LASS

The challenge facing many users of video surveillance today is how to efficiently store the information captured by cameras which, despite being equipped with the latest compression formats, generate huge and growing volumes of data.

In addition to helping to detect any criminal activity, cameras can now also be used, for example, to capture operational and marketing information to provide a much broader range of benefits to a business. This is because advances in technology have made it possible to synchronise high definition video with audio, as well as metadata from processes, devices and sub-systems.

With camera resolutions continuing to increase, this can cause problems when there are many cameras in respect of the speed at which very large quantities of recorded video and associated data can be searched and reviewed. The robustness of the data storage is also a concern and particularly so when there is a requirement to retain video and data for a long period of time. For high security applications, this might be up to 180 days or even longer.

The problem with storing and managing large volumes of data

The storage requirements for video is very different to documents and that is why traditional file systems used in Windows based Video Management Software (VMS) can be slow to respond to image search requests. Equally, or perhaps more importantly, there is always the risk that a collection of data is corrupted or only partially written back to disk. This usually means that inconsistencies occur on the disk and this almost always results in a frustratingly lengthy ‘check-disk’ process taking place during a restart and valuable footage can be lost forever.

Wavestore’s Large Allocation Storage System (LASS) – the solution to the problem

To meet the challenge, Wavestore developed its proprietary LASS index system which has been designed to deliver the best in robust and reliable storage and to scale as technology evolves over time. The data needs not only to be stored reliably but it must also be possible to search and retrieve that data quickly and accurately. A unique feature of LASS is that every image in the storage volume is indexed, meaning that playing back video, even from the largest data-set is effectively instantaneous.

Highly effective for any storage size requirement, LASS will efficiently manage the storage of over 520 petabytes of video and data spread over up to 255 servers in a single group. To put this massive storage capability into context, the total size of Netflix’s entire collection of films and TV programs is currently estimated to be just 3.14 petabytes.

Peace of Mind

LASS carries out updates of all image and data indexes in an Atomic manner and this means data sets are either written back in their entirety, or not at all. This avoids the need for a ‘check disk’ phase and in the event of a power cut, for example, LASS will be recording up to the second that power is lost and immediately start recording again as soon as power is restored. Although rarely likely to occur, should there be disk degradation, the worst that could possibly happen is that a LASS block of data becomes invalid, which may result in the loss of a few seconds of recording. However, even this small potential risk of data loss can be avoided by utilising RAID.

Capabilities

LASS has been integrated with RAID logic and as such supports standard RAID5 and RAID6 (N+1 and N+2) as well as Wavestore’s own HyperRAID technology, providing up to N+5 redundancy. If required, it will also support the creation of logical drives from physical drives so that, for example, two 6TB drives will appear as one 12TB drive,  making the setting up of small and medium-sized systems very much quicker and simpler.

LASS also allows up to three video recording tracks to be recorded simultaneously, which can be to separate disks. For example, a high-resolution stream can be constantly recorded on-site for only a relatively short time, but a lower-resolution stream can be recorded remotely off-site for long term retention and security.

EcoStore™ Support

LASS enables Wavestore’s EcoStore™ hard drive management technology which offers significant real-world savings on the total cost of ownership of a video surveillance solution. This can automatically spin down hard drives which are not involved in the read-write process. Over 80% of the energy used by the hard drives can be saved using EcoStore, as well as reducing the wear and tear that those hard drives would be subject to from constant use.

Sounds Complicated?

Whilst it is true to say that LASS is a highly sophisticated storage solution, installers and system integrators do not need any specialist skills to deliver this highly efficient, robust and totally reliable video storage solution to their end-user clients. LASS is supplied as standard across all Wavestore VMS levels and does its job in the background without any specialist set-up or on-going maintenance required.

Wavestore’s WaveView Client is available for both Windows and Linux operating systems to manage and operate Wavestore’s VMS day-to-day. Activity such as exporting video is very simple, and exports are available in several popular formats, including AVI and MP4. All the benefits of LASS can be enjoyed without there being any specialist knowledge required in the day-to-day set-up and operation of the system.

Futureproof

LASS’ scalability makes it to a very large degree, futureproof, but Wavestore is committed to a continuous development programme which will see functionality added to LASS that reflects changing market requirements and takes advantage of new emerging technologies. With the intellectual property rights belonging to Wavestore, we will be able to add to LASS’ existing functionality to ensure it always facilitates lightning-fast searches of what may be very large amounts of stored images and continues to negate the possibility of data corruption or loss.