German Offshore Wind Farm Operator Bard Engineering Selects Dell

Emden, Germany-based BARD
Engineering GmbH has deployed a Dell, Inc.‘s
storage solution to cope with growing data volumes that have
resulted from the constant monitoring and controlling of offshore wind farms.

Specializing in the planning, implementation and operation of wind turbines,
BARD Engineering now benefits from 120TB of storage capacity to
collect data that can be calculated and analyzed daily before being
moved to archives.

BARD Engineering’s wind turbines are designed to withstand
extreme conditions in high seas. In the control room in Emden, the company
monitors each wind turbine as well as controlling entire farms. The amount of
data collected has grown so in recent years that the business’ legacy storage
solution was no longer able to cope with the need for more automation, greater
simplicity and compliant, economical tiering for both ‘hot’ and archived data.
BARD Engineering chose Dell storage for its virtualized, scalable disk pools
and agile architecture, which can support the company’s growth as well as new
offshore wind-farm technologies.

Before implementing the new solution, the company migrated 40TB of data
without disrupting day-to-day business. The business is constantly generating
new data in the amount of 1TB every three months. With the new Dell Compellent
system in place, intelligent and automated features such as tiering means that
active data now can be stored on high-performance, tier
1 HDDs. Inactive data is stored on lower tiers consisting of less expensive
disks with large capacity. With these features in place, BARD Engineering can manage
its data growth and also ensure that in the long-term data can be
economically archived in accordance with legal regulations that require a 20-
to 25-year record of wind farm data.

"An important factor in the decision
to go with Dell Compellent was the self-optimizing, intelligent storage
functions which easily meet our demanding performance and capacity
requirements," said Andreas Fischer, head of IT, BARD Engineering.
"Combined with exceptional service
and support throughout planning, implementation and operation phases, we
benefit from a storage infrastructure that is proactively monitored by Dell and
covered by a four hour on-site service support in the instance of any HDD
failure. This resiliency gives us confidence that we have a solution that can
easily grow and support our business."

"With advancements to the Dell
storage and enterprise portfolio, an increasing number of customers are turning
to our company for large-scale storage deployments," said André M.
Braun, German sales director storage, Dell. "BARD Engineering’s decision to partner with Dell is a great example of
our ability to efficiently and cost-effectively offer performance, scalability
and long-term protection to business-critical workloads."