Awareness of the benefits of targeted surveillance systems for the detection of criminal activity and the subsequent apprehension and prosecution of criminals has resulted in an increase in the number of surveillance cameras in the field. This has resulted in a demand for robust and reliable storage systems for the recorded video footage.
“Video surveillance, combined with advanced analytics, is being used by businesses to identify customer buying patterns, store planning and success of marketing plans to reduce operating costs and increase revenues and operational efficiency,” says Francois Malan, MD of Camsecure.
This in turn has resulted in the accelerated maturation of video surveillance and its associated technologies. High-definition digital technology is replacing analogue cameras, intelligent analytics is being performed on video streams in real time, and advancement in networking technology is enabling new surveillance business models for service providers who specialise in cloud-based solutions.
With the increase in the recording of finer resolution footage, there is a concurrent increase in the need for suitable methods of storing the data for later viewing and analysis. “Having the right video surveillance solution can result in increased levels of threat detection and an adequate media rich storage solution helps you with the redundancy and reliability of your footage,” says Malan.
“The most sophisticated surveillance system is of little use if you cannot store and manage the huge volumes of data generated by these high-resolution cameras. Our research led us to forming a relationship with DDN Storage as their prime partner in southern Africa. Leveraging the experience they have gained from powering the world’s fastest supercomputers, DDN has scalable solutions that can cater for up to tens of thousands of cameras.”
Effective video storage
Video surveillance relies heavily on the crucial element of having a scalable and high performing storage system behind an intelligent video surveillance platform. This storage should be able to:
* Support the concurrent ingestion of video streams from thousands of high resolution cameras.
* Deliver real-time quality of service to record higher frame rates and video resolutions, without dropping frames under any failure condition.
* Support the ability for analytic software to perform concurrent reads of high resolution video, without affecting the incoming surveillance streams from the cameras.
* Provide the flexibility to scale cost effectively to larger storage capacities and higher retention periods in the future.
Traditional storage solutions have been unable to satisfactorily fulfil these requirements. “One of the factors that poses a challenge for traditional storage methodologies is that when you try to use a system in an abnormal condition, such as drive check conditions, drive failure, cable failure or controller failure, you may well lose frames on the VMS/NVR side,” Laurent Thiers, VP EMEA, government and digital security at DDN points out.
Malan adds that the beauty of the DDN system is that it has been designed and developed in such a way that, using SATASURE, DDN will automatically power down a faulty hard disk and quickly rebuild it by indexing the last position the disk was busy writing. “This saves a huge amount of time in rebuilding the disk and has zero effect on performance. Often when disks fail they are removed straightaway and replaced but, by simply cycling power and rebuilding the disk, DDN ensures maximum utilisation before disks need to be replaced automatically by the spare, hot-swappable in the storage array.”
In addition, DDN does a parity check on every read and write performed on the storage, which ensures that the user always has clean data. DDN will also correct the user data and automatically fix the errors on disk level.
“We repeatedly receive requests from clients who operate in data-intensive scenarios who need a storage system that will afford them a failsafe environment. By providing them with a system that can experience up to 20% disk failure and still have zero performance loss, with built-in redundancy, we are able to ensure that they achieve substantial savings in time, cost and effort associated with potential data loss,” says Malan.
In a report issued by CERN (the European Organisation for Nuclear Research, one of the world’s largest and most respected centres for scientific research), it was stated that low-level data corruptions occur in all storage systems. This is an inherent problem that was only recently discovered. A DDN solution was proposed and today CERN has managed to address these issues head-on and avoid catastrophic loss or corruption of vital research.
Malan is enthusiastic about the hot spares provided by DDN. “DDN will automatically reinstate spare disks that are in the array as needed. This means a technician only needs to go to site once all the hot spares are used, which has significant maintenance implications for sites that cannot afford downtime or long maintenance cycles.”
DDN has also given cognisance to the pressing needs of businesses to minimise physical storage space. “DDN has the highest density of disks in a 4u enclosure, with 60 disks and up to 240 terabytes of storage per enclosure. Currently on the cards are plans to double this capacity. An entry level system can connect two of these enclosures, giving the end user 500 terabytes of storage in 8u,” notes Malan.
“These enclosures can use SAS, SATA and Solid State Drives. The disk density also means that DDN is very power efficient when compared to other solutions on the market and is a must for green server rooms, with 75% fewer power supplies, fans and I/O modules than comparative products.
“A number of factors provide us with complete confidence in recommending a DDN solution to our clients, including the fact that the system can handle tens of thousands of cameras and is extremely scalable. In addition, DDN is used by the largest surveillance sites in the world and by six out of 10 high performance computers,” Malan concludes.
For more information contact Camsecure, +27 (0)11 781 1341, francois@camsecure.co.za, www.camsecure.co.z
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