Germany is an innovative country, and this is especially apparent at the renowned Fraunhofer Institutes. Since 1949, the high level of applied research and development carried out at the Fraunhofer-Gesellschaft's 58 institutes and installations at 80 locations in Germany has been acknowledged around the world. Some 11,000 staff, mainly scientists and engineers, work on research projects worth an annual total of approximately 900 million euros. There are five institutions in Stuttgart alone, with more than 1,000 staff members.
Among other applications, their scientists rely heavily on powerful CAD (Computer Aided Design) systems and CAE (Computer Aided Engineering) tools. They also generate an enormous amount of measurement data and test data. The Institute for Production Engineering and Automation, for example, develops and tests new types of materials, components and complete machines, thus facilitating the automating and rationalising processes. Typical topics at the Institute for Interface Engineering and Bio-engineering, on the other hand, include innovative sludge filters, the sequence of infection processes, and modern water supply systems.
“It is important for our scientists to communicate with each other quickly and efficiently and to exchange data,” says Hinrich Ganzenberg, on the infrastructure of the Fraunhofer Institutes in Stuttgart. As the head of computing at the Fraunhofer Institute Centre in Stuttgart, Ganzenberg is responsible for IT across all of the five local institutions. He heads a department with ten IT specialists and two trainees. The institutions’ researchers cover topics such as production engineering, automation, interface engineering, bio-engineering, construction physics and the preservation of historic monuments.
“The old infrastructure could no longer keep up with the rising demands of the researchers,” says Ganzenberg. “Ever more complex research projects that constantly required more network capacity pushed the infrastructure of the Stuttgart institutions to its limit.”
By 2001, the five institutions had accumulated 330 gigabytes of data; they now have 3.3 terabytes and very quickly, the Fibre Distributed Data Interface’s maximum bandwidth of 100 Mbit no longer satisfied the Fraunhofer Institutes.
“In 2001 we began to think about a new solution,” says Ganzenberg. “After negative experiences with a solution from another supplier, we finally decided in favour of ProCurve Networking by HP.”
The solution from the competing manufacturer, already partially implemented, had to be taken out again. It soon became apparent that the two redundant core switches initially set up did not support the promised number of ports. Ganzenberg and his department then evaluated solutions from various manufacturers, all of which enabled a similarly large bandwidth.
“We decided on ProCurve Networking because their solution offered reliability and the best price-performance ratio,” explains Ganzenberg. On top of that, the lifetime warranty which comes with the ProCurve 5300xl and 4100glseries used by the Fraunhofer Institutes was an important factor.
Since May 2003, the Fraunhofer Institutes in Stuttgart have been using four ProCurve Switch 5300xl series in the backbone of their networks. This series is designed for use in networks with high data throughput, and offers scalable Layer 2, 3 and 4 switching. It can be fitted via up to eight slots with modules that provide the required terminations. Modular construction makes it possible to adapt the equipment to changing requirements, a key factor in future growth.
The four switches have the same standard fittings at all of the Stuttgart research institutes: each has four Gigabit Ethernet optical fibre modules with four ports, three Gigabit Ethernet copper modules with four ports, and an Ethernet 100Base-TX module with 24 ports. The connection from the backbone to the workstations is made by 29 ProCurve 4108gl switches. The convergence-capable switches in this series are available with slots for four or eight modules. They are based on the HP Fast Path Technology and provide transmission rates of 100 Mbit to every workstation in the Fraunhofer Institutes. In the backbone area, the new network solution makes bandwidths in the gigabyte range possible.
“In the five institutions, we now have a total of more than 2,500 ports with a Fast Ethernet connection,” explains Andreas Abele, who is responsible for the operation of the IT infrastructure. “We have also incorporated redundancy in order to guarantee high system stability.”
“System stability is important,” says Abele, “because only systems with high availability can allow researchers to implement their projects, whose many test runs place heavy demands on computing power and network stability.” The network of the Stuttgart Fraunhofer Institutes is now armed to cope with the demanding applications and large quantities of data that are generated by the researchers.
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Hinrich Ganzenberg
Head of computing
Fraunhofer Institute Centre, Stuttgart
