EMC Dantz's Retrospect 7.0 for Windows is a powerful application that can help your company to produce automated, reliable, and cost-effective backups on disk, tape, or optical media. The software is now easier to use than previous versions, with wizards to guide you through the setup process, and includes a backup-to-disk feature that makes a copy to tape for disaster recovery purposes. It also allows you to create synthetic full backups from incremental backups, supports fibre channel, iSCSI and write one, read many (WORM) tape, supports Red Hat and SuSE Linux and Mac OS X, and offers message-level protection of Exchange files. Lastly, security has been bolstered to 128-bit encryption, making Retrospect 7.0 highly recommended for individuals and enterprises.

Pros: Easy to use; powerful; supports WORM tape; 128-bit encryption
Cons: Array of editions likely to confuse


Retrospect 7.0 is comprehensive backup and recovery software backing up Windows, Macintosh, Linux, and Solaris computers. Available in six editions, depending on whether you want to backup workstations or servers (and the number of each), the latest version of the software incorporates new and enhanced features that make backing up and recovering easier and more effective for both small and midsize businesses, and home users.

Retrospect Multi Server (£904 ex. VAT, reviewed here) sits at the top of the range and is designed for businesses with three or more servers. It provides licenses to protect an unlimited number of networked servers, desktops, and laptops, whereas Retrospect Single Server (£297 ex. VAT) is designed for a business protecting up to two servers. This version of the software provides licenses to protect one server and an unlimited number of networked desktops and laptops.

Retrospect Small Business Server Premium suits a business with a server running Windows Small Business Server Premium edition. It provides licenses to protect the server in addition to networked desktops and laptops. Licenses can be purchased to protect additional networked servers. Retrospect Small Business Server Standard is designed for a business with a server running Windows Small Business Server Standard edition. It provides licenses to protect the server as well as networked desktops and laptops.

There's even an edition for home users, Retrospect Professional (£67.90 ex. VAT), and Retrospect Disk-to-Disk can be used to back up to disk and optical media. The latter provides a licence to protect a single server backing up to disk, CD, or DVD only, although licenses can be purchased to protect additional networked servers, desktops, and laptops.

All versions of Retrospect 7.0 for Windows can be extended with optional add-ons to meet the specific needs of your business environment. Add-ons provide open file backup, advanced tape support, disaster recovery, additional client support, and advanced protection for Microsoft Exchange Server and Microsoft SQL Server.

Server client licenses are available to add protection for networked servers or increase the number of networked servers already being protected. Server client licenses can be purchased for Retrospect Single Server, Small Business Server Premium, Small Business Server Standard, and Disk-to-Disk editions.

The Exchange Server Agent and Microsoft SQL Server Agent add-ons now include a server client license, which allows a backup server running Retrospect Single Server, Small Business Server Premium, Small Business Server Standard, or Disk-to-Disk to protect a separate server running Exchange Server or Microsoft SQL Server.

Whether you are protecting a home network or a business environment running a heterogeneous network of servers, desktops, and laptops, Retrospect 7.0's intuitive, easy-to-use wizards guide you through the product and make it easy to perform reliable, automated data backups. Although the software is aimed at business, you really don't need to be an IT manager to use it.

It uses an archival method of backup called progressive backup that helps to ensure backed up files are not deleted or written over until you request it. This way, they stay on the disk, tape, or CD/DVD indefinitely, which is useful if you discover you have been backing up bad files as you can easily retrieve the good version of the file.

This is also an important benefit of Retrospect that is not found in 'disk mirroring' software - you don't have to specify a 'full' or incremental' backup because Retrospect, by default, copies any and all files it hasn't backed up.

Retrospect 7.0 organises media into backup sets, which are transferred to backup media and tracked for subsequent backups and restores. A backup set transfer copies the contents of one backup set to a new or existing backup set to protect against media failure, to provide offsite storage, or to start a new cycle of backups.

When Retrospect 7.0 performs a backup set transfer, it moves only the files and folders required to make the two backup sets identical, saving considerable time. Previously, Retrospect transferred the entire contents of the source backup set to the destination backup set.

You can now create a new full backup by selecting data from existing full and incremental backups without affecting users, applications, or the network, and opt to have a disk backup set automatically groomed by Retrospect 7.0. Data grooming deletes older data stored in the disk backup set in order to make room available for files and folders currently being backed up.

Older restore points are released to ensure that new backups will always fit within the allotted disk space without intervention. By archiving older backup data to offsite tape and enabling disk grooming, you can backup data without having to continually add or readjust the allotted disk space.

Retrospect 7.0's new filters lets you include or exclude types of data for backup. New selectors include standard Windows folders, office documents, operating system and application folders, and the most popular file extensions for music, movies, and pictures.

It now supports backups to fibre channel and iSCSI-attached tape drives or libraries, and support has been added for clients running the latest versions of Red Hat Linux (8.x, 9.x, and Enterprise Linux 3), SuSE Linux (8.0, 9.2), and Solaris (8, 9).

The software now also supports 128-bit AES (Advances Encryption Standard) encryption, which is stronger and faster to process than the 56-bit DES encryption standard it replaces, and displays TapeAlert and DLTSage alerts in the Events tab of the Activity Monitor (also adds them to the Operations Log).

You can now select multiple tapes and add them to a tape backup set in a single operation, making it easier to manage tape media pools in a tape library. Previously tapes had to be added one at a time. Multiple selected tapes can be scanned, erased, or moved in a single action.

Retrospect adds support for SAIT WORM, DLTIce (SDLT WORM), and LTO WORM drives in addition to the previously supported AIT WORM drives. All events are now added to the Windows Event Log so they can be monitored and displayed by third-party network administration applications, and there's now the option to e-mail reports.

The Microsoft Exchange Agent add-on can now backup and restore Public Folders at the message level and it performs faster verification when backing up to tape. Previously, Retrospect backed up each mailbox or public folder and then rewound the tape to perform verification. Now it waits until all mailboxes and public folders have been backed up before performing verification.

BIOS, Mar 09, 05 | Print | Send | Comments (0) | Posted In Backup