Securiguard Security Services choose NEC Fault Tolerant for cost effectiveness and high availability services
New servers to support CCTV and Access Control systems
SecuriGuard Tech, one of British Columbia's largest and highly-respected private security organizations, has selected the NEC Express5800/320Fd-MR Fault Tolerant server to ensure highavailability of its security solutions provided to their customers in the UAE.
Based in the United Arab Emirates, Securiguard's reputation is built on first-rate security guard services and has been in the forefront of the asset protection for over 32 years as a leading-edge, innovative security solution provider. The company has a strong track record of delivering a wide range of services from safeguarding physical premises and personnel to securing electronic content and proprietary information with professionalism and skill which hasbrought them numerous awards for innovation and service excellence. Securiguard has replaced public policing responsibilities at some major port and airport facilities around the globe.
The challenge
One of the key services Securiguard provides is an integrated security solution for CCTV (Closed Circuit TV / video-surveillance systems) and Access Control systems. In such systems, one or more levels of redundancy are extremely important and should be considered as part of the whole system architecture, so that surveillance is maintained in emergency situations. Periodically, a security audit is undertaken to help identify areas of high-risk or potential failure, leading to the creation of primary non-technical objectives of the intended security system. For each type of risk or threat, the necessary combination of video surveillance and other security systems, such as intrusion detection or access control, can be determined and then included in the design. The likely combination of modern security systems will require the implementation of a multi-service network in order to allow full communications between the various components.
Implementing video-surveillance and access control systems without redundancy risks compromising the security and integrity of the protected premises. This is why proposed video-based security systems should run continuously without any single point of failure in order to achieve high availability in any emergency situation making high availability architecture mandatory.
Initially, Securiguard considered running these applications on software-clustered servers. The cluster presented the technical support group with setup and failover issues in the case of hardware and software failure on the node. In addition, the software cluster required two copies of the operating system and applications, which also needed to be cluster-aware, making it far more complex and costly.
The solution
In order to implement a video-based security system, some issues may be specific to its installation but many are common throughout business continuity.
After several weeks of studying the alternative solutions on the market, Securiguard selected the NEC Express5800/320Fd-MR, Fault Tolerant (FT) Intel® based server. The NEC Fault Tolerant offers a simpler and more cost effective solution for high availability with none of the overhead costs associated with traditional server clustering, which is one of the most important elements in 24/7 system availability. The project took a few days to deploy by certified NEC engineers and now hosts all of the related software applications that are managing Securiguard's network of security systems implemented on the customers' premises.
The benefits
Baldev Singh Sandhu, the UAE Managing Director at SecuriGuard said, "The NEC FT servers, the implementation process and the support services has been a successful project and we are very pleased with the level of benefits it provides us. FT servers were the perfect solution to our needs."
The FT servers match Securiguard's high availability and redundancy requirements.
According to Securiguard, the key benefits of implementing NEC FT servers are:
Much more stable solution compared to high availability clusters
Simple solution that does not require professional engineers at administration levels
A more cost-effective high availability solution because it had
none of the overhead costs of specialized software for clustering and the need for cluster aware applications
saved Securiguard the cost of the multiple licenses for operating systems applications
NEC's FT servers surpass the concept of high availability to enter the era of 'continuous availability':
Non-stop operation: The servers are designed to guarantee an availability of 99.999%, that is to say, an average of less than 5 minutes of unplanned interruption per year, including time necessary for repairs, updates and general maintenance.
Easy deployment: NEC FT Servers support standard operating systems, allowing users to run middleware and applications without modification
Full compatibility with Windows 2003 R2 EE, 32 & 64 bits, Windows 2008 64 bits, Linux Red Hat 5.x, VMware Virtual Infrastructure and Parallels Virtuozzo
Al Yousuf Computers provides NEC FT Servers in the UAE as well as the NEC Certified Engineers with the expertise on high availability NEC systems based on their many years experience in the field.
