Why China’s banks rely on SkyHawk Health Management

As surveillance storage and management have grown increasingly complex, Seagate Technology's SkyHawk Health Management (SHM) has the back of information systems integrators (SIs) across the globe.

According to IDC, by 2025 the global data volume will expand to 163 ZB. That's 10 times the amount of the data generated in 2016. Future data growth will come primarily from embedded devices, including security and protection cameras. Data managers will face daunting challenges in the areas of security and privacy, along with having to keep up with the constant change of technology demands resulting from big data, 4K resolution, H.265, the cloud, artificial intelligence (AI), system health monitoring, machine learning and biological recognition. Collectively these applications promote better monitoring and more efficient video surveillance, which not only mitigates risk and catches criminal mischief, but also improves business operations.

This is particularly the case in China's electronic business processing platforms of various banks, which can ensure 24-hour support of ATM terminals, telephone banking, self-service banking, online banking and other system service types. Head offices need to be able to carry out real-time remote monitoring, and business guidance over the various branch locations. Maintenance, scaling storage and upgrading storage equipment is a constant concern for surveillance SIs.

Among other things, SIs must: reduce total cost of operation (TCO) while enhancing service efficiency; support their banking end users to meet various legal and statutory requirements; complete emergency repairs quickly; ensure healthy system operations, etc. Often, these goals mean having to invest a lot of human and material resources to ensure product and service reliability.

SHM to the Rescue

Enter Seagate's SkyHawk Health Management. SHM is the first hard drive data analytics and recovery software dedicated to environmental monitoring of files stored on network video recorders (NVRs) and digital video recorders (DVRs). It helps prevent data loss, intervenes when data loss threats are detected, and remedies any data loss that occurs.

In 2017, Kingtion Technology bought SkyHawk drives with SHM, jointly developed by Seagate Technology and Hikvision Digital Technology. As an information SI dedicated to software R&D and surveillance solutions, Kingtion builds surveillance systems for numerous bank customers. It has worked with the Postal Savings Bank of China, Agricultural Bank of China, Guangdong Development Bank, China Minsheng Bank, Industrial Bank, Hengfeng Bank, and many of their branches and sub-branches.

Kingtion deployed the SkyHawk drives at their customer Hengfeng Bank Xiaoshan Branch in order to provide better storage monitoring and maintenance services. The resources it drew on are SkyHawk’s unique powers of prevention, intervention and recovery.

In the context of an operating system or application (such as the Hikvision NVR 4.0 OS system), SHM provides a monitoring dashboard for SIs, manufacturers and end users with end-to-end prevention, intervention and recovery services. It monitors the health status of SkyHawk hard drives by going beyond the industrial standard of Self-Monitoring, Analysis, and Reporting Technology (SMART), and by analyzing multiple parameters related to drive health while using proprietary algorithms to determine potential consequences to the drive.

This proactive prevention and intervention amount to a reduction in maintenance costs and promote stronger customer loyalty for SIs and installers.

SkyHawk Health Management chiefly offers the following three core services:

• Prevention. SHM monitors operating conditions and recommends preventive actions — such as temperature control and vibration control — to limit deterioration. Integrated with the monitoring, the interface provides readable hard disk health information and fixes output error codes for convenient communication with customer service staff.
•  Intervention. SHM analyzes over 100 internal performance parameters to determine drive health status. When the drive health has been deemed to have deteriorated, SHM may recommend backup to ensure data availability.
•  Recovery. Customers can rely on optional access to Seagate’s industry-leading data recovery services if data appears to have been lost. Whether there is a mechanical issue, natural disaster, data corruption or virus, Seagate has you covered. Our top experts work to recover data in a highly secure environment.

Satisfied Users

Gao Liang, GM of the Engineering Department at Kingtion Technology, who is responsible for operation management of the bank security system, makes sure that monitoring videos are available at any moment. “Thanks to SHM, we have mastered the working state of hard drives at all times.”

Another SI that relies on SHM is Hangzhou Senjing Information Technology, a designer of security projects for the Industrial and Commercial Bank of China of Zhejiang Province. In recent years, the company has morphed from an engineering company focused on systems integration to a service-oriented company focused on independent research and development. In order to provide its customers the most advanced financial security solution, Senjing turned to Seagate’s SkyHawk Health Management.

According to Senjing's business manager Zhu Chunhai, when trying SHM, Senjing “discovered that the Hikvision NVR not only has a friendlier operation interface, but also can remind us of the temperature and health status of hard disk drives at any time with SHM.”

When the health management system alerted Senjing that the boot time of air-conditioning needed adjusting, the company followed the preventative advice and intervened before any data loss could potentially occur. As a result, all kinds of headaches and expenses were staved off. Paying attention to the health status of surveillance storage is crucial for ensuring that your most invaluable asset — data — is being properly recorded and stored.

Reliable storage of video data is the utmost concern. With SHM, SIs can provide end users with tools for protecting data, intervening when potential issues arise, and recovering data with optional Rescue Data Recovery Services. The upshot for SIs? By offering more reliable storage, they can improve customer loyalty and increase their profit margins thanks to lower maintenance costs.