Vess A2000 SeriesNVR Storage Appliance with Milestone XProtect

Application Notes

Version 1.0

Contents

IntroduCtIon 1PurPose 2

scoPe 2

Audience 2

Overview Of surveillance technOlOgy 3

MilestOne vMs videO stOrage enhanceMent 4

summAry of milestone recommendAtion for legAcy setuP 4

milestone XProtect recommended toPology 4

Promise test-Proven AlternAtive 5

milestone XProtect / Promise A2000 nvr toPology 5

test comPArison highlights 6

disk PerformAnce 9

disk idle time 9

cOnclusiOn and field Practice 10

conclusion from milestone testing: 10

recommended XProtect configurAtions on A2000 series 11

IntroductIon

This paper challenges preconceptions about data storage and management for streaming and

archiving video and audio data. In particular, recent technological advancement in video data

management and RAID storage require system planners to rethink the conventional model for topology

design; a design that worked well given the limits of what is now outdated technology.

The pages that follow describe a surveillance system design using the Vess A2000 NVR Storage

Appliance with Milestone XProtect at its core. The system setup contrasts with the basic plan

recommended in Milestone XProtect documentation. The intent of this paper is to explain how the

Vess A2000/XProtect system setup using the PROMISE recommended arrangement will result in

significant cost savings, improved performance, simpler administration and increased reliability for

video surveillance systems administrators.

Practical scenarios and test data are presented to inform customers and enable them to understand

the advantages of using the XProtect-enabled Vess A2000 NVR server and storage system designed

expressly for video surveillance.

PROMISE Technologies is an alliance and solution partner with Milestone Video Management

Software. PROMISE brings years of experience in storage with particular expertise in design of

storage system intended for the surveillance field.

This document provides or references organized testing supporting data to make its case and to

encourage Surveillance VMS to integrate into PROMISE Surveillance Storage Server solution.

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Purpose

The purpose of these application notes are to provide testing and certification data and supporting

arguments for using a Milestone XProtect integrated Vess A2000 Surveillance Storage Server to

upgrade an existing video surveillance infrastructure or to be implemented as a core system for new

deployments.

Scope

This details the advantages of PROMISE Surveillance Storage Server solution with VMS integration

and the practical recommended guidance for integration.

Audience

This document is intended for project planners, system administrators, system integrators, technical

sales personnel, supporting engineers, or anyone interested in surveillance system topology design

and deployment.

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Overview of surveillance technology

There have been significant technological improvements for the individual components of video

surveillance systems, better cameras and networking devices for example. But when it comes to

planning, designing and operating a large scale system, the basic topology has remained unchanged

for many years.

The major components of a conventional video surveillance system are:

1. Cameras

2. Video Management Software

3. Video analytics

4. Recording server

5. Storage

Topology planning and system management are further complicated by the fact that each component

is in itself a complex system. The goal of creating the Vess A2000 Series is to simplify planning,

deployment and management of a large scale surveillance system while simultaneously improving

performance, enabling scalability and providing high availability data storage in a single device.

Additional benefits include stability, reliability and seamless integration with Milestone VMS.

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Milestone VMS Video Storage Enhancement

Storing continuous video streams, often from hundreds of cameras, presents storage management

challenges that are unique to video surveillance. As a cost saving measure, Milestone VMS employs

a storage architecture specifically designed for efficient storage of multiple real-time video streams.

One of Milestone innovations is multistage archiving for video and audio data that must be stored for

a long period.

Summary of Milestone recommendation for legacy setup

For RAID storage, the recommended Milestone arrangement for multistage archiving uses two RAID

volumes, one for the live database (RAID 1), and another for the archive database (RAID 5 or RAID

6). The higher performance RAID is preferred for the live database because RAID 5 arrays typically

have had a large overhead that degrades performance.

Milestone recommends two separate volumes; a RAID 1 volume for the LiveDB and a RAID 5 or 6

volume for the Archive.

Milestone XProtect recommended topology

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PROMISE test-proven alternative

The PROMISE A2000 has been tested and certified by Milestone using a single RAID 5 array to

produce better performance, stability and reliability than the recommended arrangement using two

separate RAID arrays.

