Manufacturing company LCFC (Hefei) Electronics Technology Co., Ltd. needs its production processes to run reliably all day, every day. To prevent unexpected downtime from interrupting operations, LCFC worked with Lenovo to design and implement an active-active data center architecture. Today, fully automated failover between sites means that systems keep running in the event of disaster and production lines keep rolling.

1. 2016 Lenovo Internal. All rights reserved.
Lenovo customer case study
LCFC ensures continuous operations with help
from Lenovo

2. CASE STUDY MANUFACTURING
LCFC ensures continuous operations with help from Lenovo
LCFC (Hefei) Electronics Technology Co., Ltd. was
founded as a joint venture between the Hefei municipal
government – the capital city of Anhui Province in
eastern China – and Lenovo. Funded by Lenovo and
Compal Electronics, the company manufactures state-
or-the-art Lenovo laptops and PCs for the global
market. LCFC’s annual production capacity is
expected to soon exceed 10 million units.
Round-the-clock operations
To keep production lines running smoothly, LCFC
needs its custom-developed, mission-critical
manufacturing execution system (MES) database to be
available 24 hours a day. But without any specialized
data backup or disaster recovery processes in place,
the company was concerned that any storage system
downtime could result in data loss and interrupt
production.
Overview
Manufacturing company LCFC
(Hefei) Electronics Technology Co.,
Ltd. needs its production processes
to run reliably all day, every day. To
prevent unexpected downtime from
interrupting operations, LCFC
worked with Lenovo to design and
implement an active-active data
center architecture. Today, fully
automated failover between sites
means that systems keep running in
the event of disaster and production
lines keep rolling.

3. LCFC’s existing IT architecture could not meet demand for round-the-clock operations. Previously, making even
minor changes to the architecture would result in at least 30 minutes of MES downtime, sometimes much longer.
Running one server for each MES subsystem also meant that if any server were to fail, the entire MES would go
down – bringing production grinding to a halt.
Furthermore, faced with ever-increasing production volumes, LCFC recognized that its existing IT architecture
could not meet growing demand for capacity, performance and scalability. To ensure that it could meet both current
and future demand – and keep its core MES running uninterrupted 24x7x365 – the company sought a new,
sustainable IT architecture solution.
Rock-solid solution from Lenovo
LCFC decided to overhaul its IT architecture. The company implemented one Lenovo/EMC VPLEX Metro with VS2
array at both of its geographically-remote data centers in Hefei. Connected by fiber channel technology and running
as an active-active cluster, failover is fully automated – enabling operations to continue as normal in the event of
disaster at one site.
The company also implemented three Lenovo ThinkServer RD640 servers at its secondary data center as the basis
for an Oracle Real Application Cluster (RAC). By connecting the RAC to its existing servers in the main data center,
LCFC’s Lenovo servers support the new active-active configuration.
LCFC then worked with Lenovo to converge all of its existing storage arrays to a single virtualized storage system
running on Lenovo/EMC VNX5300, providing increased storage capacity, better load-balancing and improved
disaster recovery capabilities.
Zero downtime
With the Lenovo solution, LCFC has significantly reduced disaster recovery times. Instant failover between data
centers means that the company’s recovery time objective and recovery point objective are now zero. LCFC’s
mission-critical MES simply continues running as normal in the event of unexpected downtime at one data center,
ensuring that there is no data loss and no interruption to production.
CASE STUDY MANUFACTURING
Solution components
Hardware
 Lenovo ThinkServer RD640
 Lenovo/EMC VPLEX Metro
with VS2
 Lenovo/EMC VNX5400 Disk
Array
 Brocade 300E Fiber Channel
Switches

4. Thanks to the easy scalability of the Lenovo/EMC VPLEX Metro solution, LCFC can now quickly and seamlessly
scale its data centers to meet growing performance and data capacity demands. With a single converged,
virtualized storage system, LCFC can make the most use out of its existing storage arrays, protecting investment.
The VPLEX Metro solution also enables LCFC to scale or replace the underlying storage devices as and when
needed, giving the company the flexibility to respond to changing business needs.
By transforming its data center architecture with Lenovo technology, LCFC can be sure that production lines keep
rolling, no matter what.
For more information
To learn more about Lenovo Data Center Systems solutions, contact your Lenovo Sales Representative or
Lenovo Business Partner, or visit: lenovo.com/systems
CASE STUDY MANUFACTURING
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