Axxana has introduced a new domain in the Data Protection arena, namely Enterprise Data Recording (EDR). EDR combines aviation Flight Data Recorder (Black Box) expertise with newly developed technologies to address today’s most pressing data protection challenges – data loss, distance between primary and DR data centers and cost.

At the heart of any EDR solution is a completely hardened, disaster proof “Black Box” type device. Aviation Black Box devices are designed to record flight data and are built to withstand extreme conditions in order to preserve the flight data in the event of a crash.

The patent pending Phoenix System™, Axxana’s first EDR system, is based on such a device and is essentially the black box for data centers. EDR systems are designed to provide data centers with the same functionality as FDRs provide airplanes by withstanding extreme conditions to preserve business data in the event of a disaster - be it a local disaster such as a building fire, a local flooding or a power outage which renders the data center inoperable or a regional, wide spread disaster such as earthquakes, weather hazards, regional floods or an act of terror.

The Phoenix System™ can be viewed as a hardened storage system which is capable of surviving:

• Direct flames at 2000ºF for one hour followed by 450ºF for an additional 6 hours
• Pressure of 5000LB
• Pierce force of a 500LB rod dropped from 10FT
• 30FT of water pressure
• Shock of 40G

The Phoenix System™ is the first disaster proof “Enterprise Data Recorder” in the EDR domain lead by Axxana.

How Axxana’s EDR System Works
The Phoenix Black Box is located near the storage system at the primary data center and records a synchronous data stream from the storage..At the same time, an asynchronous data replication system is moving data to a secondary data center (the remote recovery site). The Phoenix Black Box has to protect only the Gigabytes of data that would have been lost in a typical asynchronous replication scenario. Data is protected inside the Black Box during the course of the disaster and can be immediately extracted.

Data extraction is achieved either by:

• Physically locating the system by tracking the homing signal and connecting a laptop with an Axxana software component to the Phoenix System™ at the disaster site, or
• The self sufficient and well protected system transferring the data to the secondary site using highly resilient cellular broadband technology.  

EDR as a Paradigm Shift
EDR entirely changes the thinking behind DR strategies. Until today, no matter what the data protection scheme and topology were, the same limitation existed: all data that needed to be protected had to be transported out of the primary data center prior to a disaster. Whatever data that remained at the primary data center or did not make it to the secondary center or to the tape/disk vaulting facility was lost. This is was the underlying assumption of any data protection solution, be it Replication/Mirroring, CDP or Backup and Restore to both disks and tapes.

The world of replication is bound by the laws of physics; it is bound by the limitations of the speed of light and before the introduction of EDR devices, there was no way around that. EDR increases the distance between data centers in a synchronous world. This changes everything:

• Cost – of communication lines and of a nearby data center
• Performance – no dependency on the line or painful delays
• Dependencies – on local service providers or a specific, local, DR sites
• Robustness – no more data classification considerations or data inconsistency failures

IT managers now have the missing building block to craft their data center strategies in a robust, cost effective and uncompromising way.

Considerable Savings
EDR provides organizations with a highly cost effective solution while delivering greater value and efficiency to their DR.

EDR reduces the reliance on nearby data centers, whether in the form of a managed service (outsourced) or part of the organization. EDR eliminates the need for very high bandwidth required for synchronous replication and the need to maintain peak level bandwidth at all times. Many companies using an asynchronous replication solution spend vast sums on costly communication lines with high availability and bandwidth in an attempt to get as “near synchronous” as possible. EDR eliminates this unnecessary cost.

EDR is “Green”
By eliminating nearby data centers altogether, EDR is poised to offer a significant contribution to a greener world of IT.