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EMC Buying Dantz
Bug-Y2K writes "Looks like storage giant EMC, is buying longtime Mac software company Dantz Develpment. Dantz, makers of Retrospect have been the leader in backup technology for the Mac OS since dinosaurs roamed the earth. Mindshare has been slipping of late but the product is known for being better at restores than anything out there. I wonder what lies in store for Retrospect now?"
EMC is in talks to buy Dantz, but nothing has been finalized yet.
However, usually somebody reporting that these types of discussions are going on means that it will happen, but as the article says "it's never done until it's done"
While Dantz is _the_ Mac backup software company, the reason why EMC is interested is because Retrospect for Windows is the only software with the exception of Veritas that can back up live NTFS filesystems, with or without Volume Shadow Copy support.
THIS THING CAN TURN ON A DIME, MACROSSZERO STYLE ALSO FUCK BETA, ~NYORON
I did a eval of backup solutions, and Acronis won hands-down for ease of use; it's saved me big time several times this year. I'm a very satisfied customer.
Well that's concerning, because if they're buying it for Windows features... well, the Mac stuff may be "de-prioritised"
Doesn't always have to be that way. Don't forget that Dantz was already developing it for both platforms. The good thing about Retrospect is that it worked pretty much the same way on both platforms. Also another reason for Retrospect's success on Windows is it's ease of use compared to Windows Backup (at least the one that came with NT4)
I've used Retrospect since the mid-nineties, and it's an OK but slightly limited product (also a bit slow), but the company has slowly started to piss me off. Dantz is starting to seem a bit arrogant, although aside from a couple unfortunate run-ins with "support," I can't quite put my finger on it.
Version 5 was advertised as supporting Windows and Macintosh servers and workstations, which was great because I still had an old AppleShare IP file server to backup, plus a couple windows and OS X boxes. Unfortunately version 5, despite being advertised as compatible with AppleShare IP, was not. Period. There was a known bug that Dantz said was Apple's fault (maybe it was, but version 4 didn't have the same problem...) that crashed the server every half hour or so. The workaround: use version 4. Dantz didn't give a flying &*#% that it didn't work once they had my money, and I was stuck with a few hundred dollars of unusable software. Plus they were jerks in the smuggly arrogant way they told me I was SOL.
Well, finally the Appleshare IP server was gone so I optimistically thought I might be able to finally use version 5. No dice. It's basically not compatible with OS X, and definitely not compatible with OS X 10.3, and really definitely not at all compatible with 10.3 Server.
Unfortunately at this point due to circumstances beyond my control I had to get X 10.3 Server integrated with the rest of the backups in a hurry, so I grudingly purchase version 6. But when I go to install it I'm told I don't have a valid software key. The key included with the product doesn't work, neither does the key from the old version, nor anything else remotely key-like that I can find. A gruff dude at Dantz tells me definitively and mockingly that I don't need a key to install the upgrade. Except the upgrade won't launch without a key. Ok. Call back Dantz. They make an enormous fuss about it being an upgrade and how I didn't register the previous version, and how could I possibly have an upgrade if I hadn't registered by previous copy? I told them that the previous copy didn't work, I never used it, and that there was no clearly apparent reason to fill out the registration card anyway (do people actually register retail software?). Then I was told to use my old registration key (the one that didn't work). "Are you sure it doesn't work?" Yes. I was told I'd be sent a new registration key by email in a couple minutes. Carefully verified email address. Waited...next day no key. Call back Dantz. Explain the situation again. The customer service rep is shocked and amazed that it's possible to buy an upgrade to their product from a retailer. I eventually convince her I did not download the upgrade and that I did not receive a key in an email with the software that I did not download. I explain that I was told I'd receive a key in an email that should have been sent the day before. Then I'm told, there's no record of a key being sent. (Eureka! I think we were starting to communicate.) She promises to send a key...and against all odds it finally arrived.
