EFAFLEX is the leading manufacturer of industrial, roll-up and folding doors. EFAFLEX is the world leader across multiple markets in high-speed door applications. The company’s success is based on investments in its own research and development and on over 1,200 people who work at EFAFLEX. EFAFLEX has been manufacturing industrial doors and innovating them since 1974, which is why customers today can choose from 65 types of doors for any industry. EFAFLEX’s headquarters are located in Bruckberg in the heart of Bavaria, Germany. The company’s only production plant is in Olší, close to the city of Tábor in the Czech Republic. From here, high-speed doors are exported all over the world.

 

Challenge

 

EFAFLEX - CZ has used a campus optical network with 1 Gbps throughput in its production plant. With the virtual desktop deployment and growing digitalization, there has been an increase in data transmission, especially between individual buildings and the central server room. The increasing amount of stored data required the purchase and connection of another disk array. The goal of the network upgrade was to increase network throughput, reduce the response time of applications communicating with servers, increase the throughput of disk arrays to central servers and speed up storage backup.

 

Solution

 

The network upgrade was planned and divided into several parts, due to the progressive deployment of new systems. This also allowed investment costs to be spread out over time. Fully managed 10-Gigabit Ethernet L3 switches DXS-3600-32S were designed for the backbone, interconnected to the HW stack with a throughput of 480 Gbps. DGS-1510 series, Gigabit Ethernet switches with 10G uplink ports were used as access switches, with PoE support for powering of connected IP phones, Wi-Fi access points and IP cameras. HW stacking support at both switch series allows redundant star network topology and also dual redundant connections of servers where all links are in aggregation (LACP) and all are active. This increases the overall throughput and reliability of the network. Increased network availability is also ensured by redundant modular power supplies installed inside the backbone switches.

 

Result

 

The system integrator, VSP Data, implemented D-Link switches to the network infrastructure in 2019. It resulted in a stable high bandwidth network with easy management. In 2020, the technology was transferred to a newly built server room and old multi-mode optical infrastructure was replaced with single-mode optical fibres and D-Link SFP+ transceivers. “The selected D-Link switches are very reliable even in harsh manufacturer’s environment with many influences from CNC machines. The high throughput of the network allowed us to speed up and optimize the production process, without any restrictions or outages. We are fully satisfied with the D-Link solution “, concludes Zdeněk Nečas, head of the IT department of EFAFLEX - CZ.