DEVRO:

HIGH AVAILABILITY FOR THE BRITISH BANGER

Devro is the world’s leading manufacturer of collagen products for the food industry. In addition, the company manufacturers a range of plastic casings, supplies customers in the food industry with a range of distributed products and also supplies pure collagen raw materials for use in the healthcare industry.

THE CHALLENGE

Devro supplies world markets from its strategically based commercial offices and through an extensive network of distributors and agents. In addition to the full range of manufactured products, Devro also distributes a broad range of cellulose and fibrous casings plus other specialist products for individual markets.

Devro has manufacturing locations in three continents. In the UK, they manufacture sausage skins as their main product but have recently branched out into breath freshener strips for sale through high street stores such as Boots. The plants at Moodiesburn and Bellshill, Scotland and Bathurst, Australia, produce the range of Devro branded products. Each additionally produces specialist products for individual markets.

Three facilities in the Czech Republic at Jilemnice, Slavkov and Korenov manufacture and finish all the Cutisinä edible and non-edible products. The US facility at Sandy Run, South Carolina produces Coriaä branded products. Together these sites create the world's most extensive range of collagen technologies, processes and applications.

Jonathan Allen, Infrastructure Coordinator at Devro: “We operate two IBM iSeries eServer Model 810 machines, one at Moodiesburn just outside Glasgow and the other at Bellshill, 15 miles away. They are both operational machines that are each other’s back-up. The production system runs JDE One World and JDE World for our Hamburg sales office, the Czech Republic and the UK, replicating to the backup box in Bellshill. The backup system is also used for the US production work which replicates to the main production system in Moodiesburn.”

IBM eServer iSeries servers have dramatically expanded the range of their technological capabilities. Devro have upgraded the Model 810 machines to include dynamic logical partitioning (LPAR).

With capabilities such as uncapped partitions, unused processor capacity on iSeries servers can be automatically shared based on business priorities. LPAR is being installed to help implement Devro’s disaster recovery strategy.

Jonathan Allen comments: “Four years ago, we initiated a strategic review into our business continuity processes. We were being offered IBM’s Recovery Services to deal with the issue and they promised us a recovery point after three days. A recovery point is the point in time that you’ll be returned to after recovery processing has completed and the point from which you’ll resume operations/ applications after an unplanned outage occurs.”

“Basically, IBM would send a truck over with a ‘Recovery and Restore' system that would put us back on our feet in three days. Devro management decided that this was an unacceptably long time as stock levels, customer delivery schedules and incoming orders would come under intense pressure.”

THE SOLUTION

Devro management decided that the maximum allowed business outage had to come down to one day. “I had had previous successful experiences with Lakeview Technology MIMIX High Availability solutions. At Devro, ACS offered a perfect fit between the IBM’s eServer iSeries and the MIMIX solution.”

Devro contacted ACS, Lakeview Technology’s business partner in the UK and Devro’s IBM hardware specialist. They knew all the ins and outs of High Availability and swiftly moved into action. Steve Waterman, Senior HA Consultant at ACS: “The entire project took nine months from the first planning stage to purchasing the software solution, handling the hardware upgrade and moving in with a pre-configured version of MIMIX. Based on feedback, we tuned the HA solution to Devro’s explicit needs and three days later MIMIX received the ‘operational’ stamp of approval.”

According to Jonathan Allen, “Cooperation with ACS went very well, very smoothly. We installed MIMIX v4.1 on our then Model 720 machines, replicating the data with no problem at all. When we did the hardware upgrade and moved to MIMIX 4.4, it was more of the same: a very professional job, a very smooth transition.”

IN SUMMARY

Devro management, who initially had baulked at a three-day business outage and then had set the bar at one day, now can rest assured. Jonathan Allen’s team today has a guaranteed maximum business downtime of a mere hour thanks to MIMIX.

When you can cut your downtime by as much as Jonathan Allen’s team and MIMIX, what might be the actual return on investment of an operational HA solution? Jonathan Allen’s answer: “We estimated that the IBM Recovery System would have set us back £45,000 per annum, so our MIMIX solution is already paying for itself. And that is without taking into account the potential value to the business if we ever need it in anger.”