Meet the mass storage technology breakthrough in the era of high-definition

Digital video surveillance involves the collection, storage, and use of huge amounts of data. Therefore, a high-performance video surveillance system must have a high-performance data storage system, which relates to data management efficiency, data security, and data utilization efficiency. The increasingly high-definition monitoring era requires a powerful and reliable storage platform. In the process of monitoring network and integration, storage technology must also constantly adapt to the application characteristics of security monitoring. The integration of storage technology and monitoring technology has become a general trend.

As an important security measure, video surveillance technology is becoming more and more popular. With the development of video surveillance technology, all-digital network video surveillance systems have gradually replaced the traditional analog surveillance systems as the mainstream of video surveillance systems. The application of digital monitoring is becoming more and more extensive and the scale is becoming larger. The storage method used to store digital video information has gradually become the focus of manufacturers and users.

To achieve the independent data management goals of the storage system, there are several requirements for the characteristics of the storage system, which are listed in order of importance:

1, reliability. Concentrating the data into the storage system will inevitably impose higher requirements on the reliability of the system equipment. At the same time, data backup and disaster recovery systems need to be established to improve data security.

2, scalability. The uncertainty of business development and the rapid expansion of data in the Internet era will inevitably require high scalability for storage systems that are independent of the computing system. This scalability is not simply a capacity expansion but must also include data processing capabilities, data exchange bandwidth, and extensions to data management capabilities.

3, compatibility. Although the storage system has been separated from the computing system, the way the data is used by the host system today is still based on the file system and database system. To meet the data I/O requirements of various host systems, the storage system must be compatible with various operating systems, file systems, database systems, and other traditional data management methods.

4, manageability. It supports various mainstream management protocols and management architectures, and can be unifiedly managed and centrally managed with various devices such as networks and computers, and can implement convenient and unified equipment and data management functions in various complex environments.

5, performance. Bandwidth, IO Per Second (IO operations per second), OPS (Operations Per Second), ORT (Overall Response Time, etc.) Performance service. High-end systems should also be able to dynamically expand and adjust system performance.

6, function. Various data management functions such as data migration, data distribution, data version management, data replication, and online expansion.

Three basic types of network storage technology With the rapid development of the security market and continuous technological innovation, video surveillance technology is also moving toward high-definition, digital, network, and intelligent. The increase of picture quality and the increase of video lines will increase the storage capacity of video surveillance systems. Storage devices are becoming the decisive factor in the future development of network video surveillance.

Network storage technology is a generic network term for data storage. There are three types of network storage architectures: Direct Attached Storage (DAS), Network Attached Storage (NAS), and Storage Area Network (SAN).

Direct Attached Storage (DAS)

Directly connects the DAS storage device to the back end of the server to extend the storage capacity of the application server. It has the lowest expansion cost and simple physical connection. However, there are also problems with storage resources belonging to one or several servers, low resource utilization, and poor subsequent expansion. DAS is more suitable for application scenarios where the storage system has a simple and relatively fixed structure, such as a storage server that requires a stable storage space to expand its storage space.

Network Attachment Storage (NAS)

Through the network file system, file-level networked storage is built, and direct data transmission between a client host (such as a coding device in a monitoring system) and a NAS network device is realized. Because of its high compatibility and simple configuration and maintenance, NAS is suitable for application scenarios such as file sharing and small-scale system storage.

Storage Area Network (SAN)

It is a storage architecture that connects storage devices and application servers over a network. This network is dedicated to access between the host (such as the encoding device or recording management server in the surveillance system) and the storage device. When there are data access requirements, data can be transferred between the host and back-end storage devices at high speed over the storage area network. According to the different transmission protocols, it can be divided into FC SAN and IP SAN. The SAN storage method has centralized management of storage resources, convenient expansion, high data block-level transmission efficiency, and high compatibility. In general, its technical complexity is high, and system construction and maintenance costs are also high. Because the SAN system regards the storage space of a storage device as a physical hard disk to be managed by the host, the reliability of the storage and transmission network and the difference of the host file system greatly affect the reliability of the storage system. SAN storage solutions, due to their technological leadership, are suitable for building large-scale storage systems for large-scale data storage and application services.

Network storage systems (including storage servers and storage devices) are required for high definition image recording of high definition network cameras. Among them, the IP SAN method adopts the Ethernet transmission of the IP architecture on the one hand, and has good scalability, sharing, and low application cost for apportionment. It is one of the technologies that are currently adopted for large and medium-sized centralized monitoring and storage. On the other hand, the mainstream data hard drives used in IT have reached terabytes or more, and 2TB of data drives have gradually entered everyone's sights (calculated at an hourly data volume of 1G, and 1TB of data drives can store approximately 720p of video images.) Hours or 1000 cameras video recording data for 1 hour).

These three types of storage technologies, each storage system has its own characteristics, as shown in the following table:

Mass Storage Solutions With the promotion and application of high-definition video, IP-based video storage mass storage solutions have gradually surfaced. There are mainly the following modes for video surveillance mass storage:

Centralized management of distributed storage For large-scale urban networked monitoring systems, multiple levels of monitoring center systems are usually used. Each primary monitoring center manages and stores monitoring resources within its jurisdiction. Therefore, distributed storage centralized management is used. The model is constructed, which helps reduce the pressure on the network and at the same time distributes equipment resources and helps the strategic department to grasp more resources and information. The first-level monitoring center uniformly manages all video resources and video files, and the secondary and tertiary monitoring centers can distribute and browse videos.

Centralized storage distributed management For medium and small-scale networked monitoring systems with only one centralized management center, such as county/prefecture-level cities, a large city public security bureau, and a large-scale industrial and mining enterprise, the data is generally stored centrally in the primary monitoring center, and other grassroots monitoring The sub-control client of the central installation system platform browses and manages some front-ends. In this case, the storage servers are centrally placed in the primary monitoring center, and a virtual storage pool of unlimited capacity is formed through the virtual volumes and the grid storage technology, so that the storage extension is transparent to the users.

Large-scale hybrid storage The so-called hybrid storage solution is a combination of the above two methods, based on distributed storage, and at the same time set up a network storage server in the primary monitoring center. Short-term data is temporarily stored in the network storage server of the primary monitoring center, and long-term data is stored in the network storage server of the primary monitoring center. The video data of important monitoring points is not only stored in the network storage server of the primary monitoring center, but also transmitted to the network storage server of the primary monitoring center in real time as a backup. A backup plan is established at the primary monitoring center, and the video files that exceed the specified time are backed up to the corresponding directory on the network storage server using the automatic backup method.

The application of monitoring storage technology will become more and more obvious with the combination of security monitoring technology and user needs. During the integration and implementation of security monitoring products, storage technology must continue to adapt to the security monitoring application characteristics, and constantly improve their own, storage products and The integration of security monitoring technology is already a general trend. In addition to the several types of network storage mentioned above, a concept called "cloud storage" began to gradually enter the monitoring industry, which shows the development trend of the integration of storage and monitoring.

It is understood that cloud storage can achieve full virtualization of storage, greatly simplifying application links, saving customers' construction costs, and providing stronger storage and sharing capabilities. All devices in cloud storage are completely transparent to users. Any authorized user anywhere can connect to cloud storage through an access line for spatial and data access. Users do not need to care about the storage device model, quantity, network structure, storage protocol, application interface, etc. The operation is simple and transparent.

Monitoring the emergence of cloud storage, breaking through the performance and capacity bottlenecks of traditional storage methods, enabling cloud storage providers to connect a large number of different types of storage devices in the network to form exceptionally powerful storage capabilities and achieve linear expansion of performance and capacity. It is possible to store large amounts of data, allowing companies to have the storage capacity equivalent to a whole piece of cloud and successfully solve the storage problem.

As a new business model, cloud storage is gradually changing the way traditional storage is provided and used. With the help of the cloud storage services provided by the cloud conference manufacturers, enterprises are expected to get rid of huge investments in hardware storage devices, reduce manpower expenditure on system maintenance, save operating costs, and enhance the competitiveness of enterprises. By then, users can pay a small amount of storage costs, can put large-capacity data in the "cloud", and set the relevant permissions as needed, anytime, anywhere shared to the need to share personnel, while reducing data transmission time, with the help of manufacturers As an excellent encryption technology, it avoids the accidents such as packet loss and leakage caused by the transmission process, and fully guarantees the security of data.