Deploying a high-performance computing environment to minimise processing costs

Organisations must find more effective ways to optimise the use of the resources they have available

As market demand intensifies for higher resolution from megapixel, and 4K cameras, customers will begin to feel the ensuing cost pressures caused by the increased need for greater processing power. As customers update their system and add new cameras, operators must monitor additional cameras concurrently, oftentimes leveraging high resolution video streams.

HPC For Quick And Reliable Operation

While the appeal for high-quality video is there, companies may not always have the budgets to sustain the updates required for their infrastructure demands. Purchasing additional servers and storage, allocating space within a server room, and factoring additional expenses to operate the system, such as electricity and cooling, can get expensive. Instead, organisations must find more effective ways to optimise the use of the resources they have available, in order to reduce the cost of deploying or growing their physical security systems. By implementing a high-performance computing environment, customers can optimise the use of their existing infrastructure resources to help reduce the expense of updating their security system, while also still being able to deploy new cameras.

High Performance Computing (HPC) usually refers to a computer that uses multiple processors—tens, hundreds, or even thousands—connected together by a network to achieve performance well above that of a single processor. To help customers expand their video surveillance system and benefit from their available computing power, IP security solution vendors are focusing their efforts on technologies that will help their customers effectively deploy an HPC environment.

Deploying an HPC Environment for Video Surveillance

Not all video surveillance systems are created equal; but here are three key technologies that will help an organisation achieve better performance from existing investments, and lessen the financial impact of a growing surveillance system.

• Scalable VMS Architecture: When looking at upgrading to a new IP video surveillance system, it is important to find out how many cameras can generally be supported on a single recording server. The selection of a VMS that can provide a scalable architecture will allow organisations to reduce the number of recording servers that they require, and increase the efficiency of their system. Switching to a scalable platform will help organisations reduce the number of servers that they require, as well as many costs associated to operating and maintaining their infrastructure. 

• GPU-Accelerated Video Decoding: The ability to leverage video graphic cards to decode and render video, instead of solely relying on the CPU, can significantly enhance workstation performance when displaying video from multiple high-resolution cameras. This benefits customers who are displaying a video wall, or operators working on a multi-monitor display. Not only can they use video cards to help drive additional displays from a single workstation, but operators can also benefit from greater fluidity when reviewing video. Meanwhile, the CPU is saved to run other applications. 

• Support for Virtualisation: Being able to implement a virtual environment on a physical server and work with software that supports this type of implementation helps companies reduce costs. Some customers have implemented a virtualised environment to maximise their hardware investments, and can even eliminate full server racks of video equipment. Consolidating the number of servers required, and lessening the operating the costs, such as electricity, cooling, server space, also supports corporate green initiatives. 

Solving Common Challenges with HPC

The democratisation of HPC systems has benefited organisations that rely on compute-intensive applications to deploy and operate their datacentres more efficiently. Taking advantage of a VMS that can optimise computing performance allow customers to reduce their investment in servers, while still taking advantage of new high-resolution cameras on the market. Leveraging HPC also proposes another advantage: freeing up server space and resources to implement other applications used within an organisation. Whether that is unifying analytics, access control, intercom, or for other business applications, being able to do more with existing resources helps organisations reduce their investment in new hardware.