WestPoint · Hardware · Dell Technologies
A server is not chosen by the brand. It is chosen by the sums.
Catalogue rack servers, with remote management as standard and support contracts you can read before signing. What decides whether the recording server lasts three years is the sizing, and that is not printed on the label.
What kind of manufacturer it is.
Dell Technologies · Server — Servers and storage for video and analytics. In practice that means three things.
The first is that it is configured from a catalogue. You choose the chassis by number of bays, the processor, the memory, the drive controller and the power supplies, and what comes out is a machine with a part number that will still exist tomorrow. That sounds like very little and it is what lets you repeat the same installation across eight sites and keep all eight maintained the same way.
The second is remote management, which comes as standard in the server range. It is separate electronics, with its own network address, that stays powered even when the server is off: from there you switch the machine on, see what the screen says as it boots, mount an installation image and read which part has failed. For a recorder sitting in an industrial unit forty kilometres away, that is the difference between a call-out and five minutes.
The third is the support, and it is the one people pay most for and compare least. There are contracts at several levels and the difference between them is not the price: it is how many hours pass until somebody arrives with the part.
Where it fits in a video installation.
In the usual place: the recording and management server of a medium-sized or large installation, in a rack, with drives inside and the option of hanging an expansion shelf off it when more is needed. Also as the server for the access control software or the database, which is a different job and had better not share a machine with the video.
And it fits particularly well where the client already has servers from this house. Not for our own convenience: because the IT team already has the inventory tool, the firmware update procedure and the support contract in place. Bringing in a different brand just for the video adds one more supplier, one more procedure and one more password to a place where there was already order.
What really decides the sizing.
Four numbers, and none of them is the processor speed.
How many streams have to be decompressed at once, which is not the same as how many cameras there are. Recording is copying what arrives onto the drive and costs little; displaying forces every video to be decompressed, and a mosaic of sixteen cameras open on three people's screens is forty-eight videos decompressing at the same time. That is the peak, and that is what has to be sized for even if it happens twice a year.
How many bays, and how many are left free. If the machine goes in with all of them occupied, expanding means changing machine. And it is worth looking at the drive controller too: whether it carries write cache, whether that cache is protected by a battery, and what the system does if the power goes with a half-finished write in the air.
How much memory, which in video is consumed by simultaneous streams and by connected clients, and whether a slot is left free or it goes in with all of them full. And whether room for a graphics card is needed, which is not a question about today but about two years from now: a chassis with space, enough power supply and air for a card costs very little more and saves changing the server the day somebody wants to analyse the video.
And the fourth, which is not about the server but about the contract: how long a part takes to arrive. On an office server a three-day fault is a nuisance; on a recorder it is three days of video that does not exist and that nobody will be able to ask for later. That is why the warranty level is chosen by looking at what that machine does, not at the quotation.
Where we would not fit it.
Nobody fits everywhere, and this does not either.
In an installation of eight or twelve cameras in one premises, no. A rack server calls for a cabinet, air, backup power and somebody to administer it, and there a self-contained recording unit does the job with a fraction of the kit and the price. Fitting one just in case is selling ironmongery.
Nor where there is no plant room or ventilated cabinet. A rack server in a closed cupboard at forty degrees works for the first few months and takes the drives down with it; if the place does not exist, the honest thing is to say it has to be built or that something else goes in.
And we would not fit it as bulk storage if what you need is many cheap terabytes for low-detail cameras: filling a compute server with drives works out dearer per terabyte than putting the storage where it belongs and letting the server work.
What we do with it.
The sums first, the order afterwards. Never the other way round.
- The written calculation before anything is configured: how many cameras, at what detail, how many hours of movement in front of them, how many days have to be kept and how many people are going to watch at once. Out of that come the drives, the memory and the processor, in that order.
- The margin, which is a decision and not an oversight: a machine that on the day of handover is running at ninety per cent has no room for the six cameras that are going to be added, and they always are.
- Remote management properly configured: on its own network, with its password in the client's name, sending an email when a power supply or a drive fails. Without that, the alert arrives the day somebody misses a recording.
- The tests before handover: pulling a power supply with the system recording, taking a drive out and seeing how long it takes to rebuild, opening the largest mosaic that will be used with every workstation at once, and cutting the power to see whether the machine shuts itself down in an orderly way.
- The paperwork: what it has inside, what support contract it has and on what date it ends, what parts are worth keeping to hand and when spares stop being made.
Who administers it when we leave.
Here the answer is yes, your IT team. And it is better that way.
A server of this class is familiar ground for any IT team: they already know how to look at remote management, apply firmware, watch drives and open a case with the manufacturer. If the company already has a way of doing things and a set of tools for servers, the video one should come in through that door and not live apart as a black box only the installer understands.
What we ask is that it is decided who is in charge of two particular things, because they are the ones that break video installations: updates —firmware and system— are not applied at midday or without knowing whether the video software supports them, and the drive space is not shared with anything else, because the day another process fills that volume the recording stops without warning.
Our side after that is what requires knowing the installation: what happens if the machine is replaced, how the video software configuration is recovered, and redoing the sums when cameras are added. That is half an hour for somebody who has done it before and several days for somebody doing it for the first time.
Where to go next.
What holds a video system up is not just the server: it is the drives inside it, the power that keeps it switched on and the cabinet it lives in.
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Have you been quoted for a server and you do not know if it is enough?
Send us how many cameras there are, at what detail they record, how many days have to be kept and how many people watch at once. With that we do the sums and tell you whether that machine gets there, whether it is more than you need, or whether it has no room for what you are going to add next year.