Mainly because you can't run the software on a NAS (you can use it as the backup "drive", but...). It's handy to have Retrospect running on a separate machine, especially so if Retrospect bombs horrifically or your tape drive needs to be restarted and is on SCSI, you can just restart that machine instead of kicking all your users off your file server.
BTW, those "500 GB" external drives are scary as hell. I wouldn't want my data on an unprotected RAID 0. Unless of course you're referring to an external RAID 5 array with 3 250 GB drives that uses FW800.
And, really nitpicky here, it's an Xserve. Not xServer. What do you think this is, an IBM list? ;-)
-----Original Message-----
From: Jason Johnson [mailto:email@hidden]
Sent: Mon 9/27/2004 7:23 PM
To: Tom Jacobs
Cc: email@hidden
Subject: Re: Retrospect and Xserve DP
I am just about to do a little testing, but in actual backup the task most
optimized by DP would be software compression since it appears to be the
single most CPU intensive portion of the backup (if you use it).
Bigger question. Why waste an xServer. I use a SP G5 xServer as a primary
file server but it is pretty much inactive from 8pm to 6am. What to do with
the rest of the time? I use a 500GB external FW800 drive (there are many
other potential configs including xRServer RAID). During the night the
server uses Retrospect and client software to back up itself (1.2GB/minute),
2 other apple servers (137MB max/minute), and 1 Win2K server (120MB
max/minute). The three remote servers are via 10/100 network. Yes you
could get RAID advantages from an xServer, sure you could have rack
restrictions, maybe your existing xServer is in constant use. If these are
your objections then consider a NAS at less than half the cost.
_Jason
__________________________________________
Jason Johnson
Technology Coordinator -- The Lowell School
1640 Kalmia Road, NW -- Washington, DC 20012
email@hidden -- (202) 577-2018
> From: Tom Jacobs <email@hidden>
> Date: Sat, 25 Sep 2004 22:57:53 -0700
> To: <email@hidden>
> Subject: Retrospect and Xserve DP
>
> Does anyone know if Dantz Retrospect gains any performance benefits when
> used with an Xserve dual processor machine rather than a single processor
> unit? I'm currently using my DP Xserve as a file server and backup server,
> but I want to get another Xserve and dedicate it for backups. Should I buy a
> DP unit or is a single processor unit sufficient?
>
> Tom
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