In the meantime though, have you just tried using your email you use to log into the management console?

You're using Managed Connect? My apologies. I was confused and thought you were using Free/Pro. Ignore my previous statement.

I do not know why you are receiving an Activation Code message with Managed Connect. Are you saying you reached out to Support and could not get an answer? I'll check internally, but you are a paying managed customer and I'm not clear on why you were unable to get a resolution from the support team.

I believe I answered you in another post.

You can use your email or use the code. The code is on the download page when you download the agent from the web site. If you missed it, you can probably use the email you used when registering. Or download again and note the code.

What problem are you having?

You'll need to copy the backup data from the primary location to the secondary location on some schedule. You can use Microsoft Robocopy or other synchronization tools.

What's the reason for no encryption and compression? Are you looking to have the backup files accessible like native files?

We understand. While the loss of unattended access for true administrative reasons has been difficult for some Connect Free users, you can still help your uncle using attended access by joining an existing session. I assume if he’s using the computer, he will be able to devote a few minutes to help you get connected and help him manage the PC remotely and avoid a drive over.

That's the high level. The general rule of thumb is do not Synchronize unless you are instructed to do so by Support or if you've tried running a Consistency Check and that did not address the issue. Keeping in mind that Synchronizing the repository can be time-consuming depending on the number of objects in storage.

Please refer to this help article: https://help.msp360.com/cloudberry-backup/restore/about-restore/repository-sync

I'm not seeing any internal notifications about performance issues. Again, I'd recommend you open a support case to get it diagnosed as that's going to be difficult to do on the forums. Is the issue on a particular screen or all across the management console when you access it?

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You can restore perform file-level restores from Image Backups. That has always been supported. Having said that, it may not be the best format if you do not really need an image backup. If you're just backing up files, then the file backup format is best and it includes automatic backup consistency checks when using the new backup format. If a problem is found, a new full backup is run and you are alerted.

What's your retention set to? Retention is about how much backup data you need to keep. So if it's set to 3 days and you are running a Full + 2 Incremental backups and then repeating the process, on the fourth day the initial full is 4 days old, but you are keeping 3 days, and that full needs to be kept until it can safely be deleted while still maintaining the 3 days of retention.

The problem could be where the agent is installed at your customer. Plans are not stored in the management console. They are pulled real time from the agent.

I do not see any service issues noted internally, but you may want to open a support case if this continues to be a problem and you're pretty sure that the issue is not on the remote end where the agent is installed. Support can help analyze what's causing the latency.

If you need to back up files from three different network shares, then you'll need the server version even though you're running on Windows 10.

If the network shares are on non-server operating systems, then the other option is to get three desktop licenses and back them up to a share on the Windows 10 machine. If however any of the shares are on Windows servers, then this is not an option as they would require a server license.

A few points.
The new backup format supports VMs.
GFS is not required. If you want 90 days, set retention to 90 days and it will operate much like the legacy format.
The new format supports restore verification for image backups.
But you're correct that hybrid support is not available yet, so you'd need to run two backups for local and cloud.

Are you performing file or image backups?

If file, what's driving you to test a restore of a single file? Since the legacy format uses a different cloud object for each file, a test restore of one file, even a random one, only ensures that file can be restored. I'm not suggesting that there is going to be a problem restoring other files, but I am trying to understand the reason to run these test restores. With the new backup format, there is backup verification built-in. But with file backups, you may have an increase in storage, as you noted.

If you're running image backups, then the new backup format is far superior.

There is an API for the product, so you could try to automate in some way, programmatically.

Why not schedule restores across all clients that restore a single file? The impact to the client is negligible for a file restore.

Please review my comments to Justin above and tell me more about your situation.

Are you sticking with the legacy format or do you plan to move to the new backup format? If new backup format, you can use Restore Verification if what you're after is image restore verification. If you want to test a file-level restore from a VM or Image, then you can set up a scheduled restore that restores a single common Windows file.

Or, as an alternative, or for file-level backups, you can create a dummy file in the same location on every computer and make sure it's backed up . That way you can test restores if you need by restoring this dummy file.

But I have not run into any customers doing this. I've probably asked before, but what is your major concern? Is it image/VM backup with a broken incremental chain, a corrupted backup file, something else? Is it only for image/VM or are you concerned about file backups too?

Also, the new backup format performs backup consistency checks every backup to ensure the backup sets are in backup storage and they are the correct ones. That's an additional check that is not performed by the legacy format. In cases, where you have a full backup and chained incremental backups, the new backup format avoids backup set integrity issues (like a missing incremental) by performing this check and escalating to a new full backup if it detects an issue.

macOS support for managed Connect is in the works. I don't have a release date. However, if you needed to be able to connect into a remote macOS machine, the feature is available in the free version of Connect. Please refer to this article for more information: https://www.msp360.com/resources/blog/introducing-msp360-remote-desktop-free-to-access-remote-mac-devices

As far as macOS support in the RMM product, I believe that feature is already in progress. I'll try to get somebody from the RMM team to reply back here with more specifics.