PDM Test Environment Presentation Was A Big Hit!
The Votes Are In! People loved our test environment presentation at 2023 3DEXPERIENCE World!
We are pleased to announce the scores from Tom’s presentation at 2023 3DEXPERIENCE World! Tom Cote and Marty Ohnemus, from Knapheide Manufacturing Company in Quincy, IL, joined forces to discuss setting up the “Ultimate SOLIDWORKS & PDM Testing Environment”. The presentation was given on Tuesday (February 14, 2023) at the Dassault Systemes 3DEXPERIENCE World in Nashville, TN.
Prove Out Your Backups
During the presentation, they discussed the reasons for creating test environments, the considerations for such a system, and some pitfalls to avoid. Tom and Marty described the test environment they had built for Knapheide and gave some foundational reasons for building a test environment. The first and most important is to test your backups by using them to create the test vault.
Many PDM administrators consider having a backup plan and monitoring the backup jobs as sufficient and often the subject ends there. However, unless you test those backups from time to time you have no idea if the data is usable. Test environments give you the ability to make certain you are ready to recover from a disaster, data corruption, or a virus attack.
Walking Out The Steps
From there they walked step by step through the process of building and verifying a test vault. They covered many of the aspects that are involved in building it. Tag-teaming the subject matter, Tom and Marty gave different options for creating a test environment depending on your purposes and hardware options. They even discussed how to build an environment for a special situation like a DriveWorks staging environment.
Never a Dull Moment
The Q&A portion of the presentation was a deep dive into a wide array of backup concerns and network configurations. It was a treasure trove of information! There were some veteran CAD admins with great questions and experiences. It gave Tom and Marty opportunities to bring clarity to the reasons for and the process of building a test environment. We even heard some words of wisdom from Tor Iveroth.
There wasn’t enough time to tackle the hardware needs and concerns. However, the presentation gave a lot of great information to help administrators with their planning and implementation for such an environment.
Great Ratings From The Participants
The participants of the breakout sessions at the conference were asked to rate the content of the sessions and the knowledge of the speakers. The overall rating for the presentation was a deeply satisfying 4.83 out of 5! The presentation of the material was given an additional rating of 4.93 out of 5.
Tom and his team has developed a great working relationship with Knapheide over the years that have been to our mutual benefit. Their willingness to develop a very robust testing environment has given us the opportunity to gain experience and test out different approaches to issues and possibilities. That experience was brought out for the benefit of attendees at this year’s conference!
Are You Looking To Up Your Game?
Contact us today to see how we can help your company strengthen its PDM environment. We can help you build a test environment that can also give your SOLIDWORKS users opportunities for training and improvement!