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Report from COMDEX: Arkeia backup software

by Dwight Johnson

Las Vegas, Nevada, November 16. The Linux Pavilion this year is
in the Sands Convention Center. Although it is surrounded by other
exhibits, I found it very easily in the center of the main exhibits
floor.

There are 14 exhibitors in the Linux Pavilion this year: Walnut
Creek CDROM, Enhanced Software Technologies (BRU), Pacific HiTech
(TurboLinux), Softway Systems (Interix), VA Research, Applix, Linux
Journal, InfoMagic, Linux International, Knox Software (Arkeia),
Linux Hardware Solutions, S.u.S.E., Red Hat Linux and Caldera.

I was quite familiar with all of the companies except one. I
will be writing about these other companies in other installments,
but since I had never heard of Knox Software, I decided to spend
some time getting acquainted with it.

Sam Siegel, President of the American division of Knox Software,
told me that Knox Software is a privately held two year old company
with offices in San Francisco and Paris and their principal product
is Arkeia Version 4.0, a high performance network backup solution
for Linux, Windows NT and all major UNIX platforms. Arkeia will
also support Windows 95/98 and Novell clients.

According to Siegel, Knox has written its own proprietary
protocol that uses TCP/IP as its transport vehicle.

The Arkeia product features total network management with an
easy to use graphics user interface. If there are transient errors
that cause packet loss, Arkeia is able to automatically reconnect
and continue a backup.

The typical Arkeia customer is a business with libraries or
databases that need to be backed up.

Interfaces are currently available for backing up Oracle,
Informix and Adabase databases. A Sybase interface is in
development.

Siegel boasts: “I have customers backing up 100s of gigabytes of
data every night on Linux.”

He continues: “I have a customer in Boston running our Lotus
Notes Client on an NT Notes server who can back up and restore on a
Linux backup server the Lotus Notes directories while Notes remains
active.”

At COMDEX, Knox wants to reach end user buyers and VARs and also
to meet more of the Linux community.

Siegel stated: “We’re seeing a lot more interest in Linux from
people who weren’t interested last year. Last year, we were seeing
mostly $500 sales, today it’s $1500 and up.

“We are seeing a doubling every quarter for customers buying
Linux backup solutions.”

Arkeia is free for personal use and is currently distributed
with S.u.S.E. 5.3 and on the Red Hat 5.2 Applications CD.

In future COMDEX reports, I’ll tell more about the other
exhibitors in this year’s Linux Pavilion and also any other
companies I can search out, such as Corel, who have Linux products,
but who have booths that are not in the Linux Pavilion.

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