Now I'm successfully using the product, but the company exudes a smelly fog of bumbling arrogance. So far it doesn't seem to have hit their programming team, but I'm not impressed. Especially with so many other backup solutions out there, of varying price & capability, I hesitate to recommend the product to others.
Dantz owns a patent, 5,150,473 Data storage format for addressable or sequential memory media which essentially covers the use of a on-disk catalog to record what is written to tape for faster retrieval and creating incrementals. This patent can be very cumbersome for companies trying to enter the Mac OS X backup market. With that said, there are quite a few backup solutions available or coming to Mac OS X - BakBone, Avail, SGL, Tolis Group, and more. I know that the Tolis Group doesn't use a catalog the same way and doesn't do point-in-time incremental snapshots like Retrospect does. I don't know if anyone else coming to Mac OS X does. It is rumored that OmniGroup's OmniBackup was killed over this patent issue. Too bad, since that was the only tape backup application for Mac OS X Server at the time.
EMC^2 also bought Legato last year, aother Backup Company, and Legato NetWorker has also (somewhat limited) backup support ... coincidence?
Exercise caution when modding this message up: the author acts like a jerk when his karma is excellent.
I bought Retrospect about a year and a half ago to do incremental backups of non-system and non-media files to cd-r's. It was a massive pile of steaming crap. It does not want to do anything but full drive backups. Ever time I did a backup, it would just keep asking for more disks to write on (a backup that was estimated at 6 disks ended up at 14). It was constantly making coasters (about 65% success rate with my Pioneer DVR-104 on good brand name media, which has never made a coaster in any program but Retrospect). And when I went back to verify a previous backup, it declared the whole set corrupted. It did not inspire confidence in me that my backups were being done correctly and would be useable when I needed them.
.Mac stuff too). But it always works. If I want incremental, I'll use build a Linux file server and run Rync on my Mac. And if they do kill Retrospect for Mac, maybe Apple will add some of the higher end features to Backup to take its place.
They released two pay-for-upgrades in that year and a half, while not releasing any new device drivers (or driver updates) for their older versions. I was told that I should try newer drivers for my DVR-104 and that it might make fewer coasters, but I would have to pay for an upgrade just to try them.
I switched to Apple's Backup. Its not as full featured, it doesn't do incremental and I do pay an annual fee (but it includes all
Dell has been promising for about 3 months now (I've seen "beta" sales presentations) to come out with a line of fiber-channel and SCSI-attached S-ATA arrays. But they keep pushing it back, probably because they know the margins are higher on the SATA-based NAS and full SCSI arrays.
We gave up and bought about 14 nStors. Never been happier.
THIS THING CAN TURN ON A DIME, MACROSSZERO STYLE ALSO FUCK BETA, ~NYORON
so far this is not retropects fault as any differential backup syste has this weak link. But what pissed me off was that I could not get the program to let me revert to an earlier backup and then try to partly recover files from the more recent and readable disks. on a good system I should have been able to recover what was recoverable, not just lose it all because one earlier disk could not be read.
So that was the last time I used it. No instead I only do backward diffs not forward diffs. This way the most recent version is always the most easily recovered without having wad back through old disks. And I only store my backup files in native file format. That way if all goes wrong I can use any operating system that can read the disks to get back my files. I'm not beholden to one company's program and it's limitations.
The money I saved on retrospect went into buying large firewire drive for the reverse diffs and then I only use DVDs now for archiving the ancient reverse diffs as my firewire drive fills up. Who needs retrospect.
Perhaps if I still used tape drives I'd want to use retrospect.
Some drink at the fountain of knowledge. Others just gargle.
Dantz didn't know that Retrospect 5.0 would crash AppleShareIP servers until shortly after the product shipped. Much scrambling and cursing in the testing lab ensued, but finally it was confirmed that the newer API's that Apple was providing were at fault, and that there was no way the end-of-lifed ASIP would be updated to support these newer calls.
At that point it became company policy to provide a refund to any buyer who got bitten by this bug. I know that for a fact.
