Indinvest LT, a leading European company in the production and extrusion of aluminum profiles, needed to ensure the continuity of production in its plant. By adopting Pure Storage, it was able to enhance the resilience and performance of its critical data management systems.
A business that never stops
Indinvest LT has specialized for over 40 years in the production of aluminum alloy billets and the extrusion of profiles for industry and architecture. The foundry's hot workings, carried out on a 24x7x365 basis, prevent plant shutdowns outside of scheduled mandatory maintenance: a requirement that has become even more significant after an investment round that has doubled the company's production capacity.
Activity support is guaranteed by three internal data centers hosting VMware virtual machines assigned to functions such as domain controllers, file servers and various types of application services. A critical role is played by SQL Server technology in always-on mode, the heart of the data collection and interconnection system for the company's Industry 4.0 plan.
The central role of data
The need to guarantee constant availability, quality and performance of data with the IT / OT infrastructure clashed with the limitations of existing storage which, even if of the latest generation, in practice manifested management difficulties and latencies that in turn had repercussions on the entire supply chain up to the final user experience. A problem that could not be overcome by adopting cloud solutions due to the lack of adequate connectivity options in the territory where the company is based.
"Our IT infrastructure must be able to manage a continuous production environment, with minimal downtime.
In addition to being complex to manage, the storage we had relied on caused latencies of up to 60 milliseconds and had to be stopped in the event of updates or expansions".Andrea Consalvi
INDIVEST LT
A positive impact
The turning point comes in 2016: Evaluating several alternative solutions, Indinvest LT chooses the value proposition of Pure Storage and introduces its first FlashArray//m10 unit, later joined by two additional FlashArray//X10 units. The positive experience demonstrated by Pure in the field has led to a gradual transformation of the environment which now, with upgrades, data packs and various additional options, has come to include two FlashArray//X20 units and one FlashArray//X10 unit. The entire storage infrastructure is covered by Pure Storage's Evergreen subscription, which ensures continuous hardware and software updates.
The importance of "hot" rollbacks
With the entire infrastructure converging on Pure Storage, Indinvest LT has also implemented Purity FA Active Cluster a metro solution in asynchronous replication on the third node for absolute data protection. As Consalvi explains, in fact: "If necessary, data rollback must occur by restoring the closest possible situation: the data must be 'hot' so as not to negatively impact production. Therefore, availability takes on a fundamental priority value, even higher than that of backup which, for a business like ours, represents a solution to be drawn upon only as a second option".
Results that make the difference
The implementation of Pure Storage has had a positive impact on Indinvest LT by improving application performance, business productivity and user experience. The ease of management has reduced the workload for the IT team, confirming how deployment, use and maintenance are easier than traditional storage.
Within the company, the significant improvement in performance did not go unnoticed: "Pure made us take a huge leap forward in performance, effectively eliminating application latencies: the impact on the user experience was so evident that many colleagues wondered what had suddenly changed", recalls Consalvi, adding that in the case of a disconnected controller without affecting users has demonstrated Pure Storage's ability to ensure continuous operation even during maintenance operations. Last but not least, the security issue: "Pure Storage's advanced features such as double and triple authentication, immutable snapshot copies and ransomware protection have strengthened the security of company data, adding further peace of mind to our work".
The contribution of T.A.I. Solutions
We at T.A.I. supported the entire project, from the analysis phase, to the design, planning and finally the implementation, always working in close contact with the Customer. We thank Indinvest again for the trust placed in us.