Arkeia Network Backup Version 8 Available

At the Solutions Linux conference in Paris, Arkeia Software announced general availability of Arkeia Network Backup v8.0 that includes the industry’s first virtual appliance for backup. With general availability of the Arkeia Virtual Appliance, Arkeia becomes the first data protection company to support backup servers deployed as any combination of system software, physical appliances and virtual appliances, consequently lowering the cost and complexity of protecting data in heterogeneous environments.

“Arkeia Software is a fast, secure and reliable backup solution that we have relied on since 2006,” said Gilbert Derus, Security Manager, BETE Network, Ericsson France. “Version 8 allows us to optimize deployments across physical and virtual servers, and future-proofs our backup infrastructure against changing environments. It’s great that Arkeia can backup several virtual machines on one ESX hypervisor…with an Arkeia Virtual Appliance running on another ESX hypervisor.”

“Arkeia Network Backup Version 8 represents a dramatic departure from traditional backup systems,” said Bill Evans, CEO of Arkeia Software. “In the past, customers with remote offices, data centers and virtualization would require multiple distinct solutions or significant systems implementation work. Now with Version 8.0, customers can deploy and manage a consistent backup solution across their infrastructure, quickly and painlessly.”

Backup Servers
as Software, Appliances, and Virtual Appliances
Arkeia Network Backup v8.0 supports backup deployments as any combination of virtual appliances, physical appliances and traditional software. The flexibility of Arkeia backup solutions matches the increasing heterogeneity of IT environments. Now, IT doesn’t have to change backup solutions when expanding their virtual environments.

Version 8 capabilities and features are identical across the three deployment alternatives. The same Backup Agents are used across all three, giving administrators the flexibility to evolve their servers without modifying their agent machines. Similarly, complementary products like Arkeia’s Backup Replication and Arkeia’s Central Management Server work seamlessly across all three backup server deployments, making these advanced capabilities easy to deploy and use.

In the same way, a consistent user interface across deployments means no new learning curve when deployment modes change.

Virtual Appliance
The Arkeia Virtual Appliance for backup is an all-in-one software appliance, optimized for virtual environments. The Arkeia Virtual Appliance delivers all the functionality of Arkeia Network Backup v8.0 as a system image for a VMware virtual machine. It comes bundled with licenses for a disk-based virtual tape library (VTL) and Arkeia Backup Agents to create a fast, simple and scalable backup solution. The Arkeia Virtual Appliance can be deployed in both VMware ESX and ESXi virtual environments. As a complete system image, the appliance can be deployed in minutes instead of hours, and enables companies to take full advantage of virtualization benefits such as high-availability, load-balancing, and storage provisioning. The virtual appliance is ideal for deployment in virtualized data centers such as managed service providers (MSP). Pricing for the Virtual Appliance deployment with three bundled backup agents begins at $2,000.

Arkeia Physical Appliance
The Arkeia Physical Appliance, formerly known as the EdgeFort, is an all-in-one software and hardware backup solution that comes with an optimized version of Version 8.0. Physical Appliances are ideal in scenarios where the technical resources to deploy, configure, and maintain general purpose computers is not available. Distributed organizations use Physical Appliances in ROBO (remote offices / branch offices) offices. Smaller organizations benefit because the appliance doesn’t need to be regularly administered and for which the hardware and software are perfectly optimized and balanced. ISPs and MSPs benefit because the Physical Appliance can both stage rapid backups at a customer location before backups are replicated to the cloud over several hours, and serve as an ideal medium for disaster recovery of even the largest servers.

Arkeia Software Application
Arkeia’s Software Application deployment, the traditional mode for deploying system software, remains the general-purpose solution, ideal when administrators want to configure their own hardware and operating systems according to company standard practices. Arkeia has supported this deployment mode since 1999 when it delivered the industry’s first professional solution for Linux system backups.

Additional features in Version 8.0 include wiki-based documentation, an enhanced graphical user interface, simplified tape library management, and delivery of platform updates. Both the virtual appliance and the ESX agent are available for download.