The first release of version 5.x was qualified for use with Mac OS X 10.1.5. Point updates followed, with the final build (5.0.238) released to get around problems that were introduced by changes in 10.2.
Retrospect for Mac OS X has had to play catch-up with Apple's changes to the OS. Major changes would sometimes be introduced by the OS vendor between beta builds. Retrospect 5.1 under OS X 10.3 had issues which couldn't be addressed until version 6.0, etc.
After reading this, and generally being a little let down by MacOS backup solutions, I'm very glad 10.4 will give proper support for rsync.
Don't blame me, I voted for Baltar.
I never bothered upgrading from version 5. I was very irritated with v.5's inability to run scheduled backups, which is why I bought the software in the first place. I had to run a cron job just to launch the program. There was no support, no fix. Just a new version which required new money. As OSX has aged, v.5 hasn't aged well with it. Now the operation log frequently locks because Retrospect doesn't exit cleanly and I need to cold boot in order to free it (Haven't figured out how to do that any other way. Any tips?) Requiring people to purchase upgrades in order to fix buggy software is poor customer support. It erodes customer loyalty. I didn't realize they had such a broad stranglehold on Mac backup solutions because of that patent. That explains their arrogance. Being bought out may be good for Retrospect in the long run IF the code is sold, not the development team. At least we can hope. I have to admit that the move to OSX has broken many companies. I have been surprised at how companies like Dantz and Palm haven't dedicated ample resources to embrace the new regime. ;)
Fun with Inkwell | www.coo
until "The Great Hard Drive Crash of 1999". Which was followed by "The Great Failure of Retrospect To Restore My Data."
I'd done several backup/restore tests to ensure everything worked fine, and it did. But when the sh*t hit the fan and I REALLY needed it to come through for me, it failed to do the job it was designed to do. I've never used it since, nor will I ever consider trying it again.
For you Star Trek fans: Fool me once, shame on me, fool me twice...
I don't even bother with traditional backups anymore. I just periodically copy important data to another system or burn it off to disk.
Retrospect is and has been crap for years and years and years. it is impossibly naive about how networks work, just for starters. does unnecessary prep work before beginning that makes backups run ridiculously long... and on my machine, it just loops and loops ad infinitum after the backup is done, with no indication of what it's doing. Tech support and customer service have been dismal, insulting, rude. All in all, this is a very privileged, pretty rich company that thinks it's on top of the world. EMC would be better off hiring a couple of programmers to build and deploy a decent replacement for this train wreck of a product.
Has anyone had direct experience using Amanda under OS X? I know of windows support & assume that, at the very least, samba could be a work-around. I'm particularly interested in a native approach, as discussed here, but wanted to know whether more people had tried (and succeeded!).
I am looking for a cross-platform backup solution, but the per-seat charges on all proprietary solutions are a bit prohibitive (the hardware was hard enough to obtain!).
Hopefully we'll see a 'consumer' version of Networker, which is way overpriced for at home. [I was priced almost $2k for the OS X support pak. For three machines? No thanks.]
1) Obvious they are just reprovisioning their PowerEdge servers. ::shakes head::
2) Powering it with Windows NT 5.2 with some bullshit Microsoft-supplied NAS configuration patches.
I mean, how retarded is that? All the loveliness of a full-blown windows install with half the ability to configure it properly... it's the worst of both worlds.
3) NOBODY USES WINDOWS FOR FILE-SERVING. I mean, I suspect even Microsoft knows that. They call DFS a filesystem, but it's nothing like that. It's implemented by just storing UNC paths in AD... so you can arrange some (anything-else-but Windows) boxes using Samba and use DFS to patch it up on the client side.
THIS THING CAN TURN ON A DIME, MACROSSZERO STYLE ALSO FUCK BETA, ~NYORON
Why is it that PowerQuest or any of those other tools are not able to do differentials or backup the system drive or do anything remotely useful like Dantz has managed to do with your technology?
THIS THING CAN TURN ON A DIME, MACROSSZERO STYLE ALSO FUCK BETA, ~NYORON