Storage at the heart of enterprise HD surveillance systems

Video surveillance systems currently play a key role in society, as they are on the street, in transport, in offices, Hotels, Etc. as Rainer W discusses. Kaese, responsible for Toshiba Electronics Europe's Storage Products Division.

The experience of most people with such CCTV systems (CCTV) is limited to granulated images that appear in the news or are printed in newspapers along with information about an investigation.

However, the industry's advancement over the past decade around IP technology and high-definition HD cameras has resulted in surveillance systems providing much higher quality images that are most useful for, among other uses, identify aggressors, Victims, and their respective situations.

These systems are critical to helping to maintain public safety and protect property, as several studies have already shown. Global investment in these solutions is expected to grow since 22.000 millions of dollars of 2018 to some 46.000 millions of dollars in 2027.

Remember what happened

Although the elements of a surveillance system are numerous, a critical one is your storage solution. The days of VCR racks (cassette video recorders) that stored analog CCTV signals have been left behind.

Today's digital IP solutions are based on HDD storage (hard drives) hardware servers to collect digital video signals and store the compressed video they receive. And while many storage providers offer hard drives tailored to surveillance needs, in practice only focus on implementations that optimize costs.

A commercial DVR or NVR, available on the market with a single disk drive, can simply be located in the backroom of a commercial establishment or in the office of security personnel.

In these situations, there is little consideration for environmental conditions (Temperature, Moisture, Etc.) requiring rotary plate storage and also the number of IP cameras in use, so data generation will probably be quite limited.

The quality of images collected by a surveillance system is key in the resolution of crimes. Thanks to the reduction in its price and its ease of installation, HD cameras are increasingly the preferred solution. However, its use generates a significant network load due to the amount of data, in addition to imposing high demands on the implementation of the server used to collect them, analyze and store them.

It is true that compression techniques have improved significantly over the years, but even today's most modern codecs, like H.264, continue to generate significant amounts of data. It should also be noted that the data generated is not a constant flow, come in waves.

These encoding techniques capture a full frame at a time-defined time, known as frame Ⅰ. This will be followed by a series of frames Q they just store the difference in the image between it and the frame Ⅰ Previous.

As a result, recording events in a hotel hallway, where there's usually little traffic, involves generating a small amount of data. However, if the fire alarm goes off and guests fill the aisle when they leave, the amount of data generated increases significantly due to the large difference between the frames Q and the Ⅰ.

For a standard HD camera 2 Megapixel, Assuming 6 Ips (images per second), this results in a generation of data from between 3 And 23 Mbps. It is quickly clear that, with a significant number of cameras or the move to higher camera resolutions, surveillance is truly a challenging problem big data.

Efficient surveillance solutions

Enterprise IP CCTV solutions require full server technology, with storage solutions that go beyond the bandwidth and storage capacity of hard drives that are commonly marketed as a 'surveillance unit'.

A solution provider such as Secure Logiq meet this challenge with dedicated and customized surveillance servers for each customer. In these systems, HDDs are the most important component and, due to the demands of its customers and its commitment to quality, use enterprise-level HDDs.

In your quest to deploy an optimal available storage solution, Secure Logiq selected Toshiba's MG series of enterprise-capacity hard drives. These devices are designed for use Nearline and target business-critical workloads that require performance 24/365 with high reliability.

They are classified for an annual workload of 550 TB and an MTTF (average time until failure) minimum of 1.400.000 Hours. For the MG series, Toshiba offers a five-year warranty from purchase.

If an MG series unit fails within the warranty period, is replaced by a new HDD and not a recertified product. Maintaining high levels of services like this is critical to the success of companies like Segure Logiq.

Choose between SATA and SAS

Surveillance solutions implemented by DAS (direct attached storage) are well supported by disks such as SATA models of the MG series. Combined with multiple RAID cards for high levels of resilience, minimizing rebuild time at the same time in the event of a disk failure, SATA HDDs provide more than enough bandwidth along with the random read/write performance required.

This is the approach taken with HD servers such as Secure Logiq's HPS-4U-XL series, that provides up to 1.344 TB of storage in a 3xRAID6 configuration, perfectly configured within a 4U frame and capable of handling more than 4.000 Mbps of IP traffic.

At the highest level of the product spectrum, MG series SAS drives offer performance improvements, such as gains in search time and read/write performance, that should offset additional acquisition costs. These solutions find their place in SAN deployments (storage area network) and systems that can make use of JBOD.

Staying ahead

Since HDD form factors and interfaces are standardized in the industry, companies like Secure Logiq benefit from having a range of HDD providers that offer a basic product. While it is true that this helps ensure price competition, this alone is not the winner in the surveillance market.

Toshiba's added value to Secure Logiq that helps you differentiate in your market segment is based on less tangible aspects such as the business relationship. The way this manufacturer manages its sales channels has helped ensure that hard drives are available in the necessary quantities and at a price that works.

In turn, this allows Secure Logiq to deliver new systems within the promised time period and ensures that, if a storage component fails, can be replaced quickly.

Secure Logiq's internal testing facilities for the development of surveillance systems are a prerequisite for ensuring the levels of performance required by the enterprise surveillance market.

This is achieved by using your own tool, Logiqal Benchmark, that allows you to configure virtual IP surveillance systems to test the hardware along with the various VMS (video management Software) Available. However, a storage provider that also understands technical challenges and has experimentation labs is a huge customer aid.

Toshiba operates its own Tech Lab for storage technology, allowing your team of engineers to set up, build and test the storage approaches to proof-of-concept, as well as guiding customers to the optimal storage solution.

The results are compiled into the so-called Laboratory Report, that provides information on configuration options, the various advantages and unavoidable commitments that each comes with. The IP surveillance and HDD storage markets are highly competitive. As a result, it is the intangible aspects of the business relationship that make a difference.

Rainer W. Kaese

Responsible for the Storage Products Division of Toshiba Electronics Europe

 

 

 

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