A very long time ago, in a parallel universe managing backups on Linux was a real headache. If you can remember all the way back to the mid 90's these wasn't journaling or iSCSI and Linux wasn't as stable as it is now - so having good backups was your only lifeline! Arkeia was the the first back-up software that I used for the linux systems, at the time most of the other vendors didn't support Linux. Of course there were free software options, but they were really hard to use. And anyway, we didn't want backup, we wanted restore. So Arkeia it was, and it worked very well. As backup is so easy to ignore, anything that makes it easier is good news. That's why it's great news that Arkeia now supports Ubuntu. They recently announced that Arkeia Network Backup version 8 is available on Ubuntu 8.04 LTS. Arkeia have also signed up as a Silver Partner in the Ubuntu Partner programme. Arkeia is a network backup system, so it's suitable for a networked environment. There's a central backup server where all the backups are stored on disk or tape, and individual clients are installed on each system within the network. The agent itself is available for Ubuntu, RH, Novell SUSE, OSX and Windows. So in one scenario you can use an Ubuntu server as the central backup server and install agents on all the other systems in your network. Alternatively, if you have an existing Arkeia set-up this announcement means you can install the agent on your Ubuntu systems and back them up to your existing backup server. If you'd like to try out Arkeia they're also offering a free version for Ubuntu users. A pre-licensed version is available through the Ubuntu partner repository, so if you have this switched on then a simple apt-get install arkeia will download and install it. With this free license you can backup two systems (any platform including Windows and OSX) with up to 250GB of files whether tape or disk based. See their documentation for more information. If you don't have a backup system this is a great way to get started.