The Port of West Sacramento is located 79 nautical miles north of San Francisco. Boasting some of the world’s richest agricultural and industrial regions, the port is central to network interstate and state highways, an international airport and national railway systems.
The Port of West Sacramento is located 79 nautical miles north of San Francisco. Boasting some of the world's richest agricultural and industrial regions, the port is central to network interstate and state highways, an international airport and national railway systems.
Concentrated in such an elaborate transportation hub, the Port of West Sacramento required a surveillance solution that would meet the demands of continual video surveillance throughout their facilities. A preexisting, outdated, system simply did not satisfy the Port's security demands. Amy Cameron, Analyst for City of West Sacramento said, “When the City of West Sacramento began management of the Port of West Sacramento, the security cameras and overall system was antiquated, not integrated, and became difficult to maintain.”
With this in mind, the Port weighed out their options and knew that upgrading their entire surveillance environment was their only option. The City of West Sacramento turned to security contractor, All Phase Security to architect a solution that met today's demands and tomorrow's requirements. All Phase Security recommended utilizing DNF Security's high-end line of video storage and workstations for the heart of the solution. DNF Security partnered with All Phase to provide an answer that included; capacity, scalability, speed, and endurance.
After careful consideration, the Port of West Sacramento accepted All Phase Security's recommendations. “Through the public bidding process, DNF Security was hired as a subcontractor to furnish and install their fully functional video storage appliance,” said Cameron.
The Port uses three DNF Security components: one was the powerful Falcon Video Management Engine (VME) which included dual quad core processing power, independent fail safe high speed disks for OS and video recording applications. Another was a state-of-the-art Seahawk 2405 IP SAN storage appliance that included SAS 6g storage array architecture, advanced data protection, multiple iSCSI ports and redundant power that is centrally located as the back end storage vehicle for the Falcon VME. Using the IP SAN Seahawk also allows for future growth of NVR's and capacity expansion. Joe Cuellar, Account Manager at DNF Security says, “Considering their demanding requirements, we thought that bundling our Falcon and Seahawk appliances would not only satisfy their manageability requirements, but also provide them with advanced storage technology that would meet the most demanding and sophisticated surveillance environments.” The server and storage implementation was followed up with their third DNF Security component, the Falcon 9300 workstation, capable of supporting up to 12 big screen high resolution monitors.
These three critical components were the keystones that enabled the Port's total surveillance execution. The real beauty of this solution is its modularity. As camera loads increase over the years, additions of Falcon VME engines can balance the load and keep the camera LAN separate from the storage SAN. The Seahawk 2405 can meet any new capacity requirements from adding cameras or increasing data retention requirements with the ability to expand to 288 terabytes. Storage performance and redundancy is never called to question because the Seahawk provides up to 5 gigabits of storage bandwidth today with a potential of 40 gigabits of bandwidth with an easy upgrade to 10Gbe technology.
With DNF Security's attention to pre-installation requirements, custom configuration, along with ease of use, resulted in a quick 15 minute installation.
All Phase Security never lost track of the fact that today's sophisticated technology does not translate in to ease-of-use. DNF Security products offered ease of management through internet access and web graphical user interfaces. There were no hidden training costs for their support engineers or the City of West Sacramento operators. Extensive easy to understand documentation with intuitive setup and management features made day-to-day operation a breeze.
“The installation process was seamless as we transitioned from our old security system to the new system and the staff has been helpful throughout the process,” said Cameron. “We believe other businesses will benefit from DNF Security.”
By integrating DNF Security's Falcon and Seahawk appliances, the Port of West Sacramento enjoys the benefits of a fully scalable, modular, and high performing surveillance solution. Not only has their security and surveillance requirements been met, but DNF Security's ease-of-use and manageability has resulted in lower management, operations, and training costs. Furthermore with the DNF Security production team's effort to pre-configure their system to their specifications, the Port significantly reduced their time of use.
Now the Port can look to the future, by easily scaling up (and out) their storage with inexpensive storage expansion units as their camera and video analytic requirements increase—this saving time and money. By replacing their obsolete security surveillance system with a state-of-the-art surveillance that will not only exceeds today's requirements, but is poised to grow with the Port Of West Sacramento in the future.