Keeping IP Video Reliable and Resilient

Editor / Provider: a&s International | Updated: 6/11/2012 | Article type: Tech Corner

- Window-based software is more prone to stability issues, hacker issues and requires firewalls.
- Linux-based software is comparatively low-maintenance.
- When PCs play a bigger role in the recording and movement of data, the processing power is of greater importance.

In IP-enabled environments, management software is just as important as any piece of hardware. Windows-based software is easier for R&D, and thus usually has more advanced functions than embedded software. On the other hand, Window-based software is more prone to stability issues, hacker issues and require firewalls. “Firewalls aren't necessary with a Linux-embedded system,” said Andrew Yu, Security PM at Qnap Systems. “It's a little more difficult for R&D, but for end users, it's much less likely to attract hackers or viral infections.”

The firewall may conflict with third-party VMS, however. “For daily operation of a PC plus servers, there is a risk that the firewall or anti-virus software may crash with the recording function,” said Ricky Law, Sales Engineer at Ensec Solutions. There may also be compatibility issues between the management software and the PC's operating system (OS). “This can only be solved through firmware updates from the manufacturer. Even then, the firmware may not be stable and may require the system integrator's constant attention or frequent adjustment.”

Another problem that could arise is that VMS developers may stop updating their software. “System upgrades or expansions, which might be needed for extra functions or new cameras, could become challenging,” Law said. It would be more difficult for end users who only have basic IT knowledge to solve these problems.

Linux-based software is comparatively low-maintenance. “With a hardened Linux OS, the service and maintenance cost for a video server is close to nothing, because a software update is the only requirement when the end user wants the latest video features,” said Stephan Beckmann, Video Product Marketing Manager for EMEA, American Dynamics (a Tyco Security Products company).

Power Play
PC capabilities should also be taken into consideration in installations with client-server architecture. If the PC is just a client, then the failure of that PC will not affect the main recording and storage. This is helpful as users' PC habits can be unpredictable. “Sometimes, we don't know what the user will use on that PC,” said Aaron Yeh, Sales and Marketing Director for Surveon Technology. “If the user runs a lot of applications on the same client, this can cause the client to crash. A modularized design, however, will not impact the recording server.”

But if the processing power of the hardware within the monitoring station is not enough, users may attribute lag to the system, when actually the PC is at fault. “One of the most underrated issues is the processing power of the computerused to monitor video streams,” said Florence Shih, GM of Thecus Technology. “Displaying dozens of cameras on four to six screens requires a lot of CPU power than most would expect, and users may experience a major system slowdown, but when in fact, it's a simple lack of processing power from the monitoring station.”

When PCs play a bigger role in the recording and movement of data, the processing power is of greater importance. “High-end PCs are required for deployment in a complex environment, as performance of management software is heavily dependent on computing power,” said Syo Luo, Product Specialist at Synology. In such cases, splitting functions among different PCs is advised. “To reduce loading, some solutions provide two PCs to perform live view and recording, respectively.”

Common IP Video Storage Challenges

Editor / Provider: a&s International | Updated: 4/23/2012 | Article type: Tech Corner

- An increase of channels just means an increase of NVRs.
- Multiple stand-alone NVRs are usually managed by embedded software.
- As the number of channels increases, client-server architecture may help manage more effectively.

When the number of channels increases — say, to 64 or hundreds of channels — the principles remain the same, but the architecture and implementation have to evolve.

One way is through stacking standalone NVRs: an increase of channels just means an increase of NVRs. Individual NVRs, added as needed, have the advantage of being close to the familiar DVR or VCR model that many security practitioners are used to, said Jeff Whitney, VP of Marketing at Intransa. Stacking NVRs is also less expensive, as NVRs often use older components and technologies. Sometimes, all you need is the simplicity of NVRs.

There are, however, other more efficient options. “With the current generation of specialized video processing hardware, there is no need for multiple processors in multiple NVRs,” said Jumbi Edulbehram, VP of Business Development, Next Level Security Systems. “Streaming video directly to storage can be more efficient.”

