SecuriGuard
Tech, one of British Columbia’s largest and highly-respected
private security organizations, has selected the NEC Express5800/320Fd-MR Fault
Tolerant server to ensure high availability of its
security solutions provided to their customers in the UAE.
One of the key services Securiguard provides is an integrated security solution for CCTV (Closed Circuit TV / video-surveillance systems) and Access Control systems. In such systems, one or more levels of redundancy are extremely important and should be considered as part of the whole system architecture, so that surveillance is maintained in emergency situations. Periodically, a security audit is undertaken to help identify areas of high-risk or potential failure, leading to the creation of primary non-technical objectives of the intended security system. For each type of risk or threat, the necessary combination of video surveillance and other security systems, such as intrusion detection or access control, can be determined and then included in the design. The likely combination of modern security systems will require the implementation of a multi-service network in order to allow full communications between the various components.
Implementing video-surveillance and access control systems without redundancy risks compromising the security and integrity of the protected premises. This is why proposed video-based security systems should run continuously without any single point of failure in order to achieve high availability in any emergency situation making high availability architecture mandatory.
Initially, Securiguard considered running these applications on software-clustered servers. The cluster presented the technical support group with setup and failover issues in the case of hardware and software failure on the node. In addition, the software cluster required two copies of the operating system and applications, which also needed to be cluster-aware, making it far more complex and costly.
In order to implement a video-based security system, some issues may be specific to its installation but many are common throughout business continuity.
After several weeks of studying the alternative solutions on the market, Securiguard selected the NEC Express5800/320Fd-MR, Fault Tolerant (FT) Intel® based server. The NEC Fault Tolerant offers a simpler and more cost effective solution for high availability with none of the overhead costs associated with traditional server clustering, which is one of the most important elements in 24/7 system availability. The project took a few days to deploy by certified NEC engineers and now hosts all of the related software applications that are managing Securiguard’s network of security systems implemented on the customers’ premises.
