The Storage Chap / TechObsessedDad

 

Axxana – A Phoenix rising from the flames (literally)

Over a year ago I posted a blog entry (click here to open in a new window) on the solutions offered by Axxana in conjunction with RecoverPoint.

EMC’s RecoverPoint sends data asynchronously to remote sites, while the Phoenix System® RP protects a synchronous copy of information inside a disaster-proof Black Box storage device at the primary site. The device is designed to survive nearly any threat. Following the disaster, the system enables rapid extraction of the protected data and transmission to the remote site, where the recovered information is reintegrated with the asynchronous remote copy, yielding an exact mirror image of the data in the primary data center.

It was and still is an innovative solution, but the issue back then was that it was only supported with RecoverPoint SE in conjunction with VNX/CX storage. The reality is that the combined proposition (and cost) of Axxana and RecoverPoint does not really resonate in the majority of mid-market customers and therefore sales have maybe not been what they could have. At the end of my last post I asked that we integrate Axxana with our other RecoverPoint versions and splitter technologies. Well nearly 18 months on we have done just that. Axxana is now supported with RP/EX using VNX, VMAX and VPLEX splitter technologies. But what does that actually mean for our customers.

I think all of the use cases discussed previously are still very valid, but they are now applicable to our Enterprise customers where RPO=0 is, in many cases, extremely important. But interestingly we can now offer a new solution in conjunction with VPLEX. As I have blogged about at great length, customers deploying VPLEX want RPO=0 and RTO=0, but in many cases they are also having to deploy asynchronous replication to a passive third DC, to meet business or regulatory requirements in regard to such things as distance between data centres.

Now that an Axxana solution can be used in conjunction with RecoverPoint/EX and the VPLEX splitter we can offer a customer RPO=0 across all three sites including the passive DR site that could be at the other side of the world if needed. Think about customers with two sites in for example Istanbul with VPLEX Metro, but who also want to replicate to Ankara. Or two sites in London that also want to replicate to another European location.

Where this potentially gets really interesting is for those customers who were previously or are still operating a three site, bunker, model, where they are paying for a dark site synchronously connected to the primary as well as a third async site. A combined VPLEX, RecoverPoint and Axxana solution could enable them to deploy VPLEX Metro locally within a single DC that had two distinct failure domains allowing them to benefit from 100% storage availability within the data centre and then replicate to a second site asynchronously using RecoverPoint in conjunction with Axxana to also maintain an RPO=0 in the event of a total primary site disaster.

The cost savings of removing the bunker site combined with the benefit of being able to ride through a primary storage array failure completely non disruptively from an application perspective should easily justify the solution.