EMC Retrospect 7.5 Updated With New And Improved Features, Better Automation

Unless you live under a log, any reseller or solution provider in the storage and backup business should be familiar with, or at least have heard of, EMC’s Retrospect backup and recovery software. The software is designed for SMB use and distributed enterprises. While these environments might not be as complex as enterprise settings, data protection is every bit as important. But because these environments likely don’t have extensive internal IT staffs, and thus aren’t equipped to run complex backup and recovery applications, EMC Retrospect is designed to make managing backups as simple and as automated as possible. The news is that the newly updated Retrospect 7.5 has been upgraded with new features that make data protection more thorough and easier than ever before.

EMC Retrospect runs on a Windows computer, but it can provide data protection for networked computers running Windows, Mac OS, Red Hat Linux, Suse Linux and Solaris. Retrospect also provides online data protection for critical applications including Microsoft Exchange Server and SQL Server. The software is easy to install and manage. The administrator is led through the setup, backup, restore and media duplication operations by helpful wizards.

The software automatically recognizes servers, desktops and notebooks when they connect to the network so the administrator doesn’t have to keep track of them. Backups can be scheduled to run individually, in groups, on specific days and times and so on. Computers that aren’t connected at scheduled backup times are given top priority backups when they do connect. Filters can be set to prevent certain types of media, such as music and video, from being backed up.

To reduce storage costs, Retrospect performs incremental backups where only changes made since the last backup are recorded. If identical files are found, only one copy is backed up. Data compression squeezes as much as possible onto backup media, and media can be protected by 128-bit AES data encryption. Retrospect can perform backups using disk, tape or optical devices depending on performance, cost and restore priorities. Restoring data is as easy as backing it up. A Restore Wizard can create a recovery CD that will boot a system, restore its operating system and applications and reset user preferences.

Retrospect is designed for distributed enterprise, SMB and even SOHO use, and there are six versions of it depending on the application. Versions are available for single and multiple servers, the SMB and even SOHO use. All editions have been upgraded to Retrospect 7.5, which includes a host of new and improved features. Among these new features is an automated deployment of the Retrospect Client for Windows to multiple computers using Microsoft SMS, Active Directory Group Policy or other deployment tools. Also new is Automatic Updates, which automatically downloads software updates over the Internet whenever available.

Retrospect 7.5 can automatically scan the network for new clients that need to be backed up. In addition, users can now restore their own files without help from an administrator. Retrospect 7.5 also has improved support for Windows Server 2003 R2 for both 32- and 64-bit versions and improved support for Microsoft SQL Server 2005 for both 32- and 64-bit versions.

Company: EMC
Product: EMC Retrospect 7.5
Company Address: 176 South Street, Hopkinton, Mass., 01748
Phone: (508) 293-7238
Web Address: www.emc.com
MSRP: $399 to $1,449 depending on edition
Primary Distributors (U.S.): Ingram Micro, Tech DataThere’s also improved client support for Red Hat Enterprise Linux 4, Novell Linux Desktop 9 and Mac OS X 10.4 Tiger.