ALD Vacuum Technologies AG is the leading provider of processes and services in the field of vacuum process technology. ALD´s strategic direction is the development of processes as well as the design and operation of plants in the company´s three main areas of vacuum metallurgy, heat treatment and thermal recycling. In order to retain and extend its innovative lead in these strategic areas, ALD continues to invest heavily in its research and development. With subsidiaries in UK, USA and Japan, ALD maintains a high profile in these key markets where, for example, its thermal recycling technology contributes to protecting the environment. ALD engineers have developed a method by which poisonous, yet valuable, metals and substances such as zinc, cadmium, lead and quicksilver can be regained and reintroduced into the production chain rather than being disposed of and polluting the environment by ending their life-cycle on refuse dumps. A prerequisite for innovation is knowledge and ALD values the intellectual capital of its employees such that it selects leading products and service providers to support, manage, store and share its knowledge base.

Efficient File Serving with CLARiiON IP4700

The success of any organisation concentrating on the development of new technologies requires fast access to its CAD files. The system´s efficient cache management provides for good response times and mirrored service processors ensure high availability. The system was subjected to an internal failover test and passed with flying colours.A further benefit ALD derives from the system is the integrated software feature SnapView/IP. The availability of data and applications is thus enhanced by the system´s capability to create a copy of the data without having to stop the system. As a result, the backup window no longer represents a challenge. Productivity in the organisation has also been improved as users can now access their data whenever they need to. Backups are now executed smoothly and non-disruptively in the background. As the process of creating a copy takes no more than a few seconds, ALD is now in a position to create several copies each day so that, if necessary, for example if files have been inadvertently deleted, rapid recovery is now possible. This situation is appreciated by both the IT staff and the users.

New Backup

Design ALD´s core applications for its commercial sections are SAP R/3 and PAISY and, in the area of product development and construction, comprise electronic CAD and mechanical CAD applications. Solaris and NT are today the two strategic platforms ALD has implemented. The tremendous growth of data in general, and in the area of CAD in particular, led ALD to review the design of its storage environment. The migration from 2D to 3D CAD files has been accompanied by a data growth in excess of 1000%! Robert Schuhl describes the challenge: In order to meet future requirements we needed to look at introducing a means of centralising backup/restore procedures. Compared with the decentral procedures we used to have, we have been able to achieve considerable savings in the effort required to manage backup/restore. There were several compelling reasons which led us to opt for Legato´s NetWorker solution as our backup software. At the top of the list today is investment protection. NetWorker is recognised as a leading backup solution providing support and agents for all popular client platforms and databases. Of equal importance is the certification for R/3 and the interface to the Oracle database which enables us to run online backups. We backup data on a daily basis and the support for NDMP Protocol allows us to transfer backup data LANfree directly from the storage system - IP4700 - to the tape library via a SCSI connection. During backup runs only the metadata is transferred across the 100 Mbit Gigabit Ethernet. The consequence of this is that the user network itself now provides the users with more bandwidth."

As far as the hardware is concerned, COMPAREX installed a P2000 Library with DLT drives and an UltraSparc Server from SUN. The decision to opt for DLT technology was a relatively easy one as ALD had already been using this technology for some time and has come to value its record for reliability. In addition, the system provides both the capacity required for today and the upgrade path for the future.

"As a medium-sized company the consultancy provided by a good Systems Integrator is invaluable for us. They have the expertise to be able to integrate a variety of products within the framework of an overall solution and know that it will work. This is the best way for us to implement a first-class solution via a single point of contact only. COMPAREX had the reputation of being a supplier of mainframe-based solutions but we find that we certainly took the right decision in selecting COMPAREX as our preferred partner for open systems solutions. Cooperation with COMPAREX during the design and implementation phases was both pleasant and professional as has been the ongoing support since," concludes Mr. Schuhl.