Primary Shared Storage for Surveillance

Increasing Camera Resolutions and Retention Times Drive Need for New Solutions

Surveillance cameras are the biggest data generator on the planet, and data from surveillance cameras is growing exponentially. Surveillance footage is, of course, critical for security and loss prevention. It is also helping to make cities safer, smarter, and more connected, and even helping retailers grow revenue by analyzing shopping behavior. Surveillance camera resolutions are increasing, which increases the size of the files and the performance required. In addition, retention times are increasing due to the additional analysis of the surveillance footage.

For large-scale surveillance infrastructures—500 to several thousand cameras—high-performance, highly scalable shared storage solutions are required.

High-Performance Primary Shared Storage, Designed for Surveillance Workloads

Quantum’s solution addresses the scale, performance, and management required for large-scale shared storage in surveillance. Based on the StorNext® File System, the world’s fastest file system for video workloads, Quantum’s solution combines a highly available and resilient HCI front end with high-performance StorNext shared file storage. Since surveillance cameras are always recording, StorNext has the performance to keep up with high-resolution camera data, without dropping frames. And StorNext systems have a flexible architecture that can scale up or scale out to address varying camera counts as well as varying retention times.

Quantum has engineered this reference architecture specifically for surveillance workloads. This reference architecture can be configured for 500 to 2,000 cameras and can be configured differently based on varying retention requirements, from 30 days to a full year. The various configuration options are shown in the table below, and more details are provided in the reference architecture document.