System architecture, on the other hand, can be more complicated. Servers with the needed amount of storage can be purchased with third-party VMS preloaded, offering the flexibility to add channels incrementally and decrease the number of appliances in the surveillance system. This flexibility, however, also means that installation is far more complicated than installation of multiple NVRs, as the number of architectural options also increases.

System Management
Multiple stand-alone NVRs are usually managed by embedded software. “All the vendor-specific features are integrated into one program,” said Aaron Yeh, Sales and Marketing Director for Surveon Technology. Control is from either one of the NVRs or from the overlaying software (similar to CMS).

“Like the DVRs they followed, they are individually managed systems,” Jeff Whitney, VP of Marketing at Intransa, explained further. “That means an operator is required to manually operate and maintain them, or at best run some basic overlaying software that allows them to switch between them.”

The overlaying software, or CMS, allows for easier and quicker management of multiple NVRs, many channels and different clients. “But there are some disadvantages,” Yeh said. “All video streams must go through the CMS client, which puts it at higher risk for single point of failure.”

As the number of channels increases, client-server architecture may help manage more effectively. Client-server architecture is found in some NVRs, and also found in servers and PCs plus VMS installations. Recording is controlled from a PC with client software; NVRs with client-server architecture or servers with VMS allow for more centralized management of recording storage. Client-server architecture is also better at accommodating multiple clients. “You can have multiple clients, and one recording server streams the video to different clients,” Yeh said.

Storage Distribution
When video is stored on intake NVRs, they are separate islands of information as storage is not shared, and it may be difficult to recall and manage video as you would like. This is similar to when information is stored separately on multiple servers or when DAS is added to NVRs or servers.

“If another NVR in the system has unused capacity, it is not simple to move the recording capacity to that system without at least shutting everything down and recabling,” Whitney said. “As such, groups of NVRs often experience some over utilizing and some underutilizing over time, wasting equipment resources and costing excess energy and environmental needs.”

In practice, resellers end up over provisioning each NVR, since the performance and capacity are limited to each box, said Lee Caswell, founder and Chief Strategy Officer of Pivot3.

With higher camera counts, centralized storage becomes more efficient and a necessity. NAS, FC-SAN and IP-SAN all provide centralized, shared storage among different appliances on a network, like front-end servers or NVRs. “Storage can be in a centralized pool with multiple NVRs,” Yeh said. “The NVRs on the front end don't need any disks; all the NVRs will record their video to centralized storage. In this kind of architecture, the NVRs share the channel loading from all the cameras on the system.”

Any added storage is shared. “If a modular approach was used in place of standard NVRs, additional external storage modules could be plugged in as additional capacity was needed,” Whitney said. “That additional capacity could support multiple servers. So, less expensive servers, without internal storage, can be added for additional camera support.”

NAS has file-level transfer protocol, which results in slower, less efficient transfer of data. In video surveillance, this may cause a bottleneck in the system. There have been improvements made to NAS in recent years, but whether the NAS that users purchase makes use of these advancements is another issue.

SAN, with its more efficient block level transfer protocol, is more favored in recent years, especially with the budget-friendly alternative of IP-SAN that uses iSCSI. “In 2010, the use of IP- and FC-SANs began to impact video surveillance storage,” said Sam Grinter, Market Analyst at IMS Research, in a prepared statement. “Recording video surveillance data is very intensive on storage write cycles. SANs offer the benefit of using virtualized, pooled storage which has the advantage of increased performance over file-based storage systems, often characteristic in DAS or NAS systems.”

Energy Requirements
Energy consumption, cooling and rack space are often overlooked, and experienced integrators and IT personnel should be brought in to eschew system-level, overheating disasters, Law cautioned.

