As automotive manufacturers expand production capacity and connect operational technology with IT systems, their infrastructure must support both factory continuity, long-term standardization and digital transformation.
So far, more than 50 new energy and conventional vehicle manufacturers and automotive components companies have deployed SmartX ECP to accelerate new factory landing and intelligent manufacturing transformation.
The following 10+ customer practices show how SmartX ECP helps automotive companies run core production workloads, modernize infrastructure, and manage distributed factories with greater efficiency and control.
IT Infrastructure Requirements for Smart Automotive Manufacturing
24/7 Business Continuity
Production lines and critical systems such as MES, SCADA, and AGV must operate continuously. Infrastructure therefore needs high availability, reliable performance, and disaster recovery capabilities to protect production operations.
OT/IT Convergence
Factory equipment, industrial protocols, and systems such as MES, PLM, WMS, and SCADA need to be interconnected. The infrastructure must support data collection, exchange, and unified management across production and IT environments.
Standardized Factory Deployment and Unified Management
As manufacturers build new sites and expand across regions, they need repeatable infrastructure architectures and consistent O&M processes. Standardization helps factories go live faster, enables centralized management, and improves collaboration across sites.
VMware Replacement and Cost Control
Automotive enterprises are also looking for more cost-effective and controllable alternatives to VMware. The replacement solution must support smooth workload migration, protect business continuity, and make full use of existing hardware where appropriate.
Facing these requirements, SmartX ECP provides a flexible infrastructure foundation for automotive manufacturing. Its native hypervisor ELF supports core business and production systems, while SMTX Migration Tool helps enterprises transition from VMware. SmartX ECP can also integrate backup and disaster recovery, distributed firewall, load balancing, network traffic visualization, container management, and distributed storage to support different workload and site requirements.
Customer Success Stories
A Leading New Energy Vehicle Manufacturer: 150+ Nodes for a Standardized New Factory
A leading new energy vehicle manufacturer deployed more than 150 nodes in a newly built factory to run core production systems, including MES, ESB, and warehouse management. Using SMTX Migration Tool, the company migrated workloads and replaced its legacy VMware virtualization plus centralized storage architecture.
The new factory also serves as a reference model for repeatable, standardized deployment across future sites.
SAIC-GM-Wuling Automobile: Core Systems Across Headquarters and Branch Factories
SAIC-GM-Wuling Automobile uses SmartX native hypervisor ELF to run SAP and a GPU resource pool at headquarters, as well as the I²MS at branch factories. I²MS integrates core production systems including MES, MCS, group control systems, and AGVs.
The project also addressed I/O bottlenecks on SAP DB servers in the existing environment, preventing CPUs from idling while waiting for data and improving the efficiency of SAP workloads.
Chang’an Kuayue: IoV Big Data and Heterogeneous Cluster Management
Chang’an Kuayue runs an Internet of Vehicles (IoV) big data system that includes Kafka and HDFS. The company used SMTX Migration Tool to smoothly migrate from VMware to SmartX native hypervisor ELF.
By expanding capacity and building a heterogeneous cluster, the company unified the management of servers from different vendors and established a more flexible infrastructure for IoV applications.
King Long United Automotive Industry: ITAI Transformation on Hygon-Based Servers
King Long United Automotive Industry advanced ITAI transformation by deploying SmartX ECP on Hygon-based servers. The solution provides a domestic infrastructure foundation for the company’s automotive manufacturing workloads.
Tianjin Aisin Automatic Transmission: Smooth VMware Replacement
Tianjin Aisin Automatic Transmission used SMTX Migration Tool to migrate from VMware virtualization to SmartX native hypervisor ELF. The project replaced the previous VMware virtualization plus SAN storage architecture while supporting a smooth transition of business workloads.
An Automotive Components Manufacturer: Nearly 300 VMs and 200+ TB Migrated
An automotive components manufacturer migrated nearly 300 VMware VMs and more than 200 TB of data, covering all production systems, including in-house MES, big data platforms, SAP, WMS, and SCADA.
The company replaced vSAN while reusing all hardware across more than 10 existing servers. To control migration risk, it first validated high-risk workloads, then tiered VMs and migrated them within specific windows, with rehearsals performed before cutover. All workloads, including critical production systems, were cut over within the planned downtime windows without data loss.
The company also used SMTX Kubernetes Service (SKS) to transition from standalone Docker deployments to Kubernetes, with ELF CSI providing persistent storage.
An Automotive Components Manufacturer: Full-Stack Enterprise Cloud for Factory Operations
An automotive components manufacturer built a full-stack enterprise cloud with SmartX ECP. On top of hyperconverged infrastructure, the company introduced backup and disaster recovery, distributed firewall, load balancing, network traffic visualization, and container management capabilities.
The platform runs all factory business systems, including critical applications such as MES and integrated production-line systems. It also replaced VMware virtualization while upgrading the underlying IT architecture.
Inovance New Energy Vehicle: Phased VMware Replacement with Heterogeneous Clusters
Inovance New Energy Vehicle transitioned from VMware vSphere plus vSAN/SAN to SmartX ECP with ELF. Both architectures ran in parallel to support a phased VMware replacement process.
ELF reliably runs core production and office systems, including MES, ERP, and WMS. Heterogeneous clusters enable unified management across hardware of different brands and types, as well as across different virtualization platforms.
A Leading Automotive Electronics Manufacturer: Standardized Infrastructure Across Two Sites
A leading automotive electronics manufacturer used SMTX OS, SMTX Backup & DR, and Everoute distributed firewall as a repeatable architecture for infrastructure upgrades at two production sites.
The platform runs core applications including MES, TPM, smart shelving systems, and AGV. SMTX Backup & DR provides data backup and disaster recovery protection, reducing RTO from hours to minutes.
A Vehicle R&D and Manufacturing Company: Three-Phase Infrastructure Evolution
A vehicle R&D and manufacturing company evolved its infrastructure in three phases. It first validated VMware replacement, then built a core platform based on SmartX ECP, and finally introduced SmartX ECP’s full-stack capabilities.
The company adopted two architectures, including hyperconverged infrastructure and distributed storage with disaggregated compute and storage, to meet varying workload requirements. It also integrated a third-party cloud management platform (CMP) for unified cross-platform management of SmartX and VMware environments.
Compared with the previous vSphere environment, the SmartX ECP architecture delivered 40% higher performance.
Conclusion
Automotive manufacturers require IT infrastructure that ensures continuous production availability, seamlessly connects factory and enterprise workloads, and scales consistently across sites. Powered by the native hypervisor ELF, smooth migration tools, and full-stack enterprise cloud capabilities, SmartX ECP enables automotive enterprises to safeguard mission-critical operations while building a standardized, efficient, and controllable foundation for intelligent manufacturing.
References:
Native Hypervisor ELF - SmartX
SMTX Kubernetes Service: One-Stop Solution to Build Production-Ready Kubernetes Cluster
Smart Manufacturing IT Infrastructure Solutions - SmartX ECP
