creak...... buzzing...... swish...... With the faint sound of the motor, a series of mechanical arms are working in an orderly manner, rotating, clamping, lifting and lowering, and placing. Looking around, the intelligent robot production line composed of countless steel arms and flexible grippers is breathtaking. If you look closely, you can also see some sensor components from the robotic arm, which may be a pair of eyes, watching the status and changes of each item on the assembly line.
This is the industrial robot production line of Dongguan Liqun Automation Technology Co., Ltd. At present, in addition to providing robot products for well-known technology companies such as Foxconn and DJI, each robot in Liqun's own production line has also realized the intelligence of "eye, hand and sensor integration". "Li Qun's entire production line has actually run thousands of robots, and thousands of robots correspond to tens of thousands of sensors, generating dozens of gigabytes of data every day." Ms. Shi Jinbo, the founder of Liqun Technology, introduced that this intelligent driving force stems from the need for more data links in the entire production process of the customers served and the company itself, that is, the need for edge computing solutions to be transformed.
It is conceivable that if all this massive amount of "edge data" is transmitted to the network, it will put great pressure on any enterprise's computing system. What's more, the data obtained by thousands of robotic arms also needs to be analyzed, stored and interacted, so at the beginning, Li Qun's difficulty in data transmission, management and data security can be imagined.
In fact, the challenges faced by Li Qun at the production line are also a common phenomenon in the intelligent transformation of domestic manufacturing industries. Under the atmosphere of increasing emphasis and support for the intelligent development of the manufacturing industry in China, the transformation and upgrading of the manufacturing industry has put forward higher requirements for edge computing, but the edge storage application scenarios generally face three major pain points: the data storage (management) bottleneck at the production line end, the real-time collaboration difficulty of office data, and the data security and disaster recovery challenges at the storage end.
It can be said that the industry urgently needs technology providers to provide a "ballast stone" for intelligent transformation: to provide a flexible and low-cost edge storage architecture in production line applications to ensure that business does not stop; to provide unstructured data processing and collaborative office new ways in office applications; and to combat ransomware viruses (snapshots) and efficient backup means in data security.
So, what does Li Qun rely on to face these challenges with "magical" ease?
The secret behind the Thousand Hands "Divine Arm"
"In fact, in addition to massive data transmission management, we also need to ensure the stability and security of data, if once because of data errors affect production, it is a very serious 'accident'." Ms. Shi Jinbo, founder of Liqun Technology, stressed that the traditional centralized data center model is not only difficult, but also faces huge TCO (total cost of ownership) pressure. Therefore, after multi-party verification, Li Qun adopted synology (edge storage) data management solution and deployed lightweight edge storage for storing and processing 100-megabit data near the production line.
According to the relevant person in charge of the R&D center of Liqun Technology, the company deployed a number of Synology desktop DS920+ and Synology rackmount RS1619xs+ in the factory weak current room, each NAS is defined as an edge node, and the data in each set of robot sensors is transmitted to the corresponding NAS. "Every 40 robots on the production line are divided into a group, corresponding to a NAS, all the data is transmitted centrally, and the analysis results are uploaded to Synology's rack-mounted RS4021xs+ server, which can effectively reduce the network pressure caused by transmission."
At the same time, Li Qun also has an important demand, that is, to ensure that the business of the production line does not stop, if the NAS on a certain node cannot operate normally, what other ways are there in addition to manual emergency repair?
The solution also comes from Synology High Availability cluster that comes with Synology, which can be composed of multiple NAS on the compute nodes into a dual-machine hot standby architecture, and once the active server cannot operate normally, the passive server will automatically take over the original task, and the production line business can be restored within a few minutes.
In the example of Li Qun's robot production line, we can find through communication with manufacturers that Synology (edge storage) data management solution has many important features: support online expansion, storage of massive data, production line image data can be synchronized to Synology high-availability architecture in real time, efficiently ensuring business continuity.
