Quantum Releases New Surveillance Reference Architecture

With more and more devices equipped with cameras and an internet connection, video surveillance is a booming industry worth tens of billions of dollars – but with those capabilities comes a staggering amount of data (a single Nest camera, for instance, can use up to 120 GB of data in a single month at 720p resolution). In fact, data management firm Quantum Corporation calls video surveillance cameras “the biggest data generators in the world” – and now, it’s introducing a reference architecture for large-scale surveillance workloads to help lighten the load.

The problem isn’t constrained to video surveillance homes and businesses: increasingly, video surveillance is seen as a solution for more nuanced problems, such as constant monitoring of traffic flows to improve congestion in real time or even monitoring of wildlife reserves to prevent poaching. With these kinds of applications, fidelity and urgency are both core tenets, but the volume of the data can be overwhelming. Moreover, researchers and system operators increasingly want to retain the data for longer amounts of time to enable longer-term analysis.

“Video surveillance is increasingly being used to make our cities smarter and modernize business operations through analytics. However, at a certain level of scale, IT-based shared storage solutions simply can’t keep up with today’s surveillance workloads,” said Jamie Lerner, president and CEO of Quantum. 

Quantum’s solution is built around its StorNext shared file system for video workloads, combining a unique configuration of that system with enhanced hyperconverged infrastructure software built into Quantum’s VS1110-A application server for automation systems. (While the VS1110-A is marketed for building automation, it is designed for “applications where high performance, redundancy, and availability are required.)

“As the world’s fastest file system for video workloads, Quantum StorNext is uniquely suited to large-scale surveillance use cases,” Lerner said. “The resiliency gained through high-performance shared storage with a [hyperconverged infrastructure] front end will give customers peace of mind[.]”

According to Quantum, this new reference architecture supports anywhere from 500 to 2,000 cameras for 30 days to a year of retention: likely hundreds of terabytes – maybe even petabytes – of video.

For Quantum, this is part of a multi-pronged surveillance analytics play: the company reports that, in addition to the new architecture, it hired a pair of security industry specialists to lead business development overseas, and it recently announced the ability to securely monitor its VS-NVR video recording servers using its cloud-based analytics software. 

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