Al Anba Newspaper backs up with Synology Surveillance Station

The company

Founded in 1976, Al Anba Newspaper is a daily political newspaper and currently one of the most circulated publications in Kuwait. In 2001, Al Anba was the bestselling paper in the country, and by the year 2016 they have developed a good number of circulations around the world. The content of the paper focuses on political, social, technical and sports news. Al Anba Newspaper presents its news articles in an uncritical way since the paper has a pro-government stance.
 

The challenge

Prior to adopting Synology's solutions, Al Anba had been manually backing up their data onto DVDs, servers, and older NAS models. They've always experienced issues with limited storage since 1976, and dumped their data on both NAS and SAN units. Since Al Anba utilized tape drives and DVDs for backing up the 15 TB data, the collection quickly became frustratingly difficult to manage. Aside from the backup needs, Al Anba lacked a dedicated surveillance system to monitor their Axis cameras, and had to resolve to using web links to monitor each.
 

The solution

Different Synology backup methods for all scenarios

Synology provides different backup solutions that can be managed, scheduled, and maintained easily. In Al Anba's case, they've created a high availability cluster between their two RS2414RP+ units to produce complete hardware and data redundancy. On top of the HA setup, Al Anba also sends its backup files using Hyper Backup to their Disaster Recovery Site, to make sure there is always a copy for each file even if the original files on their Production Site becomes corrupted.
 

Surveillance Station: video monitoring and management made easy

Instead of monitoring each camera individually, Al Anba has switched to Synology's Surveillance Station to replace their previous method. The company now monitors and records all of their camera feeds through Surveillance Station, and there's no need to switch in-between different platforms. While recording, Al Anba particularly enjoys the Motion Detection feature within Surveillance Station. To minimize storage consumption, the system starts recording when it detects movements taking place in a pre-determined area, for example, when a door is opened, or when objects enter the frame. Al Anba also takes full advantage of the mobile app DS cam for remote monitoring purposes, which allows the managers to access the surveillance system from outside the premises. In addition, with Synology's easy-to-install storage expansions, Al Anba can now store their 20 TB worth of archive and current data securely on both their production and DR sites.