Storage Management Strategies for the CIO
Backup and disaster recovery hardware
Silver Award:
Axxana Phoenix System RP
Synchronous replication, which captures every change, and offsite disaster recovery have long been available to enterprises with the means and infrastructure to afford them, but in recent years we've seen a democratization of DR through products that help smaller enterprises get their hands on the technologies that can deliver short recovery time objectives (RTOs) and more aggressive recovery point objectives (RPOs).
Among those is Axxana, which offers what it calls "synchronous replication over asynchronous infrastructure." Its Phoenix System RP product, which first became generally available in the spring of 2009, combines EMC Corp.'s RecoverPoint asynchronous replication software for replication over distance with its own local synchronous recording mechanism. Should a disaster occur, the Phoenix System RP will send any uncommitted changes to the secondary site, bridging the gap between synchronous and asynchronous data protection.
To do this even if the entire primary site is wiped out, the Phoenix System RP wraps itself in a hardened "black box" that's resistant to flames, pressure, puncture, water pressure and electric shock, and has the ability to replicate those last bits of data using cellular signals if normal communications are down.
"I would hate to have to rely on cell infrastructure to move too much cached data in a DR event," one of our judges said. "Still, there is no magic solution to this problem and this is the most interesting idea as a solution."