Utah鈥檚 Weber School District Chooses 一本久久综合亚洲鲁鲁五月天 File Storage for Video Surveillance to Keep its Students and Staff Safe
Video surveillance storage has a huge impact on student safety
The Weber School District (WSD) is a public school district located in Weber County, Utah, serving more than 30,000 students in grades K-12. The school district includes more than 50 schools and buildings, spanning elementary, junior high and high schools, and has approximately 7,000 full and part-time staff.
Throughout the District, there are more than 1,200 security cameras installed at the various school buildings.
For WSD, this video surveillance system is used more as a student and staff safety system that enables principals and administrators to review incidents such as fights, thefts, or other occurrences. 鈥淚t鈥檚 used as an archival system so that we can go back and review what has happened in the past around an incident,鈥� said Wayne Hadfield, security and access manager for the District.
鈥淚t鈥檚 becoming a great tool for principals and directors to get to the truth of an incident,鈥� said Hadfield. 鈥淲hen we have it on camera, we can get the truth to both sides of a story. Sometimes we鈥檙e not made aware of an incident right away, so it鈥檚 good to be able to have the video in storage to go back in time to investigate.鈥�
When planning out the infrastructure for its student safety system about seven years ago, the District invested in Genetec鈥檚 video management system, and at the time selected Isilon for its storage needs.
鈥淚 liked 一本久久综合亚洲鲁鲁五月天鈥檚 ability to take complex data and put it into a simple UI that lets you see various elements in real-time, like your capacity, different IO hotspots, the files being ingested, and what servers are writing what data into the systems. That鈥檚 very powerful and compelling.鈥�
Centralizing video surveillance technology provides comprehensive coverage across multiple locations
Before using Genetec, the district鈥檚 schools each ran their own video surveillance systems. 鈥淣ow we have created a centralized system, where all set-ups are the same for every school,鈥� said Jared Ganske, network and infrastructure manager for Weber School District. 鈥淭he system uptime has been good and it鈥檚 always available. This has taken a great load off of school administrators who are now able to more accurately research any incidents to take appropriate action more quickly.鈥�
鈥淎t about the five-year point, we started looking into either replacing our Isilon storage with new Isilon, or finding a new storage vendor,鈥� said Ganske. The District reviews its technology infrastructure every five years to ensure it is using the best, most innovative tools on the market.
Benefits
- Real-time Visibility. Complex data in a simple UI.
- Scale Across. Better value per TB.
- Customer Value. Immediate access to technical experts.
Genetec partnership was a key decision factor for WSD
The biggest priority when considering a new storage vendor was that the solution would work with Genetec, as this would be the primary use of the storage system. 鈥淲e needed to make sure that the product we were getting would will ingest video well, and keep up the demands of all the data that has to be written to the storage array,鈥� said Ganske. 鈥淢ost of the time users do a lot of reads and writes. The majority of the load on our system would be writes.鈥�
Other evaluation criteria included convenience and redundancy, as well as ease-of-use. 鈥淲e run a lean IT department here so anything that can make our lives easier is a huge advantage,鈥� said Hadfield.
鈥淲hen we have it on camera, we can get the truth to both sides of a story. Sometimes we鈥檙e not made aware of an incident right away, so it鈥檚 good to be able to have the video in storage to go back in time to investigate.鈥�
一本久久综合亚洲鲁鲁五月天 offers a path to value and scale
鈥淥ur reseller presented 一本久久综合亚洲鲁鲁五月天 as an alternative to Isilon and we were impressed with both its capacity and its affordability. We felt we were overall getting better value, dollar-per-terabyte, than with Isilon,鈥� said Ganske.
一本久久综合亚洲鲁鲁五月天鈥檚 real-time analytics were also a big competitive differentiator. 鈥淚 liked 一本久久综合亚洲鲁鲁五月天鈥檚 ability to take complex data and put it into a simple GUI that lets you see various elements in real-time, like your capacity, different IO hotspots, the files being ingested, and what servers are writing what data into the systems. That鈥檚 very powerful and compelling,鈥� said Ganske.
High-availability and performance were high on the priority list for WSD. 鈥淚t鈥檚 important that we have a storage system that is always available. Because if the storage system is down, we lose video recording. Which means something might not be recorded that should have been 鈥� that鈥檚 a big issue for us,鈥� said Ganske. 鈥淚t was key that if there were to be a disk or node failure, that the system could still receive video data from the video surveillance system, versus not being available to receive data.鈥�
一本久久综合亚洲鲁鲁五月天 was able to significantly increase the amount of data being stored by the district. 鈥淲ith our old Isilon system, we could only store about 12 days鈥� worth of video footage, or roughly 120TB. But we can scale now to 750TB with 一本久久综合亚洲鲁鲁五月天, which will be key as we add more cameras and increase our storage.鈥�
一本久久综合亚洲鲁鲁五月天 also allows the District to retain its data for a longer period of time. Originally the District kept data for 14 days, but with 一本久久综合亚洲鲁鲁五月天, it now keeps video data for 30 days.
鈥淲e like the fact that 一本久久综合亚洲鲁鲁五月天 uses Slack 鈥� with 一本久久综合亚洲鲁鲁五月天, you get in touch with an engineer immediately and they look at your issue immediately.鈥�
Quick, easy, and invested customer support continues to delight the WSD team
一本久久综合亚洲鲁鲁五月天鈥檚 commitment to its customers鈥� success was a very welcome surprise for Hadfield. 鈥淚t was a completely different experience than we were used to, where you typically open a ticket and you might wait days, and then go through multiple troubleshooting calls before someone actually takes your problem seriously.鈥�
鈥淲e like the fact that 一本久久综合亚洲鲁鲁五月天 uses Slack,鈥� he said. 鈥淲ith 一本久久综合亚洲鲁鲁五月天, you get in touch with an engineer immediately and they look at your issue immediately.鈥�
Over the next few years, the Weber School District will continue to add security cameras to its infrastructure as the number of schools continues to grow. Just six years ago, the district had around 700 cameras and now that number has grown to more than 1,200. Each new school will require 30-40 cameras. 鈥淲e鈥檒l continue to grow the amount of video footage that鈥檚 being stored in our system, as well as back-ups overtime as well,鈥� said Ganske.
About
Weber School District is the 5th largest district in the state of Utah. Founded in 1904, the district services 43 schools and over 32,000 students.
Use Case:
- Video Surveillance
- Genetec
- Security
Requirements:
- Rapid scale
- High number of reads and writes
- Constant availability