PennEngineering Reduces System Downtime and Enhances Data Protection with Assure iTERA HA

PennEngineering is a global manufacturing company that specializes in producing fasteners and self-clinch fasteners for various industries. With its headquarters in Pennsylvania, USA, the company operates facilities across North America, Europe, and Asia, ensuring worldwide sales and operations around the clock. The company has a significant presence in the manufacturing industry, providing essential components that are critical to the assembly and production processes in various sectors. PennEngineering's operations are extensive, with plants strategically located to serve a global market, and its business environment is characterized by continuous production to meet the demands of its diverse customer base. The company is committed to maintaining high standards of quality and efficiency, which is reflected in its need for robust and reliable IT systems to support its operations. As a large corporate entity, PennEngineering faces the challenges of managing complex operations across multiple time zones, necessitating advanced solutions for system maintenance and data protection to ensure business continuity and operational efficiency.

PennEngineering operates facilities across the United States, as well as in Europe and Asia, but its computer systems are centralized at the company’s headquarters in Pennsylvania. At one time, its U.S. factories ran primarily a single shift, allowing considerable time at night and on the weekends to perform necessary system maintenance. However, operations in Europe and Asia dramatically reduced the times during which maintenance can be performed without impacting operations, particularly because the factories in China operate on Saturday and Sunday. In addition, maintenance windows are being further constrained by the U.S. west coast operations since a second shift has been added to keep up with demand. Thus, the cost of downtime was growing, but PennEngineering’s systems still required regular maintenance. The company’s challenge was to find a way to dramatically decrease the amount of system downtime required for maintenance, thereby reducing the cost to the business. The company also needed a more effective way to recover its data in the event of a disaster. Waiting for recovery from a tape restore was no longer an option.

PennEngineering chose Assure iTERA HA to overcome its data protection and downtime challenges. Assure iTERA HA captures all data additions and changes—including both user and system data—on PennEngineering’s production server in Pennsylvania and replicates them to a backup server located about 50 miles away. Because Assure iTERA HA replicates data in real-time, this solution protects all of PennEngineering’s data, including data updated after the previous nightly backup tape was created. And because the backup server is remote to the primary server, if a disaster were to shut down the primary data center, the company’s facilities around the world would still have access to their data and applications through the backup server. Protecting data and application availability from the consequences of unplanned downtime was a major reason for choosing Assure iTERA HA, but PennEngineering realizes significant value even when everything is running normally. Maintenance windows used to result in system shutdowns that lasted up to eight hours every Saturday night. Factories with shifts at that time could still function, but they had to record transactions manually and enter them into the systems when they were available again. This resulted in a significant duplication of effort and increased the opportunity for errors. With the help of Assure iTERA HA and a new, higher performance server, the company shaved two hours off the maintenance window. But this isn’t even half the story. PennEngineering was still creating a full backup tape on its production server during the weekly maintenance window, a task that shuts down applications for about four hours. However, because Assure iTERA maintains a real-time copy of all data, the company started creating backup tapes on the secondary system, minimizing the downtime on the production server. With all the pieces in place, PennEngineering reduced its maintenance window from eight hours to an hour and a half. In addition, the company

• Ensures that disaster recovery requirements are addressed for critical business applications.
• Dramatically reduced maintenance windows, allowing for more efficient operations.
• Ensures business continuity should a disaster strike, protecting all data, including data entered during the day.

• Reduced maintenance window from eight hours to an hour and a half.