Vietnam's Largest Commercial Bank Deploys Surveon Cameras

Editor / Provider: Surveon | Updated: 2/8/2012 | Article type: Commercial Markets

The Agribank is the largest commercial bank in Vietnam in terms of capital, assets, workforce, operating network and customer base. It has 37,500 staff in 2,300 branches and transaction offices, serving 10 million households and 30,000 enterprises nationwide. Agribank wanted to expand its video surveillance system in order to meet business growth and achieve centralized management for its surveillance networks. Agribank planned to set up a new system at its provincial headquarters in Yen Bai, while managing surveillance networks of six other locations in the province, including one branch and five offices.

A number of challenges were identified at the beginning of the project. The customer was concerned about the feasibility of setting up a truly end-to-end megapixel solution that went beyond simply installing megapixel cameras. With a strong technological background, Surveon's SI partner was well aware of the impact on system performance and stability generated by the large bandwidth required by megapixel streams.

In terms of solution deployment, the customer required a distributed structure with centralized management. In addition, the solution had to be scalable, enabling the customer to add cameras at individual locations or expand the coverage of the solution to include even more locations.

The customer was also hoping to add advanced technologies. In their old structure, monitoring relied fully on manpower, leading to low efficiency. In addition, when events did occur within the scope of the surveillance network, the customer had to spend considerable time and effort to gather information related to the event, and it was hard to follow up on events.

As for video quality, the customer required that the solution at least supported megapixel cameras and was able to provide sufficient reliability for long-term operations. Finally, the solution had to be able to support different kinds of environments and applications.

The system used by the Agribank also comes with Surveon's active monitoring and smart investigation technology, which supports the Agribank in terms of reaching required surveillance monitoring levels. Through the included real-time video analytics engine, all important events can be effectively displayed on the solution's alarm board, allowing security guards to immediately follow up.

Surveon's megapixel NVR systems have helped the customer to overcome the I/O and reliability issues often encountered in megapixel surveillance. The systems offer hardware RAID5 configurations to effectively distribute CPU loading while supporting up to 20-channel megapixel recording. The high-end NVR2000 systems feature advanced RAID storage with independent RAID controllers to offer even better solutions for medium- to large-sized projects.

Surveon cameras are developed and manufactured in-house, offering a complete solution from SMT to finished product assembly and providing users with end-products that operate with great stability. With firmware developed in-house, Surveon is able to control and manage any issues the IP cameras may encounter in video streaming or other issues created by the network's complexity.

Surveon Storage Devices Back up Taiwanese University Captured Images

Editor / Provider: Surveon | Updated: 6/2/2011 | Article type: Education

Kainan University, founded in 2000, is located in Taoyuan, Taiwan. It occupies an open area of nearly 17 hectares, and has 2500 students, 25 departments, 16 graduate schools and four master programs.

On the campus, the number of security guards was limited, and there were many places that were not being monitored. Traditional DVRs were not able to meet the surveillance needs, and Kainan University started looking for a security system to tighten up campus security. As megapixel cameras offer up to four to six times the image quality provided by analog cameras, the school hoped to deploy megapixel surveillance solutions for the campus.

Megapixel cameras offer significant benefits for surveillance operations. However, 90 megapixel cameras and the need for 60-day recordings presented many different issues for the system integrator, Sunshine Information, including the I/O performance of traditional NVR, integration of storage solutions and proven solutions that can assure end-to-end integration. To deal with these issues, Sunshine deployed Surveon's megapixel cameras, real-time VI engine, RAID NVR and enterprise VMS.

88 Surveon cameras have been installed for strategic monitoring of classrooms and hallways, as well as building entrances, pedestrian areas and campus grounds. They make use of Surveon's video analytics to configure recording. The facilities are split into three levels in an existing university building, with a dedicated 32-channel NVR, each archiving up to 60 days of surveillance footage for associated cameras

Surveon's RAID NVR makes capturing, analyzing, managing and searching video surveillance easier and faster. Its active VI detection has a preconfigured base for a number of scenarios, such as intrusion detection on the campus, examination of important gates or parking lot detection. The NVR distinguishes what's important from what is not, turning the raw surveillance videos into useful information. The recorded events are analyzed and labeled with details such as time, date, direction, color and size of the objects, etc.