From the desk of: Sam C. Chan

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.

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