Wayne County RESA Replaces Tape by VTL and De-Dupe for Mainframe

INNOVATION Data Processing, LUMINEX Software and Data Domain, Inc. announced that their combined offerings are in production at enterprise mainframe data centers and can provide customers with simplified and cost-effective tapeless backup and disaster recovery (DR) solutions. Users of the combined solution have reported significant improvement in Recovery Time Objectives (RTOs) and Recovery Point Objectives (RPOs), along with substantial capital cost and operating expense reductions.

LUMINEX provides the Channel Gateway solution necessary to enable mainframe users to deploy Data Domain deduplication storage in their enterprise environments. The two companies have established a broad base of successful, field-proven deployments, many of which have included data protection and business continuance software solutions by INNOVATION Data Processing. With INNOVATION’s FDR/UPSTREAM solution, mainframe users can also backup their open systems data through their LUMINEX/Data Domain/INNOVATION mainframe data protection infrastructure, which can extend the benefits of virtual tape backup and data deduplication technologies across their entire environment.

Michigan-based Wayne County Regional Educational Service Agency (RESA) serves more than 34 school districts within the eighth most populous county in the U.S. The agency’s data center operation, including both mainframe and open systems, has successfully combined its storage infrastructure using an integrated solution from INNOVATION, Data Domain and LUMINEX.

"We completely replaced our physical tape infrastructure for backup and DR, except quarterly backups, with the LUMINEX Channel Gateway using Data Domain deduplication storage," stated Wendy Dyke, System Programmer, Wayne County RESA. "We use INNOVATION’s FDR/UPSTREAM product on the mainframe to backup our open-systems servers. We were very impressed with how well the teams at INNOVATION Data Processing, LUMINEX and Data Domain work together. They optimized the solution to achieve deduplication and compression rates for our full backups that are extraordinary. Now we have a simplified and common business recovery plan that requires no operator intervention or physical tape and we improved our Recovery Time Objective."

Company executives at LUMINEX, Data Domain and INNOVATION believe that their combined solutions provide mainframe and mixed environment enterprises with the opportunity to overcome long-standing barriers to effective data protection processes.

"Working with INNOVATION Data Processing has been a great experience. INNOVATION’s mainframe storage products are widely used in the industry and their customers clearly want to eliminate the enormous capital costs, footprint, operating expenses and lost tape security exposures associated with tape," said Art Tolsma, CEO, LUMINEX. "The growing base of INNOVATION users upgrading to LUMINEX mainframe virtual tape with Data Domain deduplication storage speaks volumes about how well our companies work together and the opportunity to move mainframe customers to a tapeless mainframe infrastructure."

"Our customers asked us to integrate our data protection and business continuance software with the LUMINEX and Data Domain solution. Many customers have both open systems and mainframes in their data centers and there was a strong desire to deploy a unified enterprise solution that would support both environments," said Thomas Meehan, INNOVATION Data Processing Vice President, Advance Technology. "We support both open systems and mainframe backup as well as replicated DR. Experience with actual production data from customers shows that the deduplication rates based on the combined LUMINEX and Data Domain solution are quite striking. Clearly this LUMINEX and Data Domain solution can deliver great value. Our entire suite of INNOVATION business resiliency solutions stands ready to leverage this value for all of our mainframe and enterprise customers."

Beth White, Vice President of Marketing for Data Domain, said: "This combination of technologies is exciting news for mainframe enterprises. Data Domain and LUMINEX have been helping mainframe users shed the inefficiencies of tape infrastructure since 2006, establishing a field-proven record of successful implementations. With the addition of INNOVATION, mixed environments can consolidate their entire data protection infrastructure and reap the benefits of highly automated disk-based backup and DR with data deduplication."