Macrium Reflect 7.3 and why we are moving away from the Windows task scheduler.

Over the last few weeks, we have been working on replacing use of the Windows task scheduler (WTS). The release of Reflect 7.3 is the culmination of this work.

The WTS has served us well for many years. However, it is inherently limited and moving away from it has been on our long term roadmap. However, the increasing number of unresolved issues in the Windows scheduler implementation has forced our hand, specifically an outstanding issue with the switch from daylight saving.

As many developers have found, switching to a biannual Windows release schedule has negatively impacted the stability of some Windows components. We track the Windows 10 pre-releases to ensure that Reflect is always compatible with upcoming public Windows releases.

Can I trust the new scheduler? Yes; we are using the scheduler from Site Manger. This has been in public release for some years, reliably scheduling parallel backups of 100s of endpoints per instance. From the outset, Site Manager needed sophisticated scheduling to allow parallel backups with rate limiting and remote sync management.

The new scheduler will form a sound foundation for a number of features on our roadmap. It will also enable trouble free platform support all the way back to Windows XP.

The 7.3 release of Reflect is free for all version 7 license holders. While we strongly recommend you move to the new scheduler, support is retained for the WTS to ease migration. Please read the following KB for the technical details and how to migrate. https://knowledgebase.macrium.com/display/KNOW72/New+in+Macrium+Reflect+7.3

For details of other changes included in the Reflect 7.3 release, please see

https://updates.macrium.com/reflect/v7/latest_release_notes.asp

For Windows 10 / Reflect 6 users, you can get details about upgrading here https://www.macrium.com/upgrades.