Trina Solar is committed to becoming a global leader in smart photovoltaic (PV) and energy storage solutions. Its main businesses include four sectors: PV products, energy storage, system solutions and digital energy services, with products and services covering more than 180 countries worldwide. Trina Solar is dedicated to building intelligent, safe and future-oriented PV and storage energy solutions; promoting the application of innovative technologies in management, manufacturing and storage; helping transform new power systems; and reducing global carbon emissions.
At-a-Glance
Trina Solar adopted SUSE Rancher Prime and SUSE Security to build a standardized, large-scale container cluster architecture with centralized management and an end-to-end container security system. With this robust and flexible technology foundation, Trina Solar is positioned to handle future challenges such as expansion, higher data security standards and the adoption of AI technologies.
IT management challenges in manufacturing
Trina Solar has always placed great importance on introducing advanced IT solutions. They were among the first in the industry to containerize their IT systems, and the new architecture significantly improved management and production efficiency.
However, with the rapid expansion of production capacity and the continuous increase in the number of smart energy end-users, their existing IT systems also faced greater challenges. A cross-regional, cross-departmental, composite operations model required a unified architecture that could support unified management and cloud-edge collaboration. Maintaining continuous innovation while controlling costs required systems to be open source, loosely coupled and free from vendor lock-in. Continuously growing, always-on production lines required higher disaster recovery and fault tolerance capabilities. Endless IT threats and vulnerabilities required a unified security protection mechanism, providing real-time protection to ensure software supply chain security. The growing demands of smart energy end-users required systems to support Continuous Integration/Continuous Delivery (CI/CD) processes to enable rapid application release and deployment.
"We chose SUSE Security because of its full lifecycle protection for container clusters. From image scanning to real-time runtime protection, it covers the entire workflow to ensure data security.”
Why SUSE solutions?
Trina Solar compared multiple container management and security solutions at home and abroad, and ultimately chose SUSE products.
They adopted SUSE Rancher Prime to create a unified container management architecture, achieving standardized deployment and unified management of multiple clusters across multiple regions, greatly improving operational efficiency.
They selected SUSE Security to build an end-to-end container security system with 100% image vulnerability scanning and real-time monitoring, ensuring the security of the software supply chain and data.
Trina Solar’s technical lead explained, "With the growing risk of cyberattacks, we are constantly strengthening our end-to-end protection capabilities to prevent problems before they occur. We chose SUSE Security because of its full lifecycle protection for container clusters. From image scanning to real-time runtime protection, it covers the entire workflow to ensure data security. It is fully integrated with SUSE Rancher Prime, enabling unified management from a single interface. The optimization is excellent — real-time scanning has almost no impact on workload performance. With security assured, we can devote more energy to R&D and innovation."
SUSE products are seamlessly integrated with CI/CD processes, supporting rapid application launch while ensuring security during development and deployment. Trina Solar also values SUSE’s localized service capabilities. The SUSE technical team provided personalized support during testing, deployment and training, achieving a seamless transformation and upgrade.
Impact: SUSE solutions build a unified, secure and efficient IT architecture
Simplifies cluster management across cloud, hybrid and edge environments with a single interface
Trina Solar established a “multi-center” architecture early on to support the stable operation of application subsystems for operations, finance, procurement, production and other areas. At the same time, they needed to provide an intelligent energy management platform for a large number of widely distributed end-users in different regions, complicating maintenance and management of these edge devices. Due to inconsistent versions and lack of update support, Trina Solar’s original management system could no longer effectively manage large-scale container clusters.
With SUSE Rancher Prime, Trina Solar can now manage massive clusters across hybrid cloud, multi-cloud and edge environments through a single interface, supporting unified configuration and deployment, greatly reducing IT management costs.
A Trina Solar technical lead said: “After the transformation, we can now manage all clusters in two centers and on the public cloud through a single platform, greatly reducing management pressure. Its template function supports rapid cluster deployment, reducing a large amount of repetitive work. Improved efficiency means reduced overall costs.”
Achieves zero-minute RPO and one-hour RTO for same-city applications
Using SUSE Rancher Prime, Trina Solar built same-city active-active disaster recovery centers and remote backup centers, forming a multi-center high-availability architecture. SUSE Rancher Prime’s multi-cluster management, backup and recovery, and cross-regional high-availability features provide strong support for building a resilient and robust IT architecture.
SUSE Rancher Prime has a powerful backup and recovery mechanism that can automatically back up cluster status and application configurations regularly, and quickly restore them in the event of a cluster failure. It supports cross-regional high-availability architecture, distributed deployment and multi-center deployment. It has application-level disaster recovery capabilities, enabling seamless switching at the user level. It also supports cross-center traffic scheduling, automatically switching traffic to other centers in case of failure. These capabilities provide strong protection for multi-center disaster recovery and backup.
Ultimately, Trina Solar met its disaster recovery goals, achieving a Recovery Point Objective (RPO) of zero minutes and a Recovery Time Objective (RTO) of one hour for same-city container applications. It also achieved an RPO of two hours and an RTO of twelve hours for remote container applications. If the primary data center is affected by a disaster, end-users can seamlessly switch to the secondary center. In the worst case, the remote backup center can take over business in a short time, minimizing operational risk.
