In the surveillance world, video storage needs are growing rapidly due to the proliferation of cameras, increased retention requirements, and higher resolution recordings. This is why large organizations in particular need to be aware of the storage burden they are taking on and how best to manage it. If the cost of storage exceeds the value realized by storing the video, it gets thrown away. Faced with expanding storage needs, leveraging on-site, centralized storage alone is simply inefficient. It’s becoming complex, burdensome, and expensive.

Centralized storage requires perpetual maintenance such as managing software releases, patches, and bug fixes. It also requires long-term capacity and performance planning based on regular technology refresh cycles. Increasingly, security organizations and businesses are beginning to adopt cloud storage as a way to reduce video storage complexity and costs. As they do so, one of the main obstacles that they face is converting the file-based format to a cloud object storage format. AWS’s S3 API has quickly become the standard protocol for accessing cloud services. Many Video Management Software (VMS) applications, servers, and storage devices lack a native S3 API interface to cloud storage, leaving surveillance teams unable to access cloud storage services.

Videonetics’ Storage-Friendly Intelligent VMS

The proliferation of surveillance video has necessitated a diversity of storage options. Footage may rest on different mediums and in different locations depending on retention and compliance standards. For example, the storage journey for a piece of video may be placed on local devices for 30 days and then spend 90 days in the cloud before deletion. Additionally, the video segments may be categorized based on its criticality levels, and users should have a choice to decide replication of video data to the Cloud storage based on its criticality levels. However, many VMS vendors lack public cloud support as a built-in feature, making it difficult for enterprises to take advantage of the cloud’s cost and capacity benefits.

Videonetics solves this problem. Their Intelligent VMS 3.0 has a multi-layered approach to storage and supports multi-layer storage architecture where video files can be stored at multiple levels depending on the criticality and the required aging of recordings, including the cloud. IVMS 3.0 natively supports S3 protocol, allowing for instant transfers of video files to Wasabi directly within the application.

IVMS 3.0 uses its intelligent software to optimize surveillance storage. The increase in high-resolution cameras has made surveillance video files even larger. To combat this, IVMS 3.0 provides options for compression, frame-rate, and resolution when storing footage. Reducing these settings shrinks these files into more manageable sizes. For example, users can save footage in high resolutions for the first 30 days and a second copy in lower quality in the cloud. These options allow for greater flexibility in storage and video file management while respecting compliance and retention standards.

Moving “Cold Video Files” To the Cloud

Upon its creation, video surveillance files are considered hot. Hot video files are active and are usually accessed by VMS, analytics and other applications. If video files haven’t been accessed in the last 90 days, or it is not tagged as ‘critical’ due to its association with some incidents, it cools very rapidly and the probability of it being accessed drops dramatically. 75 to 90 percent of video files are cold and consume primary storage capacity on-site. With IVMS’s seamless S3 integration, video files can be instantly moved to the cloud when it is required.

IVMS and Cloud Storage for Video File Security

Keeping surveillance video safe is every VMS’ number one concern. IVMS 3.0 has multi-factor authentication, at-rest encryption, and other security features to ensure your video remains safe. Utilizing Wasabi cloud storage can also increase your data security. Storing video files in the Wasabi cloud decreases your risk of video loss in the event of a disaster and also reduces risk of cyber threats such as ransomware. Wasabi is deployed in fully secure and redundant data centers that are certified for SOC-2 and ISO 27001 compliance. The service is architected in accordance with industry-best security models and design practices. Wasabi supports comprehensive user authentication and access control mechanisms and strong data-at-rest encryption to safeguard stored video. In addition, all communications with Wasabi are transmitted over SSL (HTTPS) to protect video files in transit.
Wasabi provides eleven nines (99.999999999%) of object durability, protecting video recordings against disk failures and media errors. Video files are encrypted at rest and in motion with integrity checks every 90 days. Optional immutability is available on a per-storage bucket to protect against accidental or malicious deletions or modifications. An immutable object cannot be deleted or modified by anyone—including Wasabi—ensuring video footage is never altered or destroyed.

Wasabi + Videonetics IVMS 3.0 Solution

Wasabi Hot Cloud Storage Delivers Breakthrough Economics and Performance

Wasabi is the hot cloud storage company delivering low-cost, fast and reliable cloud storage on-demand. Wasabi’s solution is 80% less expensive and is faster than first-generation cloud vendors. Wasabi hot cloud storage is designed with eleven nines (99.999999999%) of object durability and immutability that guarantees stored objects cannot be deleted or modified by anyone. Not only is Wasabi 80% less expensive to store video recordings than traditional cloud providers, but there are also no fees for egress or API requests. Wasabi keeps all files “hot” so it can be accessed in milliseconds. All Videonetics and Wasabi customers can treat their video files as hot, so they can shorten upload windows and quickly access their video files for faster retrieval times.

About Videonetics

Videonetics’s Unified Video Computing Platform helps you make sense of surveillance, by providing you with an end-to-end solution for a wide range of applications. The platform is powered by our Artificial Intelligence and Deep Learning engine, which is trained on humongous data sets, making our solutions incredibly robust and smart. All our products and solutions are integrated yet modular, ONVIF compliant, OS and hardware agnostic, scalable and interoperable. Videonetics has been ranked #1 Video Management Software provider in India, and among the top 5 in Asia (IHS/Informa Tech Research). We remain driven by innovation, and committed to making the world a safer, smarter, happier place.