Executive summary

Trustmark needed to eliminate the operational delays caused by lengthy mainframe backups in its always-on banking environment. By implementing BMC AMI Storage solutions—including FDRINSTANT, FDRABR, COMPAKTOR, IAM, and FDRPAS—Trustmark cut data unavailability during backups by 98 percent, restored files from tape in under a minute, and reduced job times by half. The result is greater application availability, stronger long-term storage management, and a more resilient foundation for customer-facing services.

Company overview

Trustmark, a wholly owned subsidiary of Trustmark Corporation, has served the financial needs of families, customers, and communities since 1889. Established in Jackson, Mississippi, it now does business across more than 160 locations in Alabama, Florida, Georgia, Mississippi, Tennessee, and Texas, and supports a vast network of ATMs and ITMs throughout its marketplace.

Trustmark’s vision is to be a premier financial services company. Its mission is to achieve outstanding customer satisfaction through banking, wealth management, and risk management solutions. Community-focused and values-guided, Trustmark commits to service excellence and strives daily to exceed customer expectations.

The challenge

Over Trustmark's 135-plus-year history, the financial services industry has evolved into an always-on, 24x7 banking model that includes digital services. Trustmark runs two very large mainframe applications that use IBM^® Db2^® databases and virtual storage access method (VSAM) datasets. These applications form the foundational core of the bank's services and are expected to be around for a long time.

Meeting regulatory compliance requirements is integral to doing business, and record-keeping—such as maintaining transaction histories for several years—is crucial. To achieve this, Trustmark uses SMS-managed storage and monitors its data pools regularly to gauge whether it needs additional space.

The virtual tape system (VTS) environment grew dramatically and was recently upgraded. The bank's operations, administration, and maintenance (OAM) processes store check images for seven years, and even though customers use fewer checks, these OAM procedures still require a lot of tape storage. Trustmark is also converting many cold storage reports from Advanced Function Presentation (AFP) to PDF format to make them universally accessible through internet banking. The offloading process from Db2 to tape is fast, but it still requires close management of disk storage.

The bank faced a significant challenge in creating full-volume backups on the mainframe. In the IBM^® CICS^® environment, IBM^® z/OS^® File System (zFS) files enabled CICS applications to access and manage files within the z/OS UNIX file system. Full-volume backups ran on weekends, while incremental backups took place during the week. Incremental backups took around 20 minutes, but full-volume backups required significantly more time. Before each backup, the Hierarchical File System (HFS) zFS files had to be quiesced, halting all UNIX file activity throughout the process.

A secondary issue emerged in one of the eight CICS production systems, where CICS regions were being recycled and couldn't complete until the backup finished, causing delays in operations.

The solution

To address these critical issues, the bank implemented BMC AMI Storage FDRINSTANT with Dell Snap Technology. FDRINSTANT provides a managed point-in-time backup with minimal disruption to online processing, reducing data unavailability during backups by 98 percent.

This improvement significantly increased backup efficiency and minimized operational downtime.

Trustmark also uses BMC AMI Storage COMPAKTOR to keep storage volumes operating at maximum performance and efficiency. "We do a daily compress of our temp volumes and our batch volumes to keep large areas of free space available on each volume for the larger files we have," explains Bridges. COMPAKTOR's ability to optimize available storage space further enhanced backup operations and improved the system's overall long-term storage management.

The results

Since installing FDRINSTANT, the lag issue hasn't reoccurred. Eliminating those delays and increasing application availability has been a game changer for Trustmark. "We didn't realize that the CICS really did quiesce, and nothing else could happen," explains Bridges. "Minimizing that time was a huge benefit."

Trustmark also uses BMC AMI Storage FDRABR for backup and for restoring accidentally deleted files. "It restores as quickly as it can read the tape. Usually less than five minutes, sometimes as fast as one minute," says Bridges. "Occasionally, we'll have some datasets that get created in the wrong SMS pool, either by renaming or somebody doing an override or copying a test dataset, and it copies the attributes. FDR can move those datasets. You just put the right attributes, and they're where they need to be."

Trustmark has leveraged BMC AMI Storage IAM for over 30 years as an alternative to VSAM. IAM shortens job times by reducing I/O and CPU utilization, improves batch processing speeds, and uses less space, making it a key solution for operational efficiency. "With no JCL, no job, you just put in the name, put in the new name, and it's done," Bridges points out. "That's another quick and easy tool and very much a productivity enhancement."

Trustmark's experience with BMC AMI Storage FDRPAS proved crucial in reducing the disruption and application downtime typically associated with moving entire direct access storage device (DASD) volumes to new devices. It successfully migrated most of the volumes while they were still actively in use. "It was the closest to magic of any software I had dealt with. It moved the volume as you were currently actively running on it. It did 98 percent of your volumes with no disruptions," remarked Bridges, emphasizing the seamlessness and efficiency of the migration.

Looking ahead

By implementing BMC AMI Storage, Trustmark transformed its backup and storage operations—cutting data unavailability by 98 percent, restoring files in under a minute, and halving job times. These gains strengthen application availability, support regulatory compliance, and free the team to focus on serving customers across the Southeast.

As Trustmark continues to modernize its always-on banking environment, BMC AMI Storage gives the bank a resilient, efficient foundation to build on. The partnership positions Trustmark to meet growing data demands and evolving compliance requirements with confidence.