The advantages of using a single high-performance RAID 5 (or RAID 6) array are:

• Redundancy to protect against data loss in the event of an HDD failure

• Performance optimized for multiple live data streams, recording, playback as well as archiving.

• Cost Saving

The test environment was created to compare the performance of the Vess A2000 against the

conventional server plus RAID HBAs surveillance setup. For surveillance systems with a large camera

count, the test data clearly demonstrate a performance advantage for the Vess A2000 with a single

RAID 5.

The PROMISE/Milestone solution delivers better performance with a single RAID 5 volume for both

LiveDB and Archive using XProtect.

Milestone XProtect / PROMISE A2000 NVR topology

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Test comparison highlights

• As an experimental control for the comparison, the Vess A2600 was tested using the Milestone

recommendation of using separate volumes for LiveDB and the Archive.

• The single volume method recommended by PROMISE proved to be the best setup for optimal

performance for the highest number of cameras.

Milestone recommended setuprecording server and two RAID volumes on storage system

Vess A2600

StorageLiveDB 2xSAS@R0 2xSAS@R1 4xSAS@R10 2xSATA@R1 15xSATA@R5

single RAID volumeArchive 13xSATA@R5 13xSATA@R5 11xSATA@R5 13xSATA@R5

Camera*

Maximum Number 30 25 30 35 90

Motion Detection enabled

Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes

Recording setting H264/Q60/30FPS/1280x720/

* Milestone software settings for cameras configured for maximum performance for all setups.

Test comparison setup

The Milestone recommendation using two separate volumes - one for live database and another for

archiving - operates under the assumption that a RAID 5 or RAID 6 volume has too much overhead

to satisfy performance requirements for the live database. PROMISE RAID performance has made

this restriction obsolete. PROMISE RAID achieved demonstrably better performance results than the

Milestone recommendation using a different RAID HBA and a server.

Milestone recommends two SAS 10k rpm HDDs in a RAID 0 or RAID 1. The Vess A2000 with a 15

disk RAID 5 (using HDDs of the same specifications) performed significantly better. The RAID 0 setup

lacks redundancy, while the RAID 1 suffers from lower performance. In contrast, the Vess A2000

demonstrates higher throughput performance, solid system stability and excellent data reliability.

See the table below for comparison of the competing storage setups.

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Milestone recommended setuprecording server and two RAID volumes on storage

system

Promisesingle RAID volume

VessA2200 VessA2600

SetupLiveDB 2xSAS@R0 2xSAS@R1 4xSAS@R10

6xSATA@R5 15xSATA@R5Archive 13xSATA@R5 13xSATA@R5 11xSATA@R5

Net RPMLiveDB 20k (2x10k) 10k (1x10k) 20k (2x10k)

36k (5x7.2k) 100.8k (14x7.2k)

Archive 93.6k (13x7.2k) 93.6k (13x7.2k) 79.2k (11x7.2k)

RedundancyLiveDB No Yes Yes Yes Yes

Archive Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes

Required components

2 SAS HDD

13 SATA HDD

RAID HBA

2 SAS HDD

13 SATA HDD

RAID HBA

4 SAS HDD

11 SATA HDD

RAID HBA

6 SATA HDD 16 SATA HDD

Cost Medium Medium High Low Medium-low

Relative cost comparison

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Now we need to determine how large to make the live database for the single RAID 5 volume.

Milestone recommends 2 TB when configuring the VMS for hourly archiving.

The formula used to determine the recommended size of the LiveDB is to multiply all of the following:

• Camerabitrate

• FPS

• Retentiontime

• 1.1(10%overhead)

• 2(Previous+CurrentHour)

• MaximumCameraCapability

So for a recommended LiveDB of 2TB, the values are:

15Mbpsx30fpsx1.1x2x124*

*124/hr using the highest throughput consumption ( H264 / 30FPS / 1280x720 )

The 2TB LiveDB size is chosen to work with all the various camera video configurations in an

archive updated hourly from the Vess A2000.

Here are also testing data available to supports compare to two enterprise SAS 10k rpm HDD in

terms of the disk performance index. As for reliability in terms of redundancy, it is straight forward w/o

supporting testing data required.

