Video Surveillance and IP Storage

A White Paper with Genetec Omnicast

And
Intransa Scalable, External IP Storage

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Contents
Introduction......................................................................................................................... 3
Part One: Video Surveillance Solution Overview .............................................................. 4
Genetec Omnicast................................................................................................................................ 6
Intransa Storage Architecture .............................................................................................................. 7
Video Surveillance System Performance and Frame Loss..................................................................... 9
Part Two: Test Configuration ........................................................................................... 11
System Setup and Configuration........................................................................................................ 11
File layout and IO profile.................................................................................................................... 13
System Performance Evaluation ........................................................................................................ 13
Single LUN Using a 14 Disk RAID5 Diskgroup............................................................................................. 13
Disk/File Level Fragmentation ......................................................................................................................... 14
Frame Loss due to Disk Failure and RAID rebuild ....................................................................................... 14
Live Viewer and Archiver Player ........................................................................................................ 15
Part Three: Guidelines for Configurations........................................................................ 16
NVR Best Practices............................................................................................................................. 16
Networking Best Practices ................................................................................................................. 17
Storage Best Practices........................................................................................................................ 18
Storage System Performance............................................................................................................. 20
About Intransa................................................................................................................... 21

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Introduction

When it comes to disk storage to video surveillance systems, most security practitioners
only think about storage capacity in terms of DVRs and NVRs. And worst of all, most of
the time, storage is thought of only after the rest of the surveillance system has been
designed and purchased. This can be a costly mistake, not only because DVRs and
NVRs typically use fixed, captive storage instead of more cost effective, scalable and
reliable shared, external IP storage, but also because not all storage performance is
equal.

This report looks at the issues, shows performance limitations and results, and then
demonstrates how a powerful video management system such as the Genetec Omnicast
application can leverage Intransa Shared, External IP Storage much more effectively
than DVR/NVR fixed captive storage.

Testing was performed on a real, functioning video surveillance system with components
from Genetec, Intransa, AXIS Communications, Dell, and other vendors, a strong
example of an IP based system with multi-vendor interoperability. The report closes with
recommendations on best practices for enabling a video surveillance system with
Genetec Omnicast.

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Part One: Video Surveillance Solution Overview
Physical security and information technology (IT) are very different disciplines, and
terminologies demonstrate this. A quick review of these terminologies and how they
are applied is required to ensure a level understanding of the discussion.

In a typical video surveillance system, there are four components: surveillance

camera, networking infrastructure, Network Video Recorder (NVR) and video
storage system. Figure 1 shows a diagram of these four components.

Figure 1: Data stream diagram of a typical video surveillance system

Camera vendors usually define performance as a combination of the number of

channels, image resolution, frames per second, and compression method.
Image Resolution - Usually measured in CIF, 4CIF, megapixel, 10 megapixel,
etc.
Frames per Second or FPS - The higher the frame rate, the better the video
quality.
Compression Method - MJPEG, MPEG-2, MPEG-4, and H.264 are common.

In the IT networking world, performance is based on a combination of available

network bandwidth plus how fast switches/routers on the network are able switch
and route packets to their destinations from individual devices.

Network bandwidth ranges from as low as 10Mbps to 100Mbps (fast Ethernet),

1,000Mbps (1Gbps) and more recently 10Gbps. Note that the Mbps unit is Megabits
per second. Typical IP network interfaces are 1GbE (1 Gigabit Ethernet) or 10GbE
(10 Gigabit Ethernet).

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For switches/routers, performance is related to how many packets per second the
device can switch toward its destination and what is the latency or delay for each
packet to transverse the switching device.

The NVR is the engine of the modern video surveillance system. The NVR manages
the cameras as well as storage system. The NVR receives frames from various
cameras, converts the frames into IOs (Input/Output operations), and then writes the
IOs to the storage system.

There are two ways NVRs write to storage: DVRs can directly write to a storage
block device (a disk drive), or they can write to the storage device (disk drive)
through a file system.

For Windows-based NVRs, the NTFS (Net Technology File System) file system is
typically used. The ext3 (Third Extended File System) file system is common for
Linux-based NVRs.

