Success Stories

The Situation

NTK is a manufacturer which specializes in cable and connector harness assembly with more than 750 staff in Hong Kong and China. In order to reduce the operational cost and improve their production efficiency, NTK decided to implement an ERP and MRP system. NTK required a reliable, scalable and manageable infrastructure to support the Java-based ERP and MRP applications for their 24x7 operations.

"We have strict requirements for availability in applications and data. Since our production lines runs 24x7, one of the first tasks of this project was to implement a high availability server platform," explains Godwin Choi, Financial Controller of NTK. "With more than a hundred of workstations in the production site and shortage of IT staffing, the second task of this project is to simplify desktop administration, and of course minimizing desktop downtime and ongoing operational costs."

NTK needed to be certain that its customers and production data would always be available; therefore, the storage infrastructure should support their disaster recovery strategy between Hong Kong and China. "We also aware that a reliable, secure and hardware independent operating system which are scalable for our future growth is important," adds Choi.

The Solution

NTK deployed its ERP & MRP applications on an IA-64 Linux cluster with ShaoLin HA Cluster and ShaoLin Volume Replicator software in Hong Kong. The ERP client software is running on 120 Linux desktops that all are in the form of "Fit Client" network computing architecture which delivered by ShaoLin Aptus in the China manufacturing site. The ERP clients access the ERP servers in Hong Kong through Internet boardband.

"Considering the cost of implementing an enterprise-class, scalable and highly available system for 24x7 operations, we've looked at various platforms -- Unix is too expensive and only runs on proprietary hardware, Windows is too unreliable and insecure, Intel-based Linux is the best choice in terms of cost, performance, security and reliability. Considering our future expansion, we chose the 64-bit Intel Itanium 2 servers to maximize the performance and scalability.", says Choi.

Redundancy was a key requirement for ensuring the availability of NTK's data and applications. "We chose ShaoLin HA Cluster because it works on the scalable 64-bit Linux operating system and does not tie us to specific hardware requirements," explains Choi. "It is very beneficial for us to have a software-centric solution, and ShaoLin HA Cluster allows us to choose the most cost-effective option. It has consistently been able to handle the failures, whether it's application or system-wide failure."

An equally important element in NTK's data availability plan was its disaster recovery solution. "We could have chosen number of different hardware options to perform replication, but we didn't want to tie us to any specific hardware vendor for our storage subsystem," states Choi. As with the clustering piece, a software-centric solution with advanced compression technology which delivers rapid replication was the logical answer. For that reason, NTK went with ShaoLin Volume Replicator.

ShaoLin Aptus assists NTK to achieve its needs on the centralized desktop management, and enhanced the reliability and security of their desktop computing environment. ShaoLin Aptus is a middleware that enables a Linux server to share its operating systems and applications with multiple diskless clients over LAN. Once ShaoLin Aptus is installed on a Linux server, all networked client PC's can turn into Linux-based "fit clients" in minutes without individual installation and even local hard drives.

The Success

Using ShaoLin HA Cluster, NTK can have critical applications automatically switch over to redundant hardware in the event of a failure. It offers a generic clustering solution that turns the non-cluster enabled system to a highly available system with minimal setup work and need of customize of application and operating systems. "Our system administrator can operate the system as a normal Linux server, including software installation and upgrades, without having to worry about clustering and application customization," says Choi.

Another benefit of using ShaoLin HA Cluster is simplified server administration. Users can upgrade the operating system by using the standby server while the active server is online without any interruption. "This way the users don't experience a long downtime during system upgrades and reduce a significant amount of planned downtime" says Choi.

NTK has also found great value in the openness and flexibility of ShaoLin Volume Replicator. As Choi points out, "Unlike other proprietary solutions, ShaoLin Volume Replicator doesn't rely on special hardware, special volume managers or file system types. We can install the software and replicate existing volumes without modification nor even a system reboot" Moreover, ShaoLin Volume Replicator delivers fast and secure data replication to NTK by using ShaoLin's unique Kypertec compression and encryption technology.

Along with ShaoLin HA Cluster and ShaoLin Volume Replicator, NTK also uses ShaoLin Aptus to centralize desktop management. "It makes us easily to deploy a reliable and secure Linux desktop environment and administering hundreds of diskless desktops from a single location," says Choi. "Administration routines are transparent to users, minimizing disruptions and keep users working, not waiting." The solution increases not just manageability, but also the availability of desktops to support daily business-critical operations, and maximizing staff efficiently.

As Choi says, the combination of ShaoLin software provides a multi-tiered client to server total solution. "ShaoLin Aptus provides the simplified management, extra reliability and security on the desktops. ShaoLin HA Cluster gives us the next layer of application availability and manageability, in which we can have a simple cluster environment. Lastly, ShaoLin Volume Replicator provides the top level of data availability, which is disaster recovery."

Additionally, NTK has taken advantage of ShaoLin consulting services. "ShaoLin helps us to work through complex analysis and come up with a correct design. They understand the concern of our business, and supporting our unique requirements," says Choi.

As the first Asian company commercially deploy Linux-based high availability cluster and data replication software on the 64-bit Intel Itanium 2 platform, NTK demonstrated the increased efficiency and high ROI of its scalable, reliable and high performance solution. The overall productivity has been improved by 35%. A comparison of the total cost of ownership between NTK's Linux-based solutions and major brand solutions in a 5-year time frame has shown approximates to 65% cost savings on the server side and 38% on the client desktops.

NTK plans to continue its use of ShaoLin software in the future to meet the growing needs of the company. Choi is confident that ShaoLin's solutions will continue to delivery consistent availability and manageability. This will help NTK to maximize their productivity and thus with maximized ROI.