Though it may appear at first glance that all of our attention is being spent on Retrospect 8 for the Mac, we are concurrently developing Retrospect 7.7 for Windows.
Retrospect 7.7 will use the new universal Retrospect engine that was developed simultaneously for Windows and Mac, but it will continue to have the familiar Retrospect 7.6 user interface. (An updated user interface and separate management console will be provided as part of a later release.)
Version 7.7 will be the first Retrospect release available as a 64-bit application, which will allow Retrospect to overcome existing 32-bit memory addressing limitations. This release will also add official support for Windows 7 and Snow Leopard, as well as new functionality in two critical areas: VMware integration and Disaster Recovery.
New VMware integration will employ pre and post scripts to initiate a VCB snapshot of any running VM and allow Retrospect to back up either the guest OS file system or the VM image files while the VM is in a quiesced state. This provides two methods to back up running guest OSes that Retrospect does not have today.
For version 7.7, Retrospect's existing Disaster Recovery technology will be supplemented with a Microsoft Windows Preinstallation Environment (WinPE) boot technology. The WinPE technology method will be used for all XP/2003 and later OSes. Instead of requiring the Retrospect administrator to create a custom boot CD for each computer they wish to be able to recover from bare metal, the WinPE method will allow for a single, generic boot disc to provide bare metal recovery for any computer supported by WinPE.
Future blog entries will detail each of these new capabilities.