It is based on these characteristics that this solution helps manufacturing companies survive the difficulties of data management. At the same time, we also noticed that Li Qun's technical leader repeatedly mentioned the concern about "ransomware" and the urgent need to deploy disaster recovery backup solutions. What's going on here?
The sense of security of not being afraid of the virus's "blackmail"
Yes, manufacturing is the hardest hit by ransomware attacks, which is already the consensus of the industry.
How "ferocious" is the ransomware virus? As an example of a recent announcement by Toyota Motor Corporation, on March 1, Toyota auto parts suppliers were completely paralyzed by a "ransomware virus" attack, so all 14 Toyota factories in Japan had to shut down for a day.
Obviously, in the process of intelligent transformation of the manufacturing industry, in addition to the big problem of "edge computing data management", there is a second pain point: data security, especially the challenge of disaster recovery and backup. Therefore, after learning about the specific cases of Dongguan Liqun Technology and Fujian Seven Wolves Industrial Co., Ltd., we also saw new ideas for manufacturing companies in protecting data security and strengthening data backup, which is also the innovative model favored by manufacturing companies at present - edge computing solutions that can take into account data security.
As a pioneering brand in China's menswear industry, Seven Wolves achieved revenue of 2.38 billion yuan in the first three quarters of 2021, up 9.6% year-on-year. Such a large garment manufacturing enterprise naturally invests huge manpower and material resources in the management of production line data. Especially for the security of data, the seven wolves naturally pay more attention.
Due to the huge amount of local data, Seven Wolves previously used Windows Server as a support platform for enterprise file services, with a total data volume of more than 40 TB in the server. However, with the frequent occurrence of ransomware attacks in recent years, and the focus of attacks has shifted from computers to various types of servers, it has undoubtedly brought greater security risks to the company's operations.
Through the exchange can be seen that the seven wolves for information security has very high requirements, the implementation of the internal and external network separation, the original storage of the intranet file server can not be shared with the outside, can only use the hard disk copy to send files, but this affects the work efficiency, so the seven wolves urgently need to establish a safe, reliable, efficient data management program.
According to the person in charge of seven wolves information technology services, through the subsidiary, seven wolves learned that Synology file server has multiple data protection measures and can be prepared to resist ransomware viruses. Two Synology rackmount SA3400 storage servers were purchased, along with 12 12TB hard drives: one for about 1,000 people in the enterprise to use as a file server, and the other as a backup server and to exchange data between intranet and intranet networks.
Since then, seven wolves have found that in addition to file servers, Synology can also be used as a one-stop backup platform, without the need to purchase additional licenses to centrally back up enterprise servers, virtual machines and cloud data, which not only improves operational efficiency, but also greatly reduces IT costs.
"We're always looking for a more secure file server, and the reason we like synology SA3400 is security, which comes with a multi-version snapshot function that can protect the company's important data in multiple versions." Seven Wolves information technology service in charge of the introduction, the company's file server from the original Windows server to SA3400 migration process is very smooth, and SA3400 can be seamlessly integrated into the company's existing environment, "we do not need to reset the permissions, SA3400 can directly join our existing Windows AD domain and support ACL, after the migration of the original folder permission settings can still be retained." "
More critically, seven wolves have strict regulations for information security, and the SA3400 can only operate in the intranet. So how do companies handle files that need to be shared?
In this regard, the technical department installed synology virtual machine manager virtualization suite on another SA3400, virtualizing a separate Virtual DSM operating system, only for external file sharing; then synchronizing the files that need to be external in the intranet to the Virtual DSM virtualization platform through synology drive ShareSync multi-point synchronization suite, so as to achieve intranet file isolation and ensure the security of the company's source-end file server.
"Synology solves the problem of our large data volume and difficult backup, and the multi-version protection and disaster recovery solution can help us defend against ransomware attacks." On the SA3400 we implemented file servers, intranet file exchange, backup and disaster recovery, etc., all of which can be operated without additional equipment. The person in charge of the Seven Wolves Information Technology Service concluded.
