Plenty of backup vendors in the Microsoft Windows space have incorporated virtualization technology in their products. But today, Arkeia Software announced what it says is the first virtual backup appliance—the Arkeia Virtual Appliance, running the Arkeia Network Backup v8.0 backup application. The appliance component of the product is actually a system image for a VMware virtual machine (VM) and includes licenses for a disk-based virtual tape library and Arkeia Backup Agents. The product provides the same functionality as Arkeia’s physical backup appliance but lets you deploy it in a VM on your own hardware.
The Arkeia Virtual Appliance runs on VMware ESX and ESXi platforms. Backup occurs via the Arkeia VMware ESX Agent, which leverages the VMware ESX snapshot mechanism. The VMware ESX Agent is installed on an ESX hypervisor running on a physical computer and allows backup of one or several VMs on that system, regardless of the OS or application running in the VMs.
The Arkeia Virtual Appliance is designed to be easily migrated between various Arkeia deployment modes (i.e., traditional backup software, physical appliance, virtual appliance). Similarly, you can replicate backup sets from any backup server deployment to an Arkeia Virtual Appliance, or vice-versa.
Arkeia Network Backup v8.0 is currently in beta and is expected to become generally available in March. Pricing for the virtual appliance deployment with three bundled backup agents begins at $2,000. For more information about the Arkeia Virtual Appliance, see the Arkeia Software website.
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