How to create a private cloud for video surveillance

8 years ago, clouds rapidly changed the world - advertising began vying to promise to connect any business to remote servers, storage in data centers and distributed computing resources. Today, large companies can not only migrate to virtual servers, but also run private clouds in their security perimeter.



Ivideon deploys and configures video surveillance systems anywhere, effectively providing customers with a “private turnkey cloud service”. And imagine: some of the solutions that customers perceive as our competitors are actually Ivideon under a different brand ... Today you will learn how it all works and how it benefits the business.

New Cloud Technologies

All modern cloud technologies originate from the last century. The downtime of the first expensive and powerful systems, occupying several rooms and requiring huge energy and human resources to work, hit hard on a budget. It was then that practice began to lease “computer time” and disk space. For this, remote terminals were used, and it is no exaggeration to say that their users have already worked with cloud services.



The term "cloud solutions" today refers to various services of remote storage and data processing provided to the user as an Internet service. They can be classified as follows: public, personal and hybrid. Ivideon uses all models. You already know everything about ordinary clouds (we hope) - let’s dwell on “exotic” solutions: Private Cloud (PC), White Label and Enterprise Cloud (EC).

Ivideon private cloud

Cloud product Private Cloud is chosen by corporations and banks. There are many companies that, for various reasons (internal security requirements, the availability of private data centers), want to completely transfer the functionality of Ivideon to their own facilities.



The PC solution is just that version of the Ivideon product in which all servers (control, archive and streaming) are located at the customer’s facilities. The solution is intended solely for internal use by the end customer.



For Ivideon Private Cloud, we have identified two connection models:

• the request is exclusively for the software, that is, the customers take over the installation, installation and maintenance of the remaining components of the system (cameras, servers, switching infrastructure);
• full hardware and software complex, turnkey turnkey video surveillance system; customers buy a fully turnkey system, including software, server hardware, cameras, as well as installation, configuration and administration work.

Private Cloud is the highest degree of automation with which the business does not depend on a cloud provider, is not limited by the width of the Internet channel, does not pay for traffic, monitors the encryption process itself and achieves complete autonomy in a secret bunker.



Thanks to the private cloud, you can additionally get several useful features:

• data storage on your own server or in your data center;
• the ability to copy and quickly restore configurations;
• multi-level data backup, stable fault-tolerant system.

The private cloud application formula is actually unlimited. There are companies that use PCs to control their "daughters" and branches - dozens, hundreds and thousands of objects operate within a giant closed network. PC owners centrally manage all surveillance objects and can add an unlimited number of cameras and users to the system.



Of course, a private cloud is more difficult to administer - the local IT service takes care of a secure update of all network servers with critical patches. The fate of the service depends on their professionalism - to ask, in which case, you will have to do it yourself. However, this minus is leveled - Ivideon can provide such services additionally.

White Label Affiliate Program

A cloud affiliate program is offered to those who want their logo and corporate colors to appear in their personal account and mobile applications - these can be telecom operators, Internet providers, security system providers and other companies.



As part of the program, our partners provide cloud-based video surveillance services on their own, both using the finished Ivideon product and creating their own conditions for customers. Partners form individual and group rates for their customers, and maintain the service using their own technical resources.



On WL, you can adaptively control video streams to reduce the load on the operator’s channels, and use triple redundancy of data and communication channels to ensure a high level of reliability.



A system under its own brand is a turnkey solution where Ivideon provides software, a branded service shell, equipment and marketing materials. Next, a provider, operator or Internet service provider that has never been involved in video surveillance, itself becomes a cloud service provider.



The quality of services, the main Ivideon solution is no different from WL, but label owners can offer customers almost any tariff, including services that we don’t have and never will. This flexible interaction model helps to give access to cloud-based video surveillance even for those who have never been interested in Ivideon.

Enterprise cloud

A rarely used server product in which you can locally host storage and streaming servers. At the same time, the management servers that are part of the EU remain on our side.



In the EU, the following servers are used at client facilities:

• storage server - a type of Private Cloud servers that receive video from connected cameras, broadcast this video to clients and record it in the archive;
• streaming server - a type of Private Cloud servers that receive video from connected cameras, broadcast this video to clients and do not record it in the archive.

Private Cloud Iron

An ordinary Ivideon user just needs to download a mobile application or install Ivideon Server or Client on almost any PC, but the owner of his own cloud, in addition to our software, will require serious hardware resources. This is the typical configuration of a storage server serving 80 cameras with a bitrate of 1 Mbit / s, setting 30% movement in the frame and with an archive depth of 30 days:



Processor: Intel Xeon E1230v5

Memory: 16 GB

Drives: four 4TB SATA 7200

Network: 100 Mbps.

Size: 1U



Sample hardware configuration for a streaming server for 2,000 cameras and 100-500 active video views:



Processor: Intel Xeon E1230v5

Memory: 32 GB

Disks: two 1TB SATA 7200

Network: 1000 Mbps.

Size: 1U



Note that the traffic between the storage, streaming and management servers is approximately 5% of the video streams from the cameras.



For Private Cloud to work correctly, at least three management servers must be placed on the customer’s site. Even if you use only one camera, you need three management servers.



Typical configuration of management servers:



Size: 1 / 2U with a "basket" of 8 disk bays

Processor: two 12-core (e.g. E5-2650v4)

Memory: 128 GB (64 GB per processor)



Disks:

• four SATA 6G eMLC NAND Enterprise SSDs of 480 GB each (raid-10 for the database);
• two 2 TB SATA / SAS (for non-critical data, such as logs and backups);
• RAID controller: hardware that supports RAID-10.

Network: 1 Gbps.



Such a cluster of three servers is able to serve 10 thousand customers. If this is not enough, then add three more similar servers to which you can transfer the databases in the archive. In this case, it is easy to serve 20-30 thousand customers. It is permissible to increase the number of servers further - the system scales depending on the tasks.



To ensure the fault tolerance of the service, the number of servers will have to be doubled. Preservation of records is ensured by duplication at the archive server level.



If you need to access the footage from cameras through a web portal, then a separate server will also be required for its operation. The load on it will vary depending on the type of calls - watching a video in a browser or requesting an API.



We recommend the following web server configuration:

• dual core processor;
• 8 GB RAM = 30 rps (the fattest);
• SSDs from 400 GB;
• LAN 100 Mbps. or 1 Gbit / s.

The world of one cloud

Perhaps in the future everyone will merge in one virtual cloud (on Amazon servers), but the world will not know about it, because the number of cloud service providers will not decrease, but even grow. A distinctive feature of Private Cloud, Enterprise Cloud and White Label is privacy. According to the NDA, we cannot name clients and disclose their server configurations.



Owners of private clouds, having drawn an invisible line between themselves and our brand, can do anything :) as part of the common good, of course. Your design, your tariffs, your usage patterns.



There are several limitations: you cannot change the basic architecture of the service, after incorrect work on which there is a chance to get a pumpkin instead of a carriage; It is forbidden to copy the source code and try to apply the code somewhere else besides our cloud.



To solve simple tasks at the “do not touch” level, we attract technical support, but often this is not enough, therefore, in close cooperation with clients of private clouds, a development team operates. Some functions that were later introduced into the common service, once appeared as add-ons developed at the request of such customers.



Contact for contact if you want to know more about the conditions for connecting Private Cloud and other Ivideon business opportunities.