Secures software supply chain and data with an end-to-end container security system
Trina Solar places great importance on security across the entire business process, with container cluster security as a top priority. Reports show that manufacturing has long been a primary target for cyberattacks, with attackers often exploiting unpatched vulnerabilities and infiltrating software supply chains to attack enterprise IT systems. Once such attacks succeed, they can cause significant damage to data security and corporate reputation.
SUSE Security adopts a zero-trust security strategy, effectively preventing unauthorized east-west data flows and maximizing data security. During deployment, it scans all container images for known vulnerabilities. During runtime, it monitors containers in real time for abnormal behavior, using behavioral learning to provide automated alerts and isolate risks. SUSE Security across clusters can be federated for unified management and maintenance.
A Trina Solar representative said: “Other container security tools and management platforms often operate independently, and sometimes even affect system performance. SUSE Security is integrated directly into SUSE Rancher Prime, so we can see the operational and security status of all clusters from one interface. Its optimization is also very good. Our testing found that real-time scanning has almost no impact on container performance, which is one of the points we are most satisfied with.”
Improves application deployment efficiency by 25% with seamless CI/CD integration
SUSE Rancher Prime’s built-in support for CI/CD helps Trina Solar optimize R&D workflows and application deployment efficiency. Its seamless integration with automated deployment tools enables a “code-as-deployment” process. When developers submit updates, the CI pipeline automatically builds images and pushes them to the image repository, after which SUSE Rancher Prime can automatically deploy the new version to the corresponding cluster according to configuration, without manual intervention. This greatly reduces deployment waiting time and human error.
SUSE Rancher Prime also supports Helm Charts deployment templates, helping Trina Solar teams standardize configuration parameters and deployment strategies, improving consistency and reproducibility. Built-in resource status monitoring and auditing functions make it easy to detect problems in real time during deployment and roll back quickly, further improving delivery stability.
By naturally connecting the CI/CD process across the application delivery chain, SUSE Rancher Prime has built an automated, highly available and traceable deployment mechanism, providing Trina Solar’s R&D team with continuous release and rapid launch capabilities, significantly improving product iteration efficiency and delivery quality. After the transformation, 100% of Trina Solar’s self-developed applications were covered by CI/CD pipelines, with application deployment efficiency increasing by more than 25%.
"We have continuously operating production lines as well as smart energy terminals that are online around the clock, which places extremely high demands on system stability and security. SUSE products fully meet our needs, with a unified management platform and end-to-end container security solution. These advantages have greatly reduced our IT management costs," a Trina Solar representative shared.
Reduces edge deployment costs by 30%
Trina Solar’s production lines can automatically complete product assembly and operate 24 hours a day to ensure timely delivery. Its intelligent operations system monitors end-user energy devices across the country, synchronizing data with the operations center for remote management. These large-scale, multi-terminal, long-distance edge application scenarios require higher cloud-edge collaboration capabilities from technical systems.
Thanks to the unified container management architecture brought by SUSE Rancher Prime, Trina Solar’s technical team no longer needs to configure each edge environment separately, and can manage application lifecycles from a single platform, reducing edge deployment costs by as much as 30%.
Unified management not only reduces costs but also improves efficiency. Edge devices in production environments have extremely high requirements for low latency. Even a single stage of data delay can affect multiple downstream processes, with accumulated delays severely impacting production efficiency.
SUSE Rancher Prime enables applications to be deployed as close to devices as possible, synchronizing production data to the center to reduce network transmission delays, while achieving centralized control and automated updates. With SUSE solutions, Trina Solar has achieved a “cloud-edge collaboration” effect across production and smart energy end-user environments, delivering high-quality products and services through technological innovation.
Localized technical support and synchronization of global best practices
Today, enterprise users not only focus on software functionality but also on technical service capabilities. A Trina Solar technical lead said: “When choosing a technical solution, we first look at whether it meets international leading standards, and second at whether it can provide localized services. Only if both are met can we feel confident using it. In this transformation project, SUSE’s technical team gave us a lot of personalized support. With our joint efforts, such a large-scale transformation could be completed on time and successfully.”
In this project, the SUSE technical team was deeply involved in every stage, including testing, deployment, debugging and going live. They developed standard container platform processes and management specifications according to the company’s needs, and carried out multiple rounds of phased training to help users fully master product features. After the product officially went live, SUSE also provided 24/7 support services, continuing to safeguard the enterprise.
With more than 20 years of localized service experience in China, SUSE has teams across major cities, providing personalized support to users in different regions. Combined with a proprietary technical knowledge base, SUSE can synchronize global IT innovation best practices with domestic users, helping Chinese enterprises embrace the wave of technological change.
"Technical support and service capabilities are one of the important reasons we chose SUSE,” said a Trina Solar representative. “Throughout the entire collaboration, SUSE engineers responded very quickly and provided highly flexible service. They were deeply involved in testing and deployment, provided dedicated technical manuals and personalized training, and shared a wealth of global best practice cases. This aligns closely with our philosophy: it is not enough to offer good products, you must also deliver good service."
What’s next for Trina Solar?
By adopting SUSE solutions, Trina Solar has built a future-oriented IT architecture that achieves transformation goals of stability, security, efficiency, and flexibility, fully preparing for future market and technology challenges.
As its global presence deepens, Trina Solar will continue to develop a global multi-hybrid-cloud container architecture to achieve cross-regional technology standardization, further improve system consistency and enhance management efficiency. Trina Solar will also consider introducing trusted AI technologies that can fully ensure data security to further improve operational and management efficiency.