How it's Done

64 Channel, D1 Real Time DVR w/ 52 Terabytes of Storage? How can it be?

What we do is really fairly straight forward - We start with the enclosure because it will determine everything else that will follow.

We use an ATX Footprint two 4U Rack Enclosures. Each one is Heavy, very nearly 100 Lbs with NOTHING in it. The box has plenty of room inside for a full blown computer system with all the horsepower we can give it. We put in two power supplies so if one fails, the other keeps the system running. We load it up with lots of RAM which is the real KEY to making the system perform, a High Performance Processor and an overkill Video Card to make SURE what you want is what you see. The issue here is pretty simple...EVERYTHING in the system HAS to be TOP OF THE LINE. If you have a fast processor with a slow Motherboard (FSB), you kill the performance. The Entire system is only as fast as the SLOWEST component....so there can't be any slow components. Overkill is the order of the day. TRIPLE REDUNDANT Power Supplies are standard.

Next comes the storage. Each Enclosure has 24 Hot Swap Bays for Hard Drives and Two Hard Mount Locations. Today we can put 1.0 Terabyte Hard Drives (SATA - 300) in there...up to 26 of them in each of the boxes ( AND - Using the X-Store 48 Dual Drive External Hot Swap Boxes, we can now STACK these up to 120 TB! ). These drives are SATA Drives with 16 Mb of cache on each one. Additionally, we can add two more hard drives in a hard mount. That gives us up to 120TB of Storage. As hard drive sizes continue to grow, our storage capability increases. What was literally out of reach for many organizations just a year or so ago, is easy to attain today. We also have 8 Drive, 12 Drive and 16 Drive Enclosures available.

Next comes the heart and soul of the system....the DVR Cards. We use a Hardware Compression (H.264) System that allows us to stack DVR Cards. Each board is capable of 8 D1 Channels at 30 FPS, so we put a total of EIGHT cards in there (4 in each box) This gives us a total of 64 Channels of Video and a corresponding 64 channels of audio with EVERY CHANNEL recording at full D1 (704x480) at REAL TIME 30 FPS.

Using the H.274 Client Software, the two DVR's appear as ONE on ONE Screen and let's you manage and administrate the systems as if they were actually ONE DVR.

Now we can connect any size monitor to the system, add a keyboard and a mouse and we're operational. Hook up your cameras, start up Windows XP PRO, load the DVR Software and we're watching 64 video screens on one monitor. Click a screen and blow the camera up to full screen, playback video, whatever you wish.

More Software Screenshots: (click to enlarge)

Once you've attached the DVR to the Internet or a LAN, you can easily watch these cameras from any remote location using the WAN or the Internet. Via the Internet you can use the included Secure Client Software or a simple Web Browser - Your choice. You can choose to allow viewers to watch the cameras you want them to see, control their access, whatever you wish. You can sit on the beach in the Bahamas with a wireless laptop, and watch your place of business.

The System comes with a DVD Burner for Backup, or you can offload to your network, a USB or Firewire Device, or choose one or more of your onboard Hard Drives for this purpose. You can even use an offsite video storage farm or array. We build these as well.

Using the included Remote Manager, you can stack these systems and watch 256 Cameras from one location. Central Monitoring at it's very best!

It's really pretty simple. Everyone TRIES to make it Rocket Science, but it's not. Let us help you build one.

Some Actual Photos of a System Built (Click to Enlarge)