For more definitions and specific details of video surveillance, IT and storage terms,
Intransa provides an extensive Glossary of Terms at
http://www.intransa.com/technology/glossary.php, useful for those interested in
either IT or physical security terminology.

Storage is the last mile of the video surveillance system, where the rubber meets the
road. Video frames from cameras are passed from the NVR to the storage system
as IOs. This translates in the IT storage world to IO workload.

The pattern used by IOs to access the storage system has a huge effect on the
storage system performance which again determines the overall system
performance. The list of parameters for IO workload includes: request block size
(typically in the unit of KB or Kilobyte), random or sequential actions, read write ratio,
etc.

When it comes to the storage IO transport, the terms most pertinent are SCSI (Small
Computer System Interface), FC (Fibre Channel), SAS (Serial Attached Storage)
and iSCSI (SCSI over IP protocol).

The device that actually stores the video is disk drive. Common current disk drive
types are SATA (Serial ATA or Serial Advanced Technology Attachment), SAS
(Serial Attached SCSI) and FC (Fibre Channel).

Disk drives are differentiated along the lines of performance, capacity and reliability.
Storage systems provide virtualized storage to the NVR, and provide data loss
protection through RAID (Redundant Array of Independent Disks).

The performance terminology for storage is typically measured units of MBps

(Megabytes), for throughput and IOPS (IOs per second).

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Genetec Omnicast

Genetec, incorporated in 1997, is recognized as a pioneer in IP security solutions

and a technology leader within the physical security industry. Genetec provides a
complete line of innovative IP security products.

With Omnicast, cameras, workstations or any other component of the system can be
added anywhere on the network, at any time. With its federation architecture,
systems can grow from a single camera to tens of thousands of cameras, one
camera at a time, and large scale city-wide surveillance is now a reality. Figure 2
shows a typical Omnicast deployment solution diagram. Omnicast servers can share
the same storage or have its own edge recording storage device.

Figure 2: Genetec Omnicast solution diagram

This whitepaper will look at Omnicast to illustrate how storage affects stored video
quality. We will also look at how videos are actually recorded to storage systems.

From a performance perspective, an Intransa mid-range system will be used as an

appropriate storage solution example of an IP storage area network. Intransa
StarterBlock occupies the middle of the companys shared, external IP storage

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family, with more system throughput and capacity than either the edge recording
platform StarterBlock or the departmental EdgeBlock series.

A single Intransa StorStac BuildingBlock system is able to support 440 cameras with
30FPS 4CIF MJPEG compression [13200 FPS]. The high end of the Intransa
product line, single PerformanceBlock system, can support 3,500 cameras at similar
compression rates [65,000 FPS].

With such capability for scaling to huge online video repositories, Intransa enables
Genetec Omnicast for large scale video surveillance deployment.

Intransa Storage Architecture

Intransa StorStac BuildingBlock systems consist of two independently scalable

components, integrated form a complete IP-based storage area network (SAN)
platform for recording of video and data.

These components are:

Performance Controller Units or PCUs

Storage Capacity Enclosures or SCEs

Performance Controller Units handle all storage management and virtualization.

PCUs are clustered to form one or more realms, managing the performance
scalability (each adds additional system throughput), and to support high availability
(should one PCU fail, the system fails over to another PCU in the cluster; up to four
PCUs may be clustered together).

Storage Capacity Enclosures hold the disk drives used in the system. All are hot-
swappable so as to be replaceable while the rest of the system continues to function
in the event of a disk failure. Multiple SCEs can be added, modularly increasing
storage capacity for retention up to 1,500TB.

Such independent scalability of both processor throughput and retention capacity

allows video surveillance system administrators to manage the number of cameras
and varied resolution, independent of the retention period. Table 1 below
summarizes optimum storage requirements for video surveillance applications.

Cost / Low Entry Price From single storage enclosure to multiple, managed as a single
& Manageability entity
Easy setup and simple ongoing administration
Managed through a single GUI interface, with easy provisioning
Manage major functions from choice of physical security or IT
perspective
Retention & Capacity Make efficient use of disk capacity
Scaling Support current capacity needs and future requirements
Scale from a few TB to 100, or 1000 and beyond modularly
Add capacity on demand, without re-cabling

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Resolution & Consistent Performance
Performance Scaling Optimized for video surveillance I/O workload
(PFS) Dynamically add cameras / NVRs / IP devices on demand, from
a few to thousands
Minimum performance impact by:
- Fragmentation at file or disk level
- RAID rebuild
- Controller failure / link failure
Reliability No single point of failure
Clustered storage
RAID support
HA configurations
Database and Database such as Microsoft SQL support
Virtualization support Server and storage consolidation through virtualization.
Tight Integration From storage planning, provisioning, monitoring to performance
Load balancing, high availability.
Distance Scaling Support LAN and WAN
IP-based

Table 1: Summarize Video Surveillance Storage Requirements

The Intransa Scalable, External IP Storage Architecture is ideal for surveillance

deployments as the primary video storage system. All Intransa storage platforms in
the product line are Security-Grade IP Video Storage certified, supporting nearly 100
applications from physical security and IT vendors. Genetec Omnicast is also
Security-Grade IP Video Storage certified though the Intransa StorAlliance Lab
program.

Intransa IP storage includes design features that deliver outstanding capacity and
performance. These are:

Improved video storage reliability and capacity, allowing increased retention,

higher resolution and maximum frame rates while decreasing maintenance
and administration burden and costs

Scalable IP Storage optimized for video surveillance IO workload, including

heaving near-constant writes

Certified for enterprise-grade IT storage for varied applications including

consolidation and virtualization with VMware ESX, & Microsoft operating
systems, Microsoft Exchange (2003 & 2007) & Microsoft SQL Server,
plus applications such as VTL and disk-to-disk backup and data warehousing

Certified for physical security applications through the Intransa StorAlliance

Labs, the GSO2010/GSI2010 labs, and the IPVS Magazine lab program

Affordably grow capacity from 2 to 1,500TB or increase performance from

220MB/sec to 880MB/sec modularly with BuildingBlock, without re-cabling

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 Advanced RAID 0, 1, 5, 6 and 10 protection, high availability configurations,
and hot-swap disk drives, fans, power supplies and major components

Video Surveillance System Performance and Frame Loss

Unintended video frame loss is common in many video storage systems today,
typically caused by one of just two factors.

First, the storage system may not be able to keep up with the video data rate due to
the number of cameras, compression, and resolution and frame rate settings
employed. Or the problem may be because the network video recorder (NVR) can
not process the all of video frames in a timely manner.

Dropping frames in video applications may have been tolerable in some application
environments, exhibited in behavior such as a nearly unnoticeable picture freeze.
However, more and more security practitioners and their end user customers are
finding continued frame loss unacceptable.

Often, frames drop more as more cameras with higher resolution are added to the
surveillance system. From storage system prospective, physical security system
designers should consider this and the impact that the design will have on
performance when it comes to system scalability and stored video quality.

How do we define the recorded video quality for a video surveillance application?
For many applications, only recorded video is meaningful, so measuring frame
losses is a measure of the recorded video quality.

The recorded video quality can be considered a total system scalability

measurement. It can be impacted by the number of cameras, FPS, resolution, NVR
configuration and the underlying storage system. Since video is a continuous
streaming application, we will need to use a statistical sampling method to quantify
the recorded video quality.

The cumulative percentage of recorded frames fits nicely into describing video
quality, since applications have different tolerances and requirements for video
quality.

For this paper, we will use two parameters:

Total Frame Loss (TFL)

Frame Cumulative Percentage

Total Frame Loss is the percentage of fame loss over a period of time. Frame
Cumulative Percentage as a way to describe the smoothness of the video stream.

Figure 3 shows sample history, and you can see there are few drops on frame rate.
This is measured with 60 cameras, 30FPS 4CIF MJPEG (1800FPS) Sampled at 30
sec intervals. The lower FPS points are caused by effects such as buffering,
caching, rotation/seek times, etc.

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 2000
1800
1600
A verage FPS [30sec]

1400
1200
1000
800
600
400
200
0
9:50:24 9:57:36 10:04:48 10:12:00 10:19:12 10:26:24 10:33:36 10:40:48 10:48:00
Time

Figure 3: Frame rate as recorded by storage system

To see what percentage of samples fall below the FPS threshold, we plotted the
cumulative percentage of the FPS sampling as shown in the Figure 4 below.

Recorded Video Quality

100% 1850
90% 1800
Cumulative Percentage

80%
70%
60%
50% 1750
40%
30%
1700
20%
10% 1650
1600
0% 0 700
0 500 1000 1500 2000 2500
FPS
.
Figure 4: Cumulative percentage of the FPS sampling distribution.

Figure 3 is very useful to defining acceptable recorded video quality. Reading from
the graph, you can see that 50% of the samples fall below 1750 FPS. 9% are less
than 1650 FPS, and 3% are less than 1600 FPS. Therefore, if you assume your
recorded video quality requirement has a zero tolerance for FPS dropping below
50% of required frame rate (if 1800 FPS is the expected frame rate, sampling
instances must be 1800*50% or 900 FPS). The graph indicates that this is possible.

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If your requirement is that no more than 2% of samples have a frame loss exceeding
10% (1800*(1-10%) = 1620 FPS), the graph indicates this cannot be achieved with
the current system.

Part Two: Test Configuration

System Setup and Configuration

Figure 5 shows the test system setup topology. The devices and software in the
configuration are as follows:

Cameras from Axis, IQinVision, Mobotix, etc.

Genetec Omnicast version 4.1
Microsoft Windows 2003 server R2 32bit OS
Intransa StorStac 4.2.000
Microsoft iSCSI software Initiator 2.07
Intel Pro MT 1000 Dual port NIC card
Dell PowerConnect 4948, jumbo frame enabled Ethernet switch

Figure 5: Genetec Intransa Test Network Topology

The core software of the video recording is archiver. While the archive database SQL is
used to store the archive catalog, the actual vides are stored directly on disks. You may
designate any local hard disk or network share on your LAN to store video files. Multiple

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LUNs can be assigned to the same Archiver as shown in Figure 6 below:

Figure 6: Multiple LUNs can be assigned to a single Archiver

The main bottleneck on the Archiver is the disk throughput. Omnicast has a way to
alleviate this problem by allowing the Archiver to write to multiple disks simultaneously.
This optimization is achieved by defining multiple disk groups. Each disk group
corresponds to a separate disk controller. By splitting the video archive over several disk
groups, the administrator can effectively attain the maximum throughput in terms of disk
access. As an example, create two disk groups from Admin Tool: Default Disk Group
and New Group, and then from Config Tool, two cameras are assigned to Default
Disk Group and one camera is assigned to New Group as shown in Figure 7 below:

Figure 7: Cameras, Archiver and Storage associations

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File layout and IO profile

Figure 8 shows the video file layout structure. IOs are not as random as other
applications.

Figure 8: Recorded file structure of Omnicast

System Performance Evaluation

A LUN or Logical Unit Number is a network storage term. A LUN is a method of

linking multiple disk drives together to form a single volume. From a Windows
perspective for example, instead of 14 drives appearing as separate drive letters
each, A: through N:, the LUN can be set to appear as a single drive or volume.

A LUN layout is how individual LUNs are presented to or are accessible by the NVR
system. Getting the LUN layout correct can go a long way to achieving optimal
performance.

Single LUN Using a 14 Disk RAID5 Diskgroup

We will first evaluate how many cameras can be supported using 14 disk RAID 5
equipped disk array with a single LUN. Figure 9 shows the total frame loss
percentage for various FPS and camera combinations:

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 6

3 Frame Loss %

30 0
40
50 30
#Cameras 55 25
60 20 FPS
64 10

Figure 9: With one single 14disk RAID5 LUN, total frame loss is measured as a
function of number of cameras, or frame per second.

With a single volume supported by a single, 14 disk RAID 5 diskgroup, the Intransa
StorStac BuildingBlock system supports more than 55 cameras at 30FPS with 4CIF
and MJPEG, resulting in less than 5% total frame drop. This corresponds to about
57MBps throughput from the cameras to the storage system.

Disk/File Level Fragmentation

Disk and file level fragmentation is another factor that must be considered for
performance.

In the live environment, the Test Engineering team ran out of performance tests after
exhausting the entire storage system disk capacity [to almost 9TB]. Throughout, no
significant performance losses were observed.

This demonstrated there was virtually no disk fragmentation produced by the

Intransa shared, external IP storage system, even after using all available capacity.

Frame Loss due to Disk Failure and RAID rebuild

RAID 5 protects data loss from disk drive failure. When disks fail, a spare drive will
be automatically allocated and the RAID group will be repaired.

The storage system operates in a degraded mode during this rebuild process. It
therefore is very important to have control over the rebuild speed, allowing a balance
to be set for recovery time versus support for ongoing video recording/playback,
depending upon specific application requirements.

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Not all storage systems are able to provide this rebuild speed control, although all
Intransa StorStac systems do. That allows the RAID group to be rebuilt at the
optimized speed, and avoid significant impact to video recording and frame rate.

Live Viewer and Archiver Player

Both live videos as well as archived videos can be accessed from anywhere in the
network. Figure 10 and Figure 11 shows a screen capture from both live viewer and
archiver play.

Figure 10: Omnicast live viewer

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 Figure 11: Omnicast Archiver Player

Part Three: Guidelines for Configurations

NVR Best Practices

For a typical NVR, security practitioners need to ensure that sufficient system
resources are available. These resources typically are system CPU, memory and
NIC (network interface card) bandwidth.

Security practitioners will need to talk with their NVR vendor or security integrator to
determine the proper system requirements for CPU and memory resourcing.

Since storage access is through standard NICs using an iSCSI initiator, we

recommend use of 1Gb Ethernet (1GbE) NICs. For compatibility between the iSCSI
initiator and the storage, please consult with your storage vendor or your security
integrator for the details.

Be sure to enable the Jumbo Frames option on the NICs used in the NVR system.
Jumbo frames will reduce the CPU utilization on your NVRs, improving performance.

By default, most of NICs do not include a function set called TCP offload capabilities.
Selecting a NIC that allows you to enable this ability can significantly reduce NVR

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CPU consumption. Given that more than 90% of the read/write requests are write
IOs, CPU overhead due to the iSCSI software is very minimal.

Table 2 shows typical CPU utilization for various request sizes as measured on a
Dell 2950 platform (2 dual core 3.0GHz CPUs). The measurement is based on a
10Gb Ethernet (10GbE) network, but can also be applied to lower performing 1Gb
Ethernet (1GbE) networks from a CPU utilization perspective.

READ WRITE
Request Size Throughput Host CPU Throughput Host CPU
(KB) (MBps) Utilization % (MBps) Utilization %

8 130 25 105 10

64 460 26 390 14

256 650 27 485 12

512 700 26 520 12

Table 2: CPU utilization due to iSCSI overhead on NVR, measured using Dell 2950.

Typically for 100 cameras with 30FPS 4CIF MJPEG, you will see about 10% CPU
resources consumed due to software iSCSI traffic.

You can also set up redundant network links between NVRs and the storage system.

This is typically done through multipath IOs, known as MPIO. MPIO not only offers
high availability but also increases the performance. If one link between NVR and
storage system is down, IOs will be redirected to the second link automatically. Not
all storage systems support MPIO, however.

If your storage system is fully protected from power outage, you can safely enable
write cache to gain further performance. Be sure to discuss this with your NVR
vendor or your security integrator before making this change.

Networking Best Practices

We recommend using separate Ethernet switches for front-end and back-end

networks. Not all storage systems allow this separation, which can have a profound
effect on overall, long term system performance and reliability.

The front-end network is the network used to connect NVRs to the storage PCUs.

The back-end network is for the storage connectivity between the storage PCUs and
the storage enclosures holding the disk drives.

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Jumbo Frames

Enable Jumbo Frames on the NVR, storage PCU, switches, and storage enclosures.

On an Intransa PCU, Jumbo Frames are enabled as:

StorStac> interface display

Name Controller State Alerts IPAddress NetMask MTU
----------------------------------------------------------------------
eth1 c0015C5F525B4 Healthy 0 172.30.33.232 255.255.255.0 1500
eth1:0 c0015C5F525B4 Healthy 0 172.30.33.230 255.255.255.0 1500
team1 c0015C5F525B4 Healthy 0 192.168.0.50 255.255.255.0 9000
team1:0 c0015C5F525B4 Healthy 0 192.168.0.230 255.255.255.0 9000
eth2 c0015C5F525B4 Healthy 0 192.168.0.50 255.255.255.0 9000
eth5 c0015C5F525B4 Healthy 0 192.168.0.50 255.255.255.0 9000
eth3 c0015C5F525B4 Healthy 0 10.0.2.1 255.255.0.0 9000
eth4 c0015C5F525B4 Healthy 0 10.0.2.2 255.255.0.0 9000
Response: Successful
StorStac>

Enable Flow Control on the Switch

You can verify flow control has been correct set from the Intransa storage PCU:

StorStac> debug shell

root@controller:/opt/internal:Debug> ethtool -a eth2
Pause parameters for eth2:
Autonegotiate: on
RX: on
TX: on
root@controller:/opt/internal:Debug> ethtool -a eth3
Pause parameters for eth3:
Autonegotiate: on
RX: on
TX: on
root@controller:/opt/internal:Debug> ethtool -a eth4
Pause parameters for eth4:
Autonegotiate: on
RX: on
TX: on

Storage Best Practices

GPT and Alignment

Video typically consumes many TB of storage; you should use a GPT (GUID or
globally unique identifier partition table) partition.

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GPT partitions are useful instead of using MBR (Master Boot Records) to enable
more than 2TB volume support. When you first initialize the disk, you will see disk
[default NBR format]:

Perform an alignment before you create the NTFS, as this will increase your
performance:

C:\>diskpart
Microsoft DiskPart version 5.2.3790.1830
Copyright (C) 1999-2001 Microsoft Corporation.
On computer: MKT-10G-S1
DISKPART> select disk 3
Disk 1 is now the selected disk.
DISKPART> create partition primary align=64
DiskPart succeeded in creating the specified partition.
DISKPART> exit
Leaving DiskPart...

Align the storage system with NTFS. Here is an easy way to increase disk performance
using the Command Line Interface (CLI) commands below:

C:\>diskpart

Microsoft DiskPart version 5.2.3790.1830

Copyright (C) 1999-2001 Microsoft Corporation.
On computer: MKT-10G-S1

DISKPART> select disk 3

Disk 1 is now the selected disk.
DISKPART> create partition primary align=64
DiskPart succeeded in creating the specified partition.
DISKPART> exit
Leaving DiskPart...

Next, format it using 64KB allocation unit size.

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Now, you can configure your NVR to use this storage device.

Storage System Performance

To summarize, Table 3 shows how many cameras can be supported with a single
standard Intransa StorStac BuildingBlock [30FPS, 4CIF, MJPEG compression]. With
PerformanceBlock storage system, over 2000 cameras can be supported on single
storage system.

1 PCU 2 PCU 3 PCU 4 PCU

1 SCE 55 55 55 55

2 SCE 110 110 110 110

4 SCE 110 220 220 220

8 SCE 110 220 330 440

16 SCE 110 220 330 440

32 SCE 110 220 330 440

Table 3: BuildingBlock Storage system performance summary

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About Intransa

Intransa provides affordable, scalable and dependable IP storage, designed specifically

for use as external video retention capacity for DVRs, Hybrid DVRs, NVRs, or as an all-IP
video surveillance storage system platform. Intransa IP storage is cost effective for a
surveillance system using a single DVR, with benefits and savings growing as more DVRs,
NVRs, surveillance cameras and other devices are added.

Intransa external video storage is based on our proven IP SAN

storage system, ideal for use as an edge or as the primary
video storage platform for surveillance deployments. It has
been certified through our Security-Grade IP Video Storage
program with nearly 100 physical securities and IT vendors and
their products for risk-free integration.

The integrated Video Storage Administrator (VSA) functionality of StorStac allows non-
storage experts to get the most out of their Intransa IP storage.

The Intransa Video

Storage Administrator
(VSA) provides the
ability to set up and
administer storage in
physical security terms
such as resolution,
compression, frame
rate, number of
cameras and desired
retention, not
complicated IT
terminology.

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Unlike captive, fixed storage in DVRs or standard IT workload storage sometimes found
with NVR systems, Intransa external IP storage is optimized for video workloads. This
video optimization also eliminates performance problems related to disk fragmentation
found in general purpose IT storage, and allows higher utilization that can lessen the
total amount of storage required.

Intransa IP SAN scalable storage solutions scale modularly from 2TB of IP storage,
suitable for a few cameras and a few weeks of retention, to more than 1,500 TB with
modular upgrades to support thousands of recording devices for a year or more
retention. Performance can be similarly scaled, allowing faster recording and support
for many more devices.

With Intransa StorStacs fault tolerant architecture, enterprise-grade components and

hot swap capabilities, system administration and ongoing maintenance is simplified and
greatly reduced with all Intransa IP SAN storage systems.

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Intransa IP storage is also proven for standard IT applications like storage consolidation
and virtualization for Green IT needs, with support for both 1 and 10GbE IP interfaces.

Some users chose to run IT and physical security applications on the same Intransa
system, as needed. Advanced Intransa-developed features are also included for IT
storage administrators. These include Intransa DynaStac Thin Provisioning, StorAR
Asynchronous Replication, RAID 0, 1, 5, 6, and 10 support, StorCluster N+1 Clustering
and Failover, StorStac Snapshot, Global Sparing, Dynamic Load Balancing, Non-
disruptive Upgrades, call home support, and the powerful StorManager graphical user
interface (GUI) and integrated command line interface (CLI).

Intransa believes in the power of partnership and alliances, and has funded the StorAlliance
Technology Lab to ensure that the promise of IP is delivered in real world solutions. The lab
certifies IT products through the Intransa 10GbE IP SAN Certified program and the Security-
Grade IP Video Storage Certified program for physical security.

Through the StorAlliance program, and other real-world test environments such as the GSO
2010 (www.gsoevents.com) conference series where security practitioner participants get to
perform hands on testing with multiple IP systems from a dozen or more vendors all using
Intransa IP storage, external IP storage upgrades are tested in real world conditions before
reaching customers.

Intransa IP storage is multi-function in nature, unlike the single purpose storage found in
DVRs and NVRs. Physical security applications like life safety, access control, physical
security information systems and IP devices ranging from surveillance cameras through
to card readers, slot machines and retail systems can all benefit from the storage system.

IT vendors certified include those offering operating systems, email, relational

databases, ILM, CDP, HSM, VTL, backup and recovery, data warehousing, data mining,
clustered file systems, network attached storage, and server and storage consolidation.
Participants include Microsoft, with the first IP storage to be certified with 10GbE
interfaces supporting Microsoft Exchange 2007, and VMware ESX virtualization.

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Only vendor products that have been tested in a similar manner can be considered as low risk
for physical security applications, in addition to demonstrating real-world customer
deployments.

Intransa believes in standards for the good of the industry and our customers. As such we also
are members and supporters of key industry associations, including the Security Industry
Association (SIA), the American Correctional Association (ACA), the Storage Networking Industry
Association (SNIA) and its Green Storage Initiative, and the Green Grid for green IT. Intransa
employees are also members and participants in important professional associations, including
ASIS International and its Physical Security Council.

Intransa Security-Grade IP Video Storage is available from Intransa StorPartner

integrators and dealers worldwide. To learn more, contact Intransa or an Intransa
StorPartner.

Intransa, Inc.
Corporate Headquarters
2870 Zanker Road, Suite 200, San Jose, CA 95134-2114

866 446 7726 or 407 678 8600 / www.intransa.com / [email protected]

2008 Intransa, Inc. All rights reserved.

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