Luminex and Data Domain Together

Data Domain, Inc. and LUMINEX, developer and provider of mainframe virtual tape products and technologies, are demonstrating significant customer wins and momentum within mainframe data centers as these users are demanding tapeless backup and disaster recovery solutions that are robust and reliable. Enterprises such as ICW Group Insurance Companies, Ingram Entertainment and Motion Industries reflect the movement of mainframe customers that are replacing existing Sun StorageTek VSM, IBM VTS and tape library products with LUMINEX’s Channel Gateway mainframe virtual tape and Data Domain deduplication storage systems.

"With the combined solution from LUMINEX and Data Domain, our enterprise mainframe customers have been able to simplify and streamline their daily operations while reducing costs, floor space requirements and the risks associated with shipping tapes," said Michael C. Saunders, President of LUMINEX. "Their disaster recovery processes are now benefiting from improved RPOs and RTOs. These users have been able to free themselves of a time consuming and often ineffective approach to data protection that has traditionally been used for decades."

Minimizing reliance on tape has been a data center trend in open systems environments, and Data Domain and LUMINEX have extended access of the latest data reduction technologies to mainframe users. As demonstrated by the positive business impact achieved by ICW Group Insurance, Ingram Entertainment and Motion Industries, the combination of LUMINEX and Data Domain can enable mainframe users to reap a significant range of benefits resulting from deduplication storage for the reinvention of their data protection processes.

"LUMINEX and Data Domain have field-proven implementations in large enterprise environments, where the maturity and robustness of our respective technologies have been combined to deliver rapid recoverability of mainframe data," said Beth White, Vice President of Marketing for Data Domain. "These enterprises can now efficiently replicate their backups via WANs and leverage cost-effective deduplication storage tiers to achieve their disaster recovery SLAs."

Data Domain and LUMINEX Customer Experiences:
"ICW Group replaced its physical tape infrastructure with a disk-based virtual tape solution from LUMINEX and Data Domain," said Frank Ury, Vice President of Infrastructure for ICW Group Insurance Companies. "We substantially improved our backup and disaster recovery plan while reducing tape media, off-site tape storage and support costs."

"Mainframe tape was the biggest barrier to an effective disaster recovery solution," said Tim Demonbreum, Mainframe Systems Administrator for Ingram Entertainment. "The LUMINEX Channel Gateway with Data Domain deduplication storage replaced our IBM VTS and now every single virtual tape we create is automatically replicated to our disaster recovery site. We now have an error free environment, and saved money. And with Data Domain, we’ve reduced 14 TB of backup data to 1.6 TB, a nearly 90% savings."

"We decided to eliminate physical tape for all applications except where mandatory," said Glenn Ecker, IT Manager for Motion Industries. "To accomplish this, we utilized the LUMINEX and Data Domain solution to replace 95% of our tape infrastructure. This included eliminating an automated tape library that contained 5 frames of tape drives and a virtual tape subsystem. We installed a couple of stand-alone tape drives to accommodate mandatory tape operations. Our backup and recovery has improved, we have reclaimed substantial floor space, reduced power consumption and reduced operating expense."

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