Network Appliance Enhances and Simplifies the CAD Architecture for PSA Peugeot Citroen
SUNNYVALE, Calif.--Jan. 28, 2003--Network Appliance, Inc., , a leading provider of enterprise network storage solutions, today announced that the Group Peugeot Citroen has implemented NetApp storage systems to ensure the evolution of its CAD infrastructure, which today includes 7,000 desktops in 50 sites in several countries. This implementation is key in contributing to the success of the car manufacturer because it will allow them to reduce the design time for a car to two years from an industry average timeframe of three years.
On average the Group Peugeot Citroen manages 25 project vehicle designs simultaneously. The development center of Velizy (near Paris, France) is the most important design site for the group with approximately 2,000 desktops. The NetApp storage systems replace a direct-attached cluster architecture connected to a server-based storage system. To replace this solution, suppliers were consulted to undergo a period of intensive testing and validation.
"The previous solution responded to our requirements in terms of maximum availability," said Jean Pierre Dumoulin, director of the Division TIVV in charge of support and IT for the group PSA Peugeot-Citroen. "However, the day-to-day running of the system was complex and costly. The clusters did not adapt well to changes and a simple manipulation such as adding a disk involved taking into account up to eight levels of compatibility. One of the most important aspects of our tests involved the ability to reboot the systems, compared to the clusters. We imposed a time limit of less than two minutes and the NetApp systems adhered perfectly to this requirement. Moreover, the engineers at PSA, accustomed to the complexity of the cluster configuration, were surprised by the astonishing simplicity of the NetApp solution which offers a lower TCO--nearly half that of the former solution."
The richness of the NetApp solution portfolio allowed PSA to choose the offering best adapted to the specific requirements for each site. The largest implementations are equipped with NetApp F820s and F840s in clustered configurations, meeting both criteria of availability and server consolidation. A NetApp F810 is allotted to the development team and all the other sites have either NetApp F87s or F810s ensuring high availability and rapid response for the best cost.
The advanced functions of the NetApp systems provide key benefits to the PSA team for day-to-day operations. The native IP replication enables a synchronization of data twice per day between the sites and the two consolidation centers in order to ensure business continuance. The NetApp storage allows PSA to deploy more resources on CAD projects by minimizing the time spent on server management. PSA is also evaluating a NetApp NearStore(TM) solution to assure backup on disks and is evaluating extending the use of NetApp systems to other applications.
"The value add of certain functions can be directly qualified in terms of productivity and exploitation costs," said Jean Pierre Dumoulin. "This is especially the case for the centralized file management ensured by NetApp DataFabric(TM) Manager and NetApp Snap technology, which enable the user to rapidly recover business data in case of a disaster. We are now thinking of extending the appliance concept to the CAD desktops on Windows(R) because NetApp systems allow complete Microsoft(R) compatibility."
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