Nobento: Moving Towards Industry 4.0 with Huawei's 10- Gigabit Network and All-Flash Storage

Nobento is an Italian manufacturing company that produces windows, doors and roller shutters. In addition to innovative frames that do not require steel reinforcements, the company also operates its own glass production facility. Nobento utilises several fully automated machines and promotes efficient, connected production.

Keeping operations running smoothly top of the agenda

Business is going well for the Italian window specialist. Due to strong growth in recent years, the company has switched to three-shift operation. Since then, fully automated machines for glass production or autonomous transport vehicles for frame assembly are running 24 hours a day on a total of 25,000 square metres of production space. This also applies to the IT infrastructure. However, the existing set-up was no longer able to cope with the new requirements. Whether it comes to servers, storage or network connectivity - Nobento needed solutions that work reliably and crisis-proof around the clock to keep production operations running smoothly. In addition to high-performance connectivity for the automated machinery, Nobento also focussed on a storage solution that could optimally store and analyse the growing volumes of data. For the implementation, the choice fell on products from Huawei. Nues, Nobento's IT service provider, was also involved in the realisation.

Fast network and reliable storage go hand-in-hand to ensure highly automated production environment

In the first step, the window and door manufacturer virtualised 15 physical servers and consolidated the infrastructure into two host computers and a storage server. Huawei's FusionCube played an important role in this, as the hyper-converged solution combines virtual machines, storage and networks in a single platform and thus reduces costs. For storage purposes, Nobento uses OceanStor Dorado 3000 in the new network.

Nobento's next step was to set up a 10-gigabit network at its headquarters and production site in Alghero, based on switches from the CloudEngine series. The switches can be connected via both fibre optic and copper cables and offer stable, high-bandwidth and fail-safe 24/7 connectivity for the highly automated production environment. The network is centrally managed via cloud-based controllers. Using this set-up, Nobento aimed to establish a high-performance network with maximum capacity. As a back-up to the wired network, Nobento also expanded and improved the Wi-Fi coverage at its production site. The manufacturer installed access points from Huawei's AirEngine series. The Wi-Fi 6 WLAN technology offers the necessary bandwidth and response time to interact with autonomous systems and machines.

On a path to becoming a fully automated and connected company

‘The network is the heart of our infrastructure and has undergone a unique evolution,’ says Giovanni Sanna, IT Manager at Nobento. The window specialist has adapted its entire network and storage environment to the requirements of round-the-clock, connected production and is ideally equipped for future developments. The 10-gigabit campus network in combination with the extensive Wi-Fi 6 coverage also provides the company with ultra-fast connectivity with ultra-low latency. This means that Nobento gains efficiency and accuracy in every step of the manufacturing process.

The company has also developed enormously when it comes to storage. ‘With OceanStor Dorado from Huawei, we have made a quantum leap in terms of efficiency, performance and data management,’ says Sanna. The all-flash storage protects the company from outages, cyberattacks and data loss, as it takes just two clicks to restore the system to the state it was in four seconds ago or earlier. Thanks to Huawei, the window manufacturer now has the best IT insight. ‘Our long-standing, strategic partner Huawei has once again fully convinced us in this project, as we have precisely achieved our goals,’ says Andrea Alessandrini, CEO of Nobento. ‘The experience gained from this project is also very valuable for our development into a fully connected company’.

About Nobento S.p.a.

The manufacturing company Nobento was founded in 2009 and has its headquarters and production site in Alghero, Sardinia. The company also operates a sales and customer service office on the Italian mainland. Since its foundation, Nobento has grown considerably and now employs around 250 people. Its largest customers include DIY stores such as Leroy Merlin Italia and Bricoman, which account for around 30 per cent of sales. Nobento also supplies retailers and private customers.