The manufacturer Western Digital Corp has added to the WD Purple range of products with the WD Purple Pro for AI-enabled recorders and back-end servers.
As the company says, the worldwide video surveillance camera market is estimated to grow to $44 billion by 2025, up from $23.6 billion in 2019, according to market research firm IDC. Emerging smart video architectures capture, store and analyse massive amounts of video data, and perform deep-learning video analytics. The new WD Purple Pro line is designed to handle these workloads for various devices, including AI-enabled network video recorders (NVRs), video analytics servers and storage arrays, including those that perform deep-learning analytics.
Brian Mallari, director of marketing for Smart Video, Western Digital, said: “With the addition of WD Purple Pro, our full portfolio of smart video products covers customers’ needs from dedicated WD Purple microSD cards for cameras to WD Purple hard drives for mainstream NVRs and the new generation of smart video architectures, where the ‘smart’ of the solution starts with the brains at the back-end – the servers that perform video analytics and heavy computational deep learning. WD Purple Pro is the ideal solution to enable original equipment manufacturers and integrators to evolve their systems for emerging AI workloads.”
The hard drives feature:
– AllFrame AI enabling video streams from up to 64 HD cameras to be recorded at once, while handling up to another 32 AI streams for AI functions, whether cameras are connected to recorders or to cloud-based servers.
– workload, supporting up to 550TB a year workload rating, for demands of AI, including pattern matching and object/event recognition, while writing video streams.
– reliability and capacity help retain and feed thousands of hours of training video to enable deep-learning and AI algorithm development. Capacities range from 8TB to 18TB with a five-year limited warranty.
– durability to work in large-scale, high-density video analytics servers and cloud solutions. Offers HDD health monitoring in compatible systems with Western Digital Device Analytics support.
Dave Nieweg, community program manager, at the video management software developer Milestone Systems, said: “Western Digital’s new WD Purple Pro, AI-ready high-capacity solutions offer the performance needed for data-heavy workloads and provide the reliability our customers need to store their critical data. Whether providing more secure access to a building or school, monitoring patients, or capturing and analysing smart city parking and transportation data for safety and efficiency, offering users a trusted storage solution from the cameras at the endpoints to the cloud is essential.”
WD Purple products for video surveillance include 1TB WD Purple microSD cards for cameras and edge devices to 1TB-8TB WD Purple HDDs for NVRs; and now, WD Purple Pro drives from 8TB to 18TB to support a range of systems for AI, including back-end enterprise servers. Purple Pro will be available this quarter from re-sellers.
