How video storage ensures critical data isn’t lost

The fundamental value of data is widely apparent in modern society, and its loss may have significant consequences

Video data is critical to today’s enterprise. The latest video storage systems must offer dependable operation that doesn’t risk loss of that critical data.

DDN - When performance matters

“Not only is bandwidth very important, but functionality cannot be lost when a storage system is having a bad day,” says Jeff Adams, director of sales, surveillance solutions, for DDN (DataDirects Network) Storage solutions. That importance is reflected in DDN’s motto: “When performance matters.”

“If you pull a drive out of a running DDN system, the system monitoring tools will show you that the video data destined for those particular drives is actually being captured or journaled – not lost forever as with competing storage solutions,” says Adams. “When the drives come back online, the journaled data is written in a partial rebuild state as normal operations continue. This dramatically increases overall system performance, reliability and dependability in comparison to competing storage solutions that need to perform full rebuilds from parity each time a drive fails.”

DDN systems are architected to continue delivering maximum performance even in adverse conditions, Adams adds. With DDN, entire drive enclosures can go offline while remaining operational with zero data loss.

Importance of data recovery service

A critical area that can be overlooked in video storage relates to the reliability and rescue capability of storage drives, according to Seagate Technology. The fundamental value of data is widely apparent in modern society, and its loss may have significant consequences; this is particularly true in an area where the maintenance of data is often strictly regulated. “It is crucial, then, that end-users take steps to ensure that the storage solution in their surveillance system is covered by a data recovery service,” says Henk Van Den Berg, Seagate’s European sales director.

To ensure that such opportunities are exploited, the storage industry must work to communicate the available options in a way that clearly demonstrates how they fulfil the vast and specific needs of surveillance storage, he says.

Dependability relates not only at the system level, but at the internal component level as well, says Jeff Burgess, president and CEO of BCDVideo. The integrator should not only expect, but demand, a scalable, stable solution that can be remotely managed, comes pre-imaged, ready-to-rack, and fully covered, he says – “and a manufacturer who’s got his back.” The technology capabilities of today’s intelligent Video Recorders (IVR) have turned the storage unit from a JBOD (just a Box of Disks) to a complete management and notification centre. In addition to capturing and redirecting the video streams, the system can alert the administrator on system fluctuations based on thresholds set by the administrator. This includes both those within the system – CPU temperature, cooling fans, and memory usage – as well as active peripherals attached to the network, such as network switch ports, camera activity, client viewing stations and video streams.

 “We relate to all those insurance commercials promising a lower rate within 15 minutes,” says Burgess. “Notice how they never tout the quality of their service, just the fact that they can save you money in 15 minutes. But is that why you buy insurance? Don’t you really want it for if/when something happens? In that regard, what do you do when something catastrophic happens and you need to find that frame sequence, or restore and view the video from a certain date, yet you can’t because the data is corrupt or simply not there? Bet you wish you had those 15 minutes back.”