Today I Cried

19 July 2006

EMC Retrospect anyone? Anyone?

I've asked far and wide and there is very little information to be had on Yosemite. The few reviews discovered online range from great to okay. I didn't see very much negative about the product but I didn't find very much at all.

A consultant pointed me towards EMC's Retrospect (info) (formerly Dantz Retrospect). The pre-sales rep at EMC told me that competative and non-profit pricing are offered. I'm assuming she's not mistaken but Retrospect, after discounts, comes out a hell of a lot cheaper than Backup Exec and Yosemite. One reason is that their Multi-server package allows for unlimited clients (!!??). For every other manufacturer, client licenses are additional. Also, EMC extends the discounts beyond the core product to the agents like those for Exchange and open files. Yosemite does the same but Symantec does not.

I have some more research ahead of me to make sure this is all kosher and Retrospect is a good choice. A quick Google search shows there is more to read about Retrospect than for Yosemite. Yes, it's true, I hate Symantec tech support this much.

Anyone have experience with EMC Retrospect? Your input would be appreciated. Anyone? Anyone? Bueller?

posted by Non-Profit IT Manager (MS) at 11:35

6 Comments:

  • We've been using Retrospect at our nonprofit for years.

    We use the OS X version, to back up mainly OS X machines (and a windows machine). It works quite well. Some have trouble figuring out the GUI and the various configuration options, and while they're not particularly straightforward, it's fine once you figure it out.

    I've never had trouble with it, and have done a handful of restores, with no problems.

    The newest windows version is better that the current OS X one; it can now do disk-to-disk-to-tape, which may be important depending on your setup.

    Configuring email notification can be a pain, it doesn't send emails natively but on OS X it uses AppleScript and a mail client to do so. Not sure what the windows version does.

    I found it to be a solid and affordable, though I'm considering moving to BRU, mainly due to lack of D2D2T

    By Anonymous Anonymous, at 20 July, 2006 16:13  

  • I used retrospect for years at a 50 user NPO and loved it.

    I have found people familiar with other back up programs find the model it uses difficult to get their head around sometimes. But it's just different, not bad.

    I never had any problems with backing up or restoring - it was great. Good defaults, lots of flexibility, and a good logging and reporting so you can double check what you think you've done :-)

    Not sure about all the add-ons like exchange server and such. I was mainly grateful for its ease of use over mixed Mac/Windows platforms.

    Keep up the blog - it's hugely helpful to your colleagues struggling in similar situations.

    By Anonymous Anonymous, at 21 July, 2006 22:23  

  • I've been using Retrospect Workgroup Backup on OSX for about 3 years at Friends of the Mississippi River, backing up between 8 and 12 workstations in that time. Generally, it has served well, but needs to be checked periodically -- the occasional backup file corruption is a big drainer, but if you test your backups weekly (I do it by requesting a "random file" from a different staff person each week to restore). Retrospect's old "wake clients from sleep to backup" is gone, so until I implement some suggestions camping in my e-mail, people are leaving their computers wide awake all night -- sucks for saving power. Overall, I'd give it a 7 out of 10.

    By Anonymous gabe, at 24 July, 2006 23:22  

  • I've been using Retrospect 7.0 Single Server for about 1,5 years in a small environment (~10 clients, backups to server disk and iSCSI SAN). When it works it seems good but it has quite a few unstable parts. Grooming backup sets occasionally ends up making the backup sets unusable, and there are no solutions to many existing problems in the program.

    Overall, I wouldn't buy it again. Backups are just too important to trust to a program that may fail unexpectedly at any time.

    By Anonymous Anonymous, at 22 September, 2006 09:15  

  • Well I've tried several and retrospect IMO is by far the best. Acronis True Image is about the worst thing I've ever used, it's bloated bugware! Tech support answers some of my emails over 2 weeks after I sent them!

    By Blogger Matt, at 23 May, 2008 19:30  

  • We are currently using retrospect fot approx 30 servers and 40 users. I definitively hate retrospect:
    - poor or absent documentation
    - poor tech support
    - error logs almost not human redable ;-)
    - easy backup set corruption, catalog corruption
    - the requested attention is far more higher than other solutions
    - actions to take are too often required
    - it hangs
    - the clients are crap. they crash frequently

    Ok is a partisan spirit, but after 2 years in production I cannot sleep the night and I dream about the replacement (Bacula)

    By Anonymous Anonymous, at 09 October, 2008 02:32  

Post a Comment

Links to this post:

Create a Link

<< Home