Designing Resilient and Reliable

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2 Important Notice NICE Systems Ltd. shall bear no responsibility or liability to a client or to any person or entity with respect to liability, loss or damage caused or alleged to be caused directly or indirectly by any NICE product. This includes, but is not limited to, any interruption of service, loss of business or anticipatory profits or consequential damage resulting from the use or operation of any NICE products. Information in this document is subject to change without notice and does not represent a commitment on the part of NICE Systems Ltd. The systems described in this document are furnished under a license agreement or non-disclosure agreement. All information included in this document, such as text, graphics, photos, logos and images, is the exclusive property of NICE Systems Ltd. and protected by United States and international copyright laws. Permission is granted to view and photocopy (or print) materials from this document for personal, non-commercial use only. Any other copying, distribution, retransmission or modification of the information in this document, whether in electronic or hard copy form, without the express prior written permission of NICE Systems Ltd., is strictly prohibited. In the event of any permitted copying, