Plan To Prepare
A failure to plan oftentimes translates into a plan to fail. Thankfully, there are people who professionally train for failure and are able to transition a failure to plan into a mass notification system that alerts the masses when disaster is on the brink. Disaster recovery comes in many forms, with equally interesting fashions.
“Intelligent notification is a disaster recovery solution that can be used for large-scale evacuation,” said Frank Mahdavi, chief strategy officer for MIR3. “The operational side of practical planning is how businesses are impacted, as well as employees, and how they use video surveillance system to react in a short timeframe.”
Before alert notification services were developed, organizations were limited in the way they could respond to emergencies and/or broadcast communications needs. Use of a phone tree spread the message like wild fire, but the method was unreliable.
Mass Notification
It’s not only the business side that benefits from mass notification. Mahdavi said the system is customer-based and suitable for many different markets.
“With an alert notification service, you can broadcast messages to large numbers of people in a very short period of time,” said Mark Nelson, business development manager at ADT. “You can send emergency and non-emergency alerts through telephones, cell phones, e-mail, pagers, faxes, PDAs, satellite devices, LED signs or virtually any communication device connected to the Internet or a telephone network.”
Mass notification isn’t something that school, city or business officials are running out shopping for, but recently there has been an uptick in budgeting for such technology and software. Activity growth was expected at about 30 percent each year, but then the recession took its toll. However, Mahdavi said growth still continues at a pretty good rate of 15 percent annually.
“The biggest issue for end users in deciding is what information to send out and what to withhold,” said Darren A. Nix, CPP, senior associate at Risk Management Associates Inc. “End users also must decide what they want people to do with the released information, who should they respond to and what direction to take.
“We’re finding the norm is for people to shelter in place. However, there are instances where first responders want people to evacuate. As with other security policy decisions, we have to minimize the liability of the organization with respect to how they issue warnings and whether they shoulder any responsibility for how people respond.”
The city of Miami held training classes for its new mass notification system the evening before Hurricane Ivan reached shore in 2004. Critical information was loaded into the system, and workers were trained to use it just 24 hours before the storm made landfall.
“Video surveillance equipment has become a staple and welcome foundation in the business continuity space,” Mahdavi said. “It’s important to have a tool powerful enough to accomplish goals of being prepared when a disaster hits, and to warm people of a threat.”
ADT officials listed seven topics they felt were necessary when considering a notification service: determining threats and risks, evaluating the effectiveness of current emergency systems and procedures, defining emergency notification service objectives, comparing features of alert notification services, pricing structure, completing a risk/expenditure analysis, and researching and securing funding. Nelson also noticed many of installations lack conformance to OSHA standards.
“ADT’s system is designed to help first responders, life safety and other emergency management services protect the public with real-time voice command control,” Nelson said. “The company also felt the technology should deliver highly directional, highly intelligible messages—live or recorded voice and emergency tones—when needed.”
The Air Force agreed, turning to ADT’s Clear Warning emergency alert system. The system was chosen because the system was mobile, could be deployed in minutes and was able to withstand the military’s strictest transport standards.
Data Storage Transition
Successful business operations depend on reliable access to critical applications and data. High availability is essential for IT systems running standard database servers, enterprise applications and e-mail servers that are required to sustain the necessary productivity of key business operations and processes.
“It’s critical to have an integrated high-availability software solution that provides fast application recovery and synchronous data mirroring to protect a critical stand-alone system against unexpected hardware and software failures,” said Ken Hertzler, director of server products for the IT platform group at NEC Corp. of America. “It’s also important to address planned system maintenance downtime with minimum requirements for additional server, storage and network hardware resources.”
NEC introduced Express Cluster to the computing world because it provides continuous monitoring of applications and system resources, including disk and network I/O for failure on the primary and standby servers.
“Obviously, the most important issue is not losing important data in the event of a catastrophe,” Nix said. “The organization and what services they provide has a lot to do with the effects of not being able to continue providing the service if the data is lost.
“If the company’s downtime is minimized, then they are still viable and will not fold. This sort of information should be written in a critical incident management plan.”
Fast Application Recovery
When a failure is detected, the target applications and dependent resources are quickly recovered on a standby server, generally within minutes. Once a failed server is repaired or replaced, the system can be quickly restored to the normal operating condition.
“Having backup for any type of business, municipality or entity is mission critical,” said Andy Higgenbothem, director of sales and marketing at the hard disk drive group at Samsung Semiconductor Inc. “If you expect to continue work after a natural disaster or emergency that takes out the primary data storage, it is critical to have backup in more than one place. It should be a business requirement to have backup across the city, or even in a different state.”
:Consider IP-based video surveillance infrastructure elements for a typical digital video surveillance system, but the backbone must be an Ethernet digital network. This works particularly well for new installations. It also supports multiple display users, including Web-based clients. It also supports camera control (in which remote PTZ control is delivered over Ethernet).
Higgenbothem said the key advantage is wiring flexibility, optional wireless IP, and PoE removes the requirements to install AC power to every camera. Facility upgrades are considered easier and less expensive. In a smaller configuration, network design and set-up is straightforward, while larger configurations require some technical skill.
“Failure to have a backup system in place is similar to driving around without car insurance,” Higgenbotham said. “The accident waiting to happen is a virus writer looking for a system to attack. Most corporations have mission-critical backup, but smaller groups are susceptible because they seem to be the last to put this in place. When nothing happens, this creates a false sense of security.”
Since many end users have jumped to the digital age of back-up recording, the use of tape drives is part of bygone days. Costs of using hard drives are comparable to similar products on the market, and they provide a more reliable and secure system. And, Internet connectivity allows an organization to backup information and data across town at nearly the same instance.
Digital backups also provide time and date stamps. If or when business continuity officials need to retrieve data, they have an exact location to begin their search. No matter how much capacity the drive may have, the stamp provides a mission-critical starting point. Among the clients using high-tech backup equipment, casinos come front and center due to the need to store the large amounts of data generated from the hundreds of cameras in place at a facility. A data cache also is important in the transportation industry, more particularly in an airport setting.
“With so much geopolitical unrest found around the world, having backup from an IP camera set-up and high-definition recordings means it is necessary to have this solution in place,” Higgenbotham said. “As far as prices are concerned, use of the technology has forced prices down. Installing 10 TB today can be found at record low price points.”
Disk Drive Workload
Data backup and storage is the workhorse for an IP camera system. Each camera typically writes to a separate file, creating a data stream of 128 to 256 blocks, although this varies depending upon levels of compression.
Usually transmitted over TCP, the creating data stream will start and stop due to optical activity on the camera and compression. These are written sequentially to a file.
On low-end surveillance systems, after drives A, B and C are filled, the cycle starts over, overwriting data on drive A. Typically 30 to 60 days of recent video is retained. Higher-end video surveillance systems store data on a RAID 5 hard drive.
Read and write caching is typically on. Buffering is typically enough to store two to four seconds. Drive errors can cause dropped frames, and dropped frames are acceptable in all but the highest-end casino and military surveillance systems.
The workload on the drive is non-continuous and random. Each camera writes to a separate file, in addition to cameras, human viewing creates more random requests and sequential updates of registry block, and updates of data table creates even more random requests.
As the IP video surveillance market expands, so grows basic surveillance for institutions, businesses, secure storage, malls, restaurants, and other locations. But what is known is video surveillance is expanding with computer applications integrated with surveillance cameras, including point of sale, manufacturing, shopping traffic, and street and highway traffic. There is an increasing need for sophisticated uses of surveillance and related data storage technologies, including the need for high-capacity drives.
The practical usability of data storage includes integrated applications and data protection, translating to a cost savings. It also points to unified disaster recovery solutions for multiple applications systems and provides fast application recovery with virtually no data loss, maximizing business continuity.