WD silently murders Arkeia backupware WD has admitted it is killing off its Arkeia backup software product: it is no longer selling it to new customers and stopping development. Privately-owned Arkeia was bought by Western Digital in January 2013, bringing WD its deduplicating Network Backup software product and technology. It was placed inside WD’s Branded …
It does/did more or less what other commercial backup software does (eg backing up vSphere VMs via snapshots, dedup, etc - I don't know if Bacula etc do that, I haven't looked in an eternity).
I don't think arkeia was ever java-based. In the earlier days it had a very funky X11 interface which had a lot of focus on rounded windows etc; possibly less on ease of use. For a long time now it's had a fairly decent web-based interface, though.
It worked pretty well but I guess I knew nothing good could come of the WD acquisition...
I checked. In the extremely detailed manual of 2000, we find:
X11 graphics user interface
This module is the interface between the backup server and the user. IIt may be installed on any machine, but is usually located on the backup server. The interface consists of an independent group of X11 client programs which can be displayed on any X11 server (R4, R5, R6) or graphics workstation. It ergonomic characteristics (colors, fonts, images...) can be fully configured interactively to provide maximum user comfort. A proprietary software display technology is implemented to prevent the slow, cumbersome features and excessive use of resources typically found in X11/Motif applications, at the same time providing unique function capabilities (animated icons, toolbar, context-sensitive menus, real-photo Vu-meters, tips, multi-language features...).
JAVA graphics user interface
This module is the interface between the backup server and the user. It may be installed on any machine, but is usually located on the backup server. The interface consists of an independent group of JAVA client programs which can be displayed on any workstation using NETSCAPE or MS Explorer. It ergonomic characteristics (colors, fonts, images...) can be fully configured interactively to provide maximum user comfort. A proprietary software display technology is implemented to prevent the slow, cumbersome features and excessive use of resources, at the same time providing unique function capabilities (animated icons, toolbar, context-sensitive menus, real-photo Vu-meters, tips, multi-language features...).
Hardware requirement
Arkeia has the following minimum hardware requirements: A computer capable of running your operating system. 32 MB RAM. SCSI tape drive. A SCSI tape drive is required for high speed positioning of the tape during restore operations. In the near future, the requirement for a SCSI tape drive will be removed and direct support of Travan and floppy based, and QIC tape drives will be implemented. This will allow high speed operation for all tape drives, SCSI and non SCSI alike.
There wasn't much focus on "rounded windows" either (in Motif/X11 an unlikely thing) but it had some weird styling indicating that the designer might have previously made games for Amiga or Atari ST:
Another version (possibly later than the above screenshot) did have X11 windows which were composed of overlaid rounded elements (always possible in X11, oclock is the most trivial example) but although we likely still have some documentation or media still around, I can't find it now. The overall amiga gaming aesthetic was still present though! It was almost comical, though to be fair after they switched to their new web interface it became quite nicely slick and functional.
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