WD Simplifies Hybrid Cloud Backup For Midsized IT Environments

IRVINE, Calif., Feb. 6, 2014 /PRNewswire/ -- WD^®, a Western Digital (NASDAQ: WDC) company and a world leader in digital storage solutions, today announced version 10.2 of WD Arkeia™ network backup software, featuring significant scalability improvements to the WD Arkeia patented Progressive Deduplication™ technology. WD Arkeia network backup software is a fast, easy-to-use, and affordable solution for small and medium sized businesses that ensures critical business data is backed up on both the local network and in the cloud.

"Backup solutions for businesses are going through a dramatic shift in technology," said Bill Evans, general manager of WD's business storage solutions group. "Advances in data deduplication, hard drive capacity, and wide-area network speeds allow companies to dispense with the error-prone process of trucking nightly backup tapes offsite. WD Arkeia 10.2 extends WD's hybrid cloud backup solution that offers the speed of LAN backups and the security of cloud storage. 'Seed and feed' for overnight transport of large backup sets delivers the flexibility of rapid data recovery when needed."

WD Arkeia's Progressive Deduplication is the critical technology for making replication of backups to the cloud an affordable, tape-free alternative for offsite backup and recovery. WD Arkeia's unique "seed and feed" technology allows the replication of large backup datasets to and from the cloud without the need for fast WAN connectivity. First, administrators export backup datasets in encrypted form via USB 3.0 to portable hard drives or drive arrays. Second, administrators ship the drives to a remote location where the backup sets are imported into another WD Arkeia backup server. Smaller backup sets, such as daily incremental changes to the original large dataset, can be easily performed over the Internet.  The reclamation of orphaned deduplication blocks is a key capability for enterprise-grade deduplication solutions.

With WD Arkeia version 10.2, block optimization progresses continuously and orphaned blocks are recovered incrementally. Unlike competitive products, no maintenance window has to be dedicated to the deduplication process and the largest deployments can affect block reclamation invisibly in the background, without administrator intervention.

Availability and Pricing

WD Arkeia version 10.2 is available today for download on www.arkeia.com. The release is free to all WD Arkeia customers on current maintenance contracts. This new capability is available for all WD Arkeia backup servers, whether deployed as software, appliances, or virtual appliances.

Backup software pricing starts at $2,000 for a perpetual license for one backup server with unlimited file and folder backup agents. Backup appliance pricing starts at $3,490 with unlimited file and folder backup agents. Both software and appliances are bundled with one year of software updates and technical support.   To learn more about the new Arkeia 10.2 release, see http://www.arkeia.com/new-in-v102.

About WD

WD, a Western Digital company, is a long-time innovator and storage industry leader. As a storage technology pacesetter, the company produces reliable, high-performance hard disk drives and solid state drives. These drives are deployed by OEMs and integrators in desktop and mobile computers, enterprise computing systems, embedded systems and consumer electronics applications, as well as by the company in providing its own storage products. WD's leading storage devices and systems, networking products, media players and software solutions empower people around the world to easily save, store, protect, share and experience their content on multiple devices. WD was established in 1970 and is headquartered in Irvine, Calif. For more information, please visit the company's website at www.wd.com.

Western Digital Corp. (NASDAQ: WDC), Irvine, Calif., is a global provider of products and services that empower people to create, manage, experience and preserve digital content. Its companies design and manufacture storage devices, networking equipment and home entertainment products under the WD, HGST and G-Technology brands. Visit the Investor section of the company's website (www.westerndigital.com) to access a variety of financial and investor information.

Western Digital, WD, and the WD logo are registered trademarks of Western Digital Technologies, Inc. in the U.S. and other countries; WD Arkeia and Progressive Deduplication are trademarks of Western Digital Technologies, Inc. in the U.S. and other countries. Other marks may be mentioned herein that belong to other companies. All other brand and product names mentioned herein are the property of their respective companies. As used for storage capacity, one terabyte (TB) = one trillion bytes. Total accessible capacity varies depending on operating environment.

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SOURCE WD