Nuova Stame Upgrades to High-Speed Resilient Network

Headquartered in Milano, Nuova Stame S.p.A. was founded in 1970 by a skilled group of technicians who specialized in the design and manufacture of tooling for cold sheet metal stamping. The company has an unusual engineering model that combines traditional expertise, such as sculpting, with technology innovation, which has been their key to long-term success. Today, Nuova Stame is a state-of-the-art company with a reputation for reliability, quality, and research into innovative technical solutions.

Nuova Stame has always been committed to technological excellence and long-term production efficiency. In line with this philosophy, the company recently undertook a major project to upgrade their network infrastructure and cabling, and the servers that run their key applications, to facilitate the company’s growth and meet its needs well into the future.

Business Objectives Drive Technology Revamp

Nuova Stame engaged the IT services and consulting company Agomir S.p.A. to design and implement the new infrastructure, who partnered with Allied Telesis for the networking solution. Agomir assigned Antonio Maggioni as the System Project Manager to lead the renewal effort. “Starting from Nuova Stame’s business-driven technology objectives, we developed the project in four main phases,” says Maggioni.

In the first phase, the Agomir consultants analyzed the existing situation and incorporated the new project specifications, including scalability to support a growing business; high reliability to ensure no downtime; resilience to problems that might pop up; and performance improvement over the old network.

The second phase was a design of the entire “supporting infrastructure,” including a new data center room and a complete replacement of the existing copper cabling with new fiber optic backbones.

Next came a determination of what new network devices – namely, switches – would be required to handle the traffic. Then, in the fourth and final phase, Agomir designed the new server architecture.

Allied Telesis Technologies Deliver High Reliability and Resilience

Agomir sought out Allied Telesis to provide the network devices to meet Nuova Stame’s requirements. “We needed a supplier who could offer switches with a wide range of ports of different types, both in terms of speed and connection,” says Maggioni. “In Allied Telesis, we found a valuable partner, along with an extremely comprehensive and diversified product range to meet the most complex needs.”

Agomir created a resilient network core by using four Allied Telesis x550 Series switches stacked together with dual 40Gb connections. These switches support the Virtual Chassis Stacking feature (VCStack™), which simplifies management by allowing multiple switches to appear as a single virtual chassis. With link aggregation across ports on different virtual chassis members, there is no perceptible disruption in the case of a link failure, and the full bandwidth of the network remains available. Near hitless failover ensures absolutely minimal network downtime in the event of a problem, thus satisfying Nuova Stame’s requirements for high reliability and resilience.

Next, the network was divided into five areas, with Agomir placing new racks and corresponding groups of access switches for user services in each area. They were all connected to the resilient core with 10Gb or 1Gb uplinks. “In these areas, we used switches from the GS980MX and GS950 Series, depending on the load requirements,” says Maggioni. “In this way, we eliminated numerous cascading switches and brought everything back to a single level of switches, connected to the network core.”

“Thanks to the 10 Gigabit per second connections between the core switches and the access switches, the Nuova Stame’s network applications can benefit from high-speed performance,” says Alessandro Amendolagine, Sales Director Italy for Allied Telesis. “Furthermore, we created duplicate link paths between the core x550 switches and the GS980MX access devices, ensuring service continuity, even in case of disruptions on a single link.”

The Successful Renewal Project Delivered Many Benefits

Valerio Villa, IT Manager of Nuova Stame, is pleased with the results. “Thanks to this important project, Nuova Stame has obtained numerous benefits. Among the most significant is the optimization of the network connection for the entire structure of the company, especially in the production area, where the difference in network speed compared to the past has been significantly felt.”

Through the increasing connection of machine tools, and the use of data collection software in an Industry 4.0 perspective, the workshop has been able to transform into a crucial environment with a significant increase in efficiency and, consequently, overall productivity, he adds.

“System reliability, operational continuity, advanced data security, network speed, and a new and innovative Data Center room—all are the result of a successful project that has allowed Nuova Stame to achieve the desired level of efficiency and competitiveness,” Villa says.