Video surveillance has gone a long way in reducing crimes against people and property, writes Laura Shepard, Director of Vertical Markets, DataDirect Networks (DDN), the storage systems product company.
Constant advances in camera technology and rising deployment of analytics software mean we get more and more useful and actionable information out of surveillance systems as time goes by.
But, there is a problem. As the number of cameras in a given infrastructure grows, and their resolution increases, and as more analytics functions are added, the rising bandwidth and capacity these additions create put increased strain on the back-end infrastructure, potentially leading to a storage bottle neck.
The absolute worst thing a surveillance system can do is fail to capture events. Overpowering the storage back end can lead to just that. If you do not have the infrastructure in place to guarantee that the data can be captured, the system is a failure. And if you do not have the additional power needed to deliver playback services for recorded imagery, or add new capabilities like analytics, then the usefulness of the system will always be limited.
Historically, even a large system would be served with an infrastructure supporting megabytes of bandwidth and terabytes of capacity. Now, we are increasingly seeing systems that require the gigabytes of performance and up to petabytes of capacity. When you add in the increasing demands from playback and analytic features you need a storage system that is scalable; so, as the number of cameras, video streams and analytics solutions grow, the storage can scale to support the systems.
DDN has worked with Arizona-based Maricopa County sheriff’s office to overcome the challenges of CCTV capture and recall from their six separate facilities monitoring 10,000 inmates. They were taking 60 days to identify, access and retrieve a month’s worth of video surveillance data. Following a significant upgrade to its storage solution (including 5.5 petabytes of DataDirect Networks SFA high-performance storage), the Sheriff’s office was able to retrieve 60 days worth of HD footage in just seconds. Overall this has meant Maricopa County Sheriff’s office has increased both crime detection and prevention, and that now officers have 100 percent coverage across all six facilities.
Built from the ground up to deliver rock solid ingest for current and future requirements, and with headroom to service peak replay request traffic, the Maricopa solution is serving its purpose of protecting people and property. Because it is expandable, it can continue to serve its original purpose reliably when new demands are placed on it. By focusing on the storage architecture early in the program Maricopa, and other institutions in transportation, prisons, gaming, entertainment, facilities, monuments and more, benefit from a scalable solution that will grow to meet both core and emerging needs for years to come.
