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| Industry | Mainframe connectivity, storage and data protection |
|---|---|
| Founded | 1994 |
| Headquarters | , United States |
Area served | Worldwide |
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| Services |
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| Website | www.luminex.com |
Luminex Software, Inc. is a developer and provider of mainframe connectivity, storage and data protection solutions[ buzzword ], including virtual tape and data integration products.
Luminex was founded in 1994 [1] by Brian Hawley, Michael Saunders and Arthur Tolsma. [2]
In 2000, Luminex acquired and merged the Data|WARE product line and technical staff. Then in 2002, Luminex acquired and merged the Polaris product line and technical staff. [3]
In 2007, Luminex and Data Domain announced a partnership to provide virtual tape library solutions[ buzzword ] with deduplication for mainframes. [4]
Channel Gateway (CGX) [5] is mainframe virtual tape controller software and hardware (together, an "MVT controller") that provides mainframe access to disk-based open systems storage by acting as tape control units and presenting the storage as "virtual" tape drives (emulating IBM 3490/3590) via FICON or ESCON channels. As tape controllers, CGX require access to a storage target(s) for virtual tape storage. Configurations include either NFS or Fibre Channel connectivity to open systems storage systems. [6]
Mainframe Virtual Tape (MVT) [7] is a family of products that are composed of one or more MVT controllers as well as internal SAS (MVTi) or Fibre Channel attached (MVTe) storage. The number of controllers in an MVT configuration is a dependent on the users' availability and throughput requirements. MVT supports System Z, Z/VM and VSE.
Mainframe Data Integration (MDI) [8] is a family of products that provide mainframe data movement, sharing and co-processing with distributed systems. MDI solutions[ buzzword ] consist of core MDI software that resides on a dedicated appliance ("MDI Platform") or an MVT controller, host software and optional "Profiles" that provide specific functionality. The MDI/MVT hardware resides between the mainframe, connected via FICON, and distributed systems, connected via 1 or 10 GbE, providing DMZ, data translation/conversion, and protocol negotiation duties. MDI Profiles include SecureTransfer (managed file transfer [9] ), BigData Transfer (webHDFS connectivity [10] ), Cross-Platform Data Sharing (NFS connectivity, data and workload sharing [11] ), zKonnect (Kafka publishing/subscribing [12] ) and SAS Language Processor (off-host SAS language processing, including MXG [13] ). MDI supports System Z.
DataStream Intelligence, [14] a feature of CGX, separates virtual tape data and metadata inline, achieving higher compression rates. Deduplication rates, when written to storage with deduplication capabilities, such as IBM ProtecTIER, HP StorOnce, Quantum DXi and EMC Data Domain systems, achieve data compression rates upwards of 20:1 [15] versus traditional tape hardware compression of 3:1. [16] For CloudTAPE users, DataStream Intelligence also collects VOLSER metadata, such as creation/replication dates, tape size and tape label (DSN), and adds it to the stored object’s metadata, enabling it to be leveraged by cloud-based applications.
Data|WARE is a family of products that provide optical-based nearline data access, distribution, publishing and archiving for mainframe and UNIX environments.
In February, 2008, Luminex Software partnered with Terasystem S.p.A., the largest data storage system integrator in Italy, as its full service channel partner for its ground breaking Channel Gateway products in Italy, Spain and Portugal. [17]
A direct-access storage device (DASD) is a secondary storage device in which "each physical record has a discrete location and a unique address". The term was coined by IBM to describe devices that allowed random access to data, the main examples being drum memory and hard disk drives. Later, optical disc drives and flash memory units are also classified as DASD.
Quantum Corporation is a data storage and management company headquartered in San Jose, California. The company works with a network of distributors, VARs, DMRs, OEMs and other suppliers. From its founding in 1980 until 2001, it was also a major disk storage manufacturer, and was based in Milpitas, California. Quantum sold its hard disk drive business to Maxtor in 2001 and now focuses on integrated storage systems.
The Symmetrix system was an EMC's enterprise storage array. It combined dozens of hard drives into a single virtual device that was then shared on a local area network. It was the flagship product of EMC in the 1990s and 2000s.
The HP Storageworks XP is a computer data storage disk array sold by Hewlett Packard Enterprise using Hitachi Data Systems hardware and adding their own software to it. It's based on the Hitachi Virtual Storage Platform and targeted towards enabling large scale consolidation, large database, Oracle, SAP, Exchange, and online transaction processing (OLTP) environments.
FICON is the IBM proprietary name for the ANSI FC-SB-3 Single-Byte Command Code Sets-3 Mapping Protocol for Fibre Channel (FC) protocol. It is a FC layer 4 protocol used to map both IBM's antecedent channel-to-control-unit cabling infrastructure and protocol onto standard FC services and infrastructure. The topology is fabric utilizing FC switches or directors. Valid rates include 1, 2, 4, 8 and 16 Gigabit per second data rates at distances up to 100 km.
Brocade is an American technology company specializing in storage networking products, now a subsidiary of Broadcom Inc. The company is known for its Fibre Channel storage networking products and technology. Prior to the acquisition, the company expanded into adjacent markets including a wide range of IP/Ethernet hardware and software products. Offerings included routers and network switches for data center, campus and carrier environments, IP storage network fabrics; Network Functions Virtualization (NFV) and software-defined networking (SDN) markets such as a commercial edition of the OpenDaylight Project controller; and network management software that spans physical and virtual devices.
A virtual tape library (VTL) is a data storage virtualization technology used typically for backup and recovery purposes. A VTL presents a storage component as tape libraries or tape drives for use with existing backup software.
In computer science, storage virtualization is "the process of presenting a logical view of the physical storage resources to" a host computer system, "treating all storage media in the enterprise as a single pool of storage."
The IBM Storage product portfolio includes disk, flash, tape, NAS storage products, storage software and services. IBM's approach is to focus on data management.
The Sun Fire X4500 data server integrates server and storage technologies. It was announced in July, 2006 and is part of the Sun Fire server line from Sun Microsystems.
StorNext File System (SNFS), colloquially referred to as "StorNext" is a shared disk file system made by Quantum Corporation. StorNext enables multiple Windows, Linux and Apple workstations to access shared block storage over a Fibre Channel network. With the StorNext file system installed, these computers can read and write to the same storage volume at the same time enabling what is known as a "file-locking SAN." StorNext is used in environments where large files must be shared, and accessed simultaneously by users without network delays, or where a file must be available for access by multiple readers starting at different times. Common use cases include multiple video editor environments in feature film, television and general video post production.
In computing, data deduplication is a technique for eliminating duplicate copies of repeating data. Successful implementation of the technique can improve storage utilization, which may in turn lower capital expenditure by reducing the overall amount of storage media required to meet storage capacity needs. It can also be applied to network data transfers to reduce the number of bytes that must be sent.
Universal Storage Platform (USP) was the brand name for an Hitachi Data Systems line of computer data storage disk arrays circa 2004 to 2010.
IBM Storwize systems were virtualizing RAID computer data storage systems with raw storage capacities up to 32 PB. Storwize is based on the same software as IBM SAN Volume Controller (SVC).
NetVault is a set of data protection software developed and supported by Quest Software. NetVault Backup is a backup and recovery software product. It can be used to protect data and software applications in physical and virtual environments from one central management interface. It supports many servers, application platforms, and protocols such as UNIX, Linux, Microsoft Windows, VMware, Microsoft Hyper-V, Oracle, Sybase, Microsoft SQL Server, NDMP, Oracle ACSLS, IBM DAS/ACI, Microsoft Exchange Server, DB2, and Teradata.
Adaptable Modular Storage 2000 is the brand name of Hitachi Data Systems mid-range storage platforms.
Dell Fluid File System, or FluidFS, is a shared-disk filesystem made by Dell that provides distributed file systems to clients. Customers buy an appliance: a combination of purpose-built network-attached storage (NAS) controllers with integrated primary and backup power supplies attached to block level storage via the iSCSI or Fiber Channel protocol. A single Dell FluidFS appliance consists of two controllers operating in concert connecting to the back-end storage area network (SAN). Depending on the storage capacity requirements and user preference, FluidFS version 4 NAS appliances can be used with Compellent or EqualLogic SAN arrays. The EqualLogic FS7600 and FS7610 connect to the client network and to Dell's EqualLogic arrays with either 1 Gbit/s (FS7600) or 10 Gbit/s (FS7610) iSCSI protocol. For Compellent, FluidFS is available with either 1 Gbit/s or 10 Gbit/s iSCSI connectivity to the client network and connection to the backend Compellent SAN can be either 8 Gbit/s Fibre Channel or 10 Gbit/s iSCSI.
Dell EMC VMAX is Dell EMC’s flagship enterprise storage array product line. It evolved out of the EMC Symmetrix array, EMC’s primary storage product of 1990s and early 2000s.
ONTAP or Data ONTAP or Clustered Data ONTAP (cDOT) or Data ONTAP 7-Mode is NetApp's proprietary operating system used in storage disk arrays such as NetApp FAS and AFF, ONTAP Select and Cloud Volumes ONTAP. With the release of version 9.0, NetApp decided to simplify the Data ONTAP name and removed word "Data" from it and remove 7-Mode image, therefore, ONTAP 9 is successor from Clustered Data ONTAP 8.
Bus and Tag is an "IBM standard for a computer peripheral interface", and was commonly used to connect their mainframe computers to peripheral devices such as line printers, disk storage, magnetic tape drives and IBM 3270 display controllers. The technology uses two sets of thick, multi-connector copper cables, one set, carrying data, called the bus, and the other set, carrying control information, called the tag.