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Retrospect (software)

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For other uses, see Retrospect (disambiguation).

Retrospect is a family of software applications that back up computers running the macOS, Microsoft Windows, and Linux (and until 2019 classic Mac OS) operating systems. Designed "to fill the space between consumer backup products such as Time Machine and enterprise-grade software", it uses the client–server backup model.

The product is used for GUI-scripted backup in "mixed-platform networks", primarily by small and medium-sized businesses.

History

The software was first developed by Dantz Development Corporation in 1989, initially for the Macintosh platform and continuing later for Windows. With sales split evenly between the two variants and the Macintosh variant claiming 90% of its market, Dantz Development Corporation was acquired by EMC Corporation in 2004. In 2006 version 7.5, the refined first release of the Windows variant under EMC, added performance features needed by SMEs.

Acquisition by EMC, under its Insignia brand, led to the product being briefly mothballed when Insignia was shut down in 2007. It was revived in 2008 and transferred to EMC's new acquisition Iomega. A "premature" release of Retrospect 8 in 2009 undermined its market after Apple introduced its competing Time Machine in late 2007. In 2010, Retrospect was sold to Roxio, owned by Sonic Solutions, which was then in turn acquired by Rovi. Rovi decided that it was not a core business, but a team who had worked on the product approached Rovi with the idea of spinning out as a separate company. Retrospect, Inc. was formed by a core team most of whom had worked on the product for ten years or more. Retrospect 9 was introduced in 2012, to positive reviews.

In June 2019 the holding company StorCentric—which also owns Drobo—announced that it had acquired Retrospect Inc., which it will operate as an wholly owned independent subsidiary.

Standard features

Backup destinations
Termed Media Sets—can be on any of the usual consumer storage media, tapes or WORM tapes—with barcoding, or CD/DVD discs.
Backups
May use any of the usual consumer facilities and optimizations, be of subvolumes, Archive backed-up data by deleting it from a source drive.
Data sources beyond the usual filesystems
Email accounts can be backed up—globally deduplicated—and restored, or directly migrated and synced, for major services supporting IMAP. Avid Media Composer devices are supported as sources for backup, copy/duplicate, archive, and restore scripts.
Validation of backups and copies of backups—primarily oriented toward backups to tape
Comparing byte-by-byte or via MD5 digest; using saved MD5, can be a separate verification script run outside the scheduled "backup window". Volume-to-volume duplicates in OS format of the latest versions of files can—going beyond what can be done via OS—also be verified.
Proactive scripts
Are usually left running at times that are not in the scheduled "backup window", back up computers—frequently but not always mobile—transiently connecting to the network, determining backup priorities by an "AI" algorithm that uses a decision tree supplemented by linear regression. As of 2019 Proactive scripts can use a Storage Group, which is automatically expanded as necessary with a Media Set for each source machine-volume, as a destination—enhancing opportunities for multithreading sources without manual administrator bookkeeping.
Enterprise client-server Performance
Multithreaded backup server,disk-to-disk-to-tape capabilities that may incorporate file exclusion, creating synthetic full backups, automated data grooming with GDPR exclusion rules, block-level incremental backup, and "instant" scanning of non-APFS source volumes.
Enterprise client-server source file integrity
Backing up interactive applications, pausing/unpausing services via "script hooks".
Enterprise client-server User Interface
Administration Console, high-level/medium-term reports supplementing Administration Console, e-mailing operations notifications to chosen recipients, monitoring with "Retrospect for iOS", integration with monitoring systems via "script hooks",, and user-initiated backups and restores.
Enterprise client-server LAN/WAN/Cloud
Advanced network client support—which can be extended to "remote" clients anywhere on the Internet for Proactive scripts and user-initiated backups/restores, and facilitating reconfiguration for cloud seeding and large-scale recovery.

Editions and Add-Ons

Retrospect is sold with varying backup server capability levels, called "Editions", with non-expiring license–codes that cover one major version. The Edition is dictated by the number of "server OS" Macintosh/Windows computers being backed up; it in turn specifies a maximum number of client computers.

"Add-Ons", which activate additional backup server features via Edition-linked license codes, may also be purchased:

See also

Notes

  1. Termed Backup Sets in the Windows variant; could have been referred to as archive files, except that Retrospect has long used the term Archive to refer to a backup operation that deletes data from a source drive once its backup is complete.
  2. To be used, a Subvolume must be specifically defined to the Retrospect application as a name for a filesystem folder, and is therefore currently termed a Favorite Folder in the Macintosh variant.
  3. Exclusion and/or inclusion is done with Selectors in the Windows variant; this misleading term has been changed to Rules in the Macintosh variant.

References

  1. ^ Gripman, Stuart (27 March 2012). "Retrospect 9.0: powerful backup for professionals, organizations". MacWorld. Setting it up(WebDAV), Scheduling scripts(GUI scripting), Restoring(file-level deduplication, Proactive priorities). Retrieved 3 November 2017.
  2. ^ Kissell, Joe (2007). Take Control of Mac OS X Backups (PDF) (Version 2.0 ed.). Ithaca, NY: TidBITS Electronic Publishing. pp. 18-20 ("The Archive", meaning information repository, including versioning), 24 (client-server), 25 (additional client licenses), 82-83 (archive file), 126-141 (old Retrospect terminology and GUI—still used in Windows variant), 127 (Archiving operation in Retrospect), 128 (subvolume—later renamed Favorite Folder in Macintosh variant), 130-132 (Duplicate—later renamed Copy in Macintosh variant), 146(versioning), 165 (client-server). ISBN 978-0-9759503-0-2. Retrieved 4 May 2019.
  3. ^ Engst, Adam (6 November 2012). "Retrospect 10 Reduces Backup Time with Instant Scan Technology". TidBITS. TidBITS Publishing Inc. Retrieved 25 October 2016.
  4. ^ Engst, Adam (18 June 2010). "Retrospect Backup Software Acquired by Sonic". TidBITS. TidBITS Publishing Inc. Retrieved 12 September 2017.
  5. ^ Flynn, Laurie (25 September 1989). "Apple Bundles Tape Backup With Retrospect Software". InfoWorld. InfoWorld Media Group, Inc. p. 33. Retrieved 17 February 2019. ...will bundle Dantz Development Corp.s Retrospect backup and archiving software with the Apple Tape Backup 40SC... {{cite web}}: |archive-date= requires |archive-url= (help)
  6. Engst, Adam (1 July 1991). "Retrospect Conclusion". TidBITS. TidBITS Publishing Inc. Retrieved 25 August 2019.
  7. ^ Mitchell, Dave (24 July 2019). "Retrospect Backup 16 review: Virtually useless for virtual machines". ITPro. Dennis Publishing. Retrieved 28 August 2019.
  8. ^ DeLong, Derik (27 March 2012). "Retrospect's long and twisted road". MacWorld. Retrieved 4 October 2016.
  9. ^ Mitchell, Dave (20 April 2006). "EMC Retrospect 7.5 review". Alphr. Dennis Publishing. Retrieved 4 October 2017.
  10. Gallagher, Emily (25 June 2019). "StorCentric Acquires Retrospect, Inc. to Offer Enhanced Backup and Recovery Software Solutions". Retrospect. Retrospect Inc. Retrieved 24 September 2019.
  11. ^ Kissell, Joe (22 January 2019). "Take Control of Backing Up Your Mac: The Online Appendixes". JoeOnTech. Alt Concepts Inc. Software for Versioned Backups or Bootable Duplicates(Retrospect Desktop line). Retrieved 26 October 2019.
  12. Charles Edge; William Barker; Beau Hunter; Gene Sullivan (2010). Enterprise Mac Security: Mac OS X Snow Leopard. Apress. pp. 521–522. ISBN 978-1-4302-2730-4. Retrieved 6 September 2019.
  13. ^ "EMC Retrospect 8 for Macintosh". Ronver Systems. Ronver Systems. 17 October 2012. Retrieved 26 October 2019.
  14. Schmitz, Agen (7 September 2018). "Retrospect 15.5". TitBITS. TidBITS Publishing Inc. Retrieved 28 September 2018.
  15. ^ Schmitz, Agen (19 March 2018). "Retrospect 15.0". TitBITS. TidBITS Publishing Inc. Retrieved 22 March 2018. the BackupBot artificial intelligence feature
  16. ^ Schmitz, Agen (28 May 2018). "Retrospect 15.1.1". TitBITS. TidBITS Publishing Inc. Retrieved 20 June 2018.
  17. ^ Benjamin, Jeff (7 March 2017). "Retrospect 14.0 backup software for Mac released with Backblaze B2 support". 9TO5Mac. Retrieved 17 October 2019. I took the Mac app's beta version for a test spin in order to test out the Backblaze B2 integration, and it worked as expected. ...now features integration with several monitoring services. The systems include Nagios, Slack, and IFTTT. It's also bundled with Avid and LTFS Production Tool Support for production houses, and supports script hooks for deeper backup integration in complex ecosystems. The new software even allows IT managers to pause databases and other services, and relaunch those services after confirming that a backup is complete.
  18. ^ Dorian J. Cougias; E. L. Heiberger; Karsten Koop (2003). The Backup Book: Disaster Recovery from Desktop to Data Center. Lecanto FL: SV Books. pp. 322–323, 360. ISBN 0-9729039-0-9. Retrieved 12 September 2019. It's nice to be able to say "Please exclude files ...." Of course Retrospect has this ability becaus of their selector process .... Retrospect Open File Backup Agent ....waits and looks for a period of inactivity on each of the volumes.
  19. ^ Charles Edge; Chris Barker; Ehren Schwiebert; Ken Barker (2010). Beginning Mac OS X Snow Leopard Server: From Solo Install to Enterprise. Apress. pp. 551-552(grooming), 553(synthetic full backup via Copy Media Set). ISBN 978-1-4302-2772-4. Retrieved 7 September 2019.
  20. Schmitz, Agen (5 March 2016). "Retrospect 13". TitBITS. TidBITS Publishing Inc. Retrieved 27 October 2016.
  21. Schmitz, Agen (6 March 2014). "Retrospect 11". TitBITS. TidBITS Publishing Inc. Retrieved 27 April 2017.
  22. Schmitz, Agen (7 September 2017). "Retrospect 14.5". TidBITS. TidBITS Publishing Inc. Retrieved 17 October 2019. ...with support for MySQL, PostgreSQL, and MongoDB database protection via script hooks
  23. "Retrospect Announces Hybrid Data Protection with New Cloud Storage Support". ChannelPro Network. ChannelPro Network. March 2016. Retrieved 6 September 2019. Retrospect supports seeding options for the initial backup and large scale recovery for large restore scenarios.

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