restore from AIT tape. Never again, Retrospect!
Now I drive clone with Super Duper. Never had a problem.
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Bart van Belle said 4:09PM on 4-28-2009
Note that Retrospect Server runs on 10.4.11, but the console app does NOT (it needs 10.5). Whoever thought of that as a solution should be flogged. Repeatedly.
I installed Retrospect 8 Server on the server and after 20 seconds the server crashed.
I restarted the server and Filemaker Server (on the same machine) did not start.
I went to my own machine, installed Retrospect Console and connected to the server to setup Retrospect Server. The console could not connect to the server.
The machine became unresponsive and crashed again.
I restarted the server, Filemaker was still not starting, Remote Desktop to the server stopped working and I could not stop Retrospect Server from System Preferences. Retrospect had 3 cores running at 100%.
I toggled the Retrospect Server option not to start at startup and rebooted.
So far, Retrospect (6 or 8) is the ONLY app that has crashed my server EVER. I can live with 6, since I can avoid most of the crashes by now.
You NEED to avoid 8.
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jmm said 1:37PM on 5-26-2009
*** Retrospect 8 Means Not Looking Back ***
EMC's announcement of Retrospect 8 for Mac highlights some "Important Information", namely that it doesn't run on PowerPC Macs, but that "of course" It still backs up PowerPC clients. So you figure they've disclosed the major limitations, and if you're on an Intel Mac you're OK to upgrade.
You would be wrong. Once you've purchased the software, you find out, either by trying to use it or by reading all the way to the bottom of the Read Me file that v8.0 will not recognize -- will not append to or restore from -- backups created with previous Retrospect versions! Is it not fundamental to a backup program to be backwards compatible? Apparently not. I'm supposed to keep using my old Retrospect 6.1 to append to and restore from my existing (large) set of AIT-5 tapes, and spend $3,000 for another set of backup tapes for use with v8.0.
Retrospect 8 will not import clients or scripts from previous Retrospect versions, and cannot access backup sets created by previous versions. It is not an "upgrade" in the usual sense: it is a different program, related to previous versions only by similarity of function and EMC's hope that existing users will buy it and only later discover the trouble and expense required to make use of it.
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