It can be seen that the "looking for an edge storage solution that can take into account data security" mentioned above comes from several major features of Synology data backup and data security solutions: Active Backup for Business backup all-in-one can be centrally backed up without additional software authorization; Snapshot Replication snapshot and replication suite can face ransomware viruses and quickly restore data; Hyper Backup offsite backup suite can back up data in multiple destinations and protect data in multiple directions.
These stories that occur in manufacturing enterprises, in short, focus on the "management" and "stability" of enterprise data, and it is based on these two points that the "use" of enterprise data has the possibility of liberating the shackles and letting go of hands and feet. In other words, the third pain point of the intelligent transformation of the manufacturing industry, the real-time collaboration of office data, has also been successfully solved.
Cloud office liberates the "hands and feet" of colleagues
As Li Qun and the technical leader of Seven Wolves said, the management and security challenges of enterprise data are very important to them, these two pain points can be solved, and the production (external operation) of the enterprise can be guaranteed, so can the data management of internal (office collaboration) also be solved in a package?
Indeed, not only manufacturing, but also many industries have another "hidden pain" when facing data storage - the inconvenience of file dispersion and management in the office environment. So, can Synology solve the above problems while at the same time managing and collaborating efficiently in the edge computing environment?
This question must be answered within polyfluoride, a well-known enterprise in the field of fluorine chemical industry.
Although Polyfluoride is a chemical company, it has always been known for its innovative initiatives in intelligent transformation. Li Shijiang, the chairman of this company, famously said: Don't use strategic diligence to cover up cognitive laziness. Therefore, Polyfluoride has been constantly subverting the existing mode of thinking and viewing digital transformation from the perspective of civilization evolution.
Through the carrier of "Three Wisdoms Project", POLYFLU has formed a management and analysis data basis with ERP, MOM and PCS as the core in recent years. But as structured data management within the enterprise improves, some challenges follow. For example, the original backup solution purchased cloud services, which were charged according to capacity and number of service sites, so the overall backup cost was too high; in addition, unstructured data such as operator data and financial (and sales) reports was scattered; engineering files were edited by many people and version management was chaotic...
In order to solve these problems, the head of the polyfluoride multi-information department has taken several important measures: through the SynologyDrive enterprise cloud disk suite, the files on mobile phones, PCs and pads are consistent and not afraid of accidental deletion; through the Synology Office collaborative office suite, all files are unified and controlled, and multiple people can edit and collaborate online in real time; through the improvement of office efficiency, the needs of different departments are accurately adapted. To this end, PCFLoid has also arranged special training courses to popularize and apply Synology products throughout the company.
The advantages brought by these measures are also very obvious, first of all, Synology backup server product + ABB backup suite, saving 70% of backup costs for polyfluoride and polyspecific; second, through the Synology Drive suite to create enterprise private cloud disks, office files to achieve centralized storage, version backtracking, file sharing, so that employees' collaborative office in one step; third, through the Cloud Sync public cloud synchronization suite to synchronize cloud data, improve the overall work efficiency of the company. "It's gold that always shines!" This sentence not only expresses the appreciation of the head of the polyfluoride multi-information department for Synology's data management solution, but also summarizes the benefits brought about by the improvement of the enterprise's data control ability.
【Conclusion】
After in-depth understanding of the digital transformation of some small and medium-sized manufacturing enterprises, it can be seen that these enterprises have solved the three major difficulties of "edge data storage", "data security and backup" and "office data collaboration" through Synology's package solutions.
In fact, there are more small and medium-sized manufacturing enterprises in China who continue to explore and pursue a point in the intelligent transformation - how to obtain a more cost-effective transformation path through more efficient and low-cost edge storage solutions. Because many companies need to purchase different services to solve problems when dealing with many challenges. Now through a set of solutions can solve the needs of intelligent transformation of enterprises, this "ballast stone", may be the key to their compliance with a new round of intelligent transformation and change.