Retrospect Backup Status Monitoring

February 27, 2007

Many of you have a DIFA at your site, and I have formally handed over the duty of routine monitoring of backups. To reduce your costs, I only maintain a very infrequent schedule (typically quarterly) of backup status review as a redundant check.

Here's a summary of the procedure and tasks:

• Launch the EMC/Insignia (formerly Dantz) Retrospect program.
• Click Activity Monitor button on toolbar to display activity monitor pane.
• Click History tab within Activity Monitor pane.
• Review the backup jobs:
  • Did all scheduled tasks take place as expected?
  • Any task showing a non-zero error count?
  • Double-click on the error entries to see the log to investigate causes.
    • Assess situation and notify me if necessary (err on the safe side!)
    • You may attempt to remedy these routine issues yourself:
      • File(s) open and were skipped (make sure users log off)
      • Missing/bad disc (I/O error, replace disc and retry)
      • Destination inaccessible (station wasn't left on at the time)
  • A zero under performance column indicates no file copying occurred. Either:
    • It's a progressive/incremental backup, and no change since last backup, or
    • The task failed to run due to errors.
• You must verify that your remedies are completely successful. Otherwise, call me.

NOTE: We can optionally setup Retrospect to automatically email you after each backup, reporting success or failure. This is in addition to (not a replacement of) the active monitoring, as they complement each others.