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Considering Using Cloud for Video Surveillance Data? Novaira Research May Influence Your Thinking

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Quantum recently worked with Novaira Insights to publish a white paper that provides insight into the state of the video surveillance market and helpful factors for deciding between on-premises and cloud storage.

Here are a few of the highlights:

  • Increasing number of cameras and resolutions and longer retention times are all driving up storage demands. In addition, the growing use of video analytics is placing more demand on storage systems.
  • When considering cloud or on-prem, all of these factors can play into choosing and designing the right solution.

The Appeal of the Cloud is Simplicity and Flexibility

For many security departments, their current infrastructure is probably using a large number of Network Video Recording servers (NVRs) , to record their data. As camera counts and resolutions increase, they are adding more NVRs until it becomes costly and difficult to manage.

The appeal of the cloud is the simplicity and flexibility it provides as a platform; however, using the cloud introduces new challenges like latency (which can cause frame loss), data security and control, and unpredictable costs.

Modernize Your Video Surveillance Infrastructure – Choose the Right Solution for You

Novaira Insights explores the many flexible paths for deciding between on-premises and cloud storage including:

  • Options for utilizing cloud in video surveillance: cloud-based services, on-prem cloud, or a hybrid solution. 
  • Factors for choosing the right solution when considering cloud or on-premises.
  • End-user and integrator benefits using on-prem private cloud or a hybrid solution.
  • How an HCI platform provides simplicity and flexibility without introducing risk or giving up control.

The white paper makes the point that a hyperconverged infrastructure (HCI) platform can be a good step toward cloud, providing the simplicity and flexibility of the cloud, without introducing risk of frame loss and without giving up control.

Quantum has helped many organizations with mission-critical video surveillance replace racks of NVRs with a simple, resilient platform that can record 10’s of thousands of cameras and run other physical security and analytics applications as well. If you are looking to modernize your video surveillance infrastructure, check out this white paper and let’s talk! You can download the white paper here .

The post Considering Using Cloud for Video Surveillance Data? Novaira Research May Influence Your Thinking appeared first on Quantum Blog .

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Video Surveillance Keeps Airports Safe 24×7

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Air Travel Will Again Break Records

I am writing this from Singapore, the tiny city-state in southeast Asia known for incredible food, endless shopping, and the world’s best airport, Changi . Though Singapore has just 5.6 million residents, 2019 was another record-setting year for Changi with 68 million passengers. While COVID-19 has had a profound effect on travel, industry watchers expect that once a vaccine for COVID-19 is found, air travel will rebound and even soar to new records.

The Need for 24 x 7 Video Surveillance

Regardless of how many passengers visit an airport in a given year, safety is always paramount.  A significant tool to keep people safe is airport video surveillance .

As camera costs have dramatically fallen and camera quality has substantially improved, airports continue to add cameras to enhance safety. Some airports have more than 10,000 cameras operating around the clock, every day of the year.

Advances in software have also had a multiplier effect. Instead of a human needing to identify a potential issue on screen, surveillance analytics autonomously identify people approaching restricted areas, sense fire before smoke detectors sense smoke, flag abandoned items, warn of queues in excess of airport standards, and of course find lost parents.

The Need for Unstructured Surveillance Data Storage

While video surveillance analytics identify potential issues in real-time, there is also a need to record and retain the unstructured video for trend analysis, investigations, and prosecutions.

One of the world’s top 10 airports by passenger volume recently undertook an initiative to upgrade their cameras from standard definition to 4K and 8K at a full 30 frames per second. 8K cameras generate 800% more data than a standard definition camera.

The increase in the unstructured data generated results in the need for more data storage. Ordinary storage would not be able to deliver all the requirements of the airport. The airport’s requirements included:

  • Performance—the ability to capture thousands of data streams without dropped frames
  • Reliability—zero data loss, even due to disaster
  • Expandability—grow on demand as more cameras are added in the future
  • Affordability—a solution with was within the airport’s budget

After reviewing various options, the airport’s integrator and the airport decided upon Quantum ActiveScale object storage .

ActiveScale Object Storage Meets All Needs

Quantum ActiveScale object storage is perfect for airport unstructured video surveillance data, as well as other archive needs in industries such as genomics research, medical imaging, and energy exploration, to name a few.

While operating at disk speeds for high performance, the use of erasure coding spreads data across multiple systems which may be operating side by side or on the other side of the planet.  This data spread protects against data loss caused by hardware failure, natural disaster, and even terrorism.  As storage needs grow, additional storage can easily be added with minimum effort by IT as ActiveScale will automatically integrate the new storage.  And of course, ActiveScale compares favorably to traditional storage systems in terms of cost.

Case Study on One of the Top 10 Airports in the World

For more details, check out a case study on one of the world’s Top 10 airports in the Solution Brief: “Video Surveillance Infrastructure Solutions for the Global Airport Industry.”

Visit Singapore

When travel rebounds, if you have a chance to transit through Singapore, be sure to check out Jewel , the newest addition to Changi Airport.  Boasting the world’s largest indoor waterfall as well as hundreds of shops and restaurants, your home shopping mall will never look quite the same to you!

singapore airport

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Making the World Safer and Smarter

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As we face these unprecedented times together, we do our best to continue to stay focused and productive and deliver new products and solutions to our customers.  Last week we announced the completion of our acquisition of the ActiveScale object storage business, and this week we are excited to be launching an expanded portfolio focused on surveillance and physical security.

Last year, we introduced the VS-HCI series, a hyperconverged platform for surveillance recording and running multiple security workloads.  We’ve expanded that portfolio and added the ability to remotely monitor systems from our cloud-based monitoring console.  We now offer both a 2U server, and an ultra-dense 4U server with HCI software that provides both high-speed block access, can host certified VMS applications, and provides for failover between server nodes in an HCI cluster. 

In addition, we are introducing a full line of network video recording servers, the VS-NVR series.  These NVRs come in a variety of form factors, including a mini-tower form factor for environments of 5-10 cameras, a 1U server, and an ultra-dense 4U NVR with the capacity to retain footage from hundreds of cameras for upwards of 90 days. 

Lastly, we’ve introduced servers with multiple GPU cards for high-speed video analytics, and for hosting access control and building automation systems. 

The result is the broadest security infrastructure portfolio available from any single vendor, from low-end NVRs to hyperconverged infrastructure (HCI), to the largest shared storage and archive solutions, to analytics processing.

So whether you are recording a few cameras to many thousands
of cameras, we have a solution for you.

If you are working remotely, and want to learn more about our new portfolio, I’m hosting a webinar on April 21st at 10am PT. Register now to learn more.

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Same NVMe Speed, Lower Price

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Last year at NAB, we introduced the Quantum F2000 – an NVMe storage server designed for the highest-performance workloads with the highest availability requirements.  The F2000 has won multiple industry awards and is in production at some of the world’s largest brands, government agencies, and major studios and post-houses.  It’s been a great year!

But there was also a consistent point of feedback from many customers – they see the benefits of NVMe (accelerate productivity, reduce infrastructure cost and complexity, gain back data center space), but not every workload requires a highly-available server and the expense that comes with that.

Enter the Quantum F1000.  The F1000 uses the same software-defined storage platform as the F2000, and provides ultra-fast streaming performance and response times, with a less expensive server platform and design.

Like the F2000, the F1000 gives users the parallel processing capabilities that are inherent with NVMe and uses RDMA networking technology to deliver SAN speeds over less expensive ethernet network infrastructure.

Also, like the F2000, the F1000 is easy to deploy as part of a StorNext file storage cluster.  And system health can be monitored anytime, anywhere by connecting to Quantum’s cloud-based monitoring software.  StorNext can even move files and folders between NVMe and nearline pools of storage, so you can get the benefits of NVMe for those workloads that require it most without committing to an all-NVMe infrastructure.

In short, if you have been researching NVMe, and thinking about how it could benefit your environment, now is the time to reach out.  We’ll work with you to design an architecture that best fits your needs, for a price point that doesn’t crush your budget.

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Why Video and Image Data is at the “Core” of the Global Datasphere

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A recently published IDC blog, “How You Contribute to Today’s Growing DataSphere and Its Enterprise Impact,” talks about the global datasphere and the impact on the enterprise. In his blog, IDC’s David Reinsel discusses how the number of connected devices and the growing Internet of Things (IoT) are contributing to massive data growth. He talks about a recent IDC study that analyzes where data is coming from (surveillance cameras are the #1 source of data), and where all this data is going.

Our mission here at Quantum is to
be the leader in video and image data infrastructure, and this IDC DataSphere
study intersects our strategy in a few ways:

First, it reinforces how video
and “video-like” data (such as high-resolution images generated by machines on a
manufacturing floor) make up the largest majority of the global datasphere.
Whether this data is generated by machines like surveillance cameras, movie
cameras, or by consumer devices, like smartphones – the common thread is that most
of the data being generated is video and imagery.

In fact, Reinsel notes how most
of the “edge” data is being generated by consumer devices with most of it being
video and images. Anyone with a smartphone can attest that video and image data
consumes most of the storage on their device.

Second, in terms of where this
data goes, most of it ends up in what IDC calls “the core” – i.e. cloud
datacenters where this data is copied or backed up, and where it needs to be
stored forever. Quantum excels at both the high-speed processing of video and
image data, as well as the long-term storage of video and image data, whether
on-premise or in-the-cloud.

Here at Quantum, we’re helping businesses be prepared in this data-driven world with solutions that help manage, store, and protect the massive amounts of data they create. Visit our Solutions page to learn more about our secure, reliable data management solutions for video and image data.    

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