Test Configurations

Software Milestone Corporate 2013R2_6.1a

Camera jpeg 640x480 25 FPS 30%

Server / Physical Disks Vess A2600: 15 x WDC WD1001FAES (SATA 7200 rpm)

Test-Company: 2 x Fujitsu MBA3073RC (SAS 150000 rpm)RAID configuration Vess A2600: PROMISE embedded RAID 5

Test-company: Test-company RAID card

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Disk performance

Vess A2600 single RAID 5 in 7200 rpm SATA versus

“H-company server + L-company RAID card + 10k rpm SAS HDDs in two disk RAID1”

The testing data just echo 64KB allocation size in disk formatting has better camera number

supported than 4KB.

Disk Idle time

The testing data also support that A2600 has better disk idle time and better disk stability

Disk idles time and Disk write stability where Vess A2600 compare to “H-company server+ L-company

RAID card + 10k rpm SAS HDDs” in same testing configuration to milestone storage architecture. Disk

write throughput in color RED where disk idle in color Black.

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Conclusion and Field PracticeTesting conducting by Milestone and PROMISE demonstrate better performance throughput using

a single PROMISE RAID volume with redundancy for the live database and archive compared to the

conventional method of using separate volumes for each. The lab testing for Milestone was conducted

by Connex International, a subsidiary of Milestone.

Conclusion from Milestone testing:

The following conclusion is copied from the performance test conducted by a Milestone subsidiary.

The Promise Technologies VESS A2000 series NVRs are certified hardware solutions for use with the Milestone XProtect VMS. The A2200 and the A2600 both easily supported the benchmark video data throughput levels as recommended by the Milestone Server and Storage Calculator. The calculator indicates that the A2200 NVR should support 7 cameras at the benchmark level, and it was able to support a maximum of 55 cameras, while the calculator indicated that the A2600 should support 19 cameras and it was able to support a maximum of 90 cameras. In extended performance testing, it was further determined that the NVRs can support up to four times the number of cameras as recommended by the calculator.

Other test findings include hard disk configuration best practices and XProtect Recording Server configuration modifications. The recommended hard disk and RAID configuration for the A2000 NVR is to create one large RAID 5 volume using as many of the physical disks as possible. Video recording performance will be as efficient as possible when the live video database and the archive database are both located on this single, large, logical disk volume. Additionally the thread priority and frame queue variables in the Recording Server configuration file should be modified to make the archive events as efficient as possible.

Integrators and end users should have confidence when building video security and surveillance systems which include the XProtect VMS and the Promise Technologies VESS A2000 NVR products. These solutions are certified, and can be used to support XProtect Recording Servers which are recording between 1 and 90 cameras at megapixel resolution. Larger systems could be built using multiple NVRs and multiple Recording Servers. The XProtect and Promise architecture is highly scalable when multiple NVRs are included, and could support any size system.

Click here to see the entire report.

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Vess A2000 NVR Storage Appliance Promise Technologies

Recommended XProtect configurations on A2000 series

The configuration settings below are strongly recommended for a Vess A2000 with Milestone

XProtect system setup:

• Install Milestone XProtect onto OS drive, and assign video archive to RAID arrays

• Use single array either in RAID5 or RAID6 (RAID5 recommended)

• Create one or two file system volumes within one single array

• Assign video archive to RAID arrays for performance and reliability consideration

• LiveDB: Assign 2TB volume from RAID array to XProtect as LiveDB

• Use with onboard storage: LiveDB either stays in the same volume or a separate volume under

the same single RAID array.

• Use with external storage: LiveDB goes to onboard local storage, the Vess A2000 series, and

Archive goes to external storage system the Vess R2000 series.

Storage configurations

• It is highly recommend to use 64KB disk formatting allocation size

• It is also highly recommended to assign LiveDB and Archive to use the same array either in one

volume or two volumes.

• RAID configurations

This applies to all PROMISE products including recording server the Vess A2000 sureveillance

storage appliance series, and external RAID storage subsystem the Vess R2000 and VTrak series

used with Milestone XProtect for surveillance video recording.

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