Centralize With IP Networks: Cameras, Storage, And Servers

Over the past few years, physical security is undergoing a transformation. Typical proprietary video servers are being replaced by newer video servers that offer redundancy, open-standard compatibility, and high performance. Video images are digital, video servers are networked, and cameras are powered via Ethernet (POE), causing a shift from analog to network based video surveillance. With this new move to centralizing over the network, security managers have the opportunity to take advantage of advanced features previously available only in the datacenter: redundancy, high availability and data protection. As surveillance goes digital, and video footage is critical for compliance, safety or asset protection, it is important to make sure each component of your security system is failsafe.

Utilizing your existing IP network infrastructure lowers deployment costs and management overhead, since resources are centralized, and can be shared across the network. Your IP network infrastructure enables convergence of widely distributed systems onto a common IP network for easy access from anywhere on the network. In order to build an efficient security infrastructure, it makes sense to take leverage innovations in workstations, video servers, and storage to increase system performance. Using IP based technologies allow organizations to:

• Simplify Infrastructure: Security managers are charged with managing their surveillance infrastructure with fewer resources, increased demands on time, performance and capacity. With IP you can manage all your cameras, storage, and video data from a single, centralized network.
• Reduce Costs for Management and Ownership: Operational costs are reduced with a centralized storage infrastructure including administration, maintenance and facilities costs. With all your resources centralized on the network, you are able add more cameras without adding more video servers to the mix.
• Increase Data Protection and Availability: Centralizing on the network allows security administrators to leverage advanced features like clustering, mirroring, and split video recording, to keep their infrastructure highly available and protected from system failure.
• Boost Surveillance Effi ciency: Centralizing resources allows administrators to be more effi cient, saving resources and time for important surveillance duties. A centralized infrastructure enables an increase in the number of applications, terabytes and systems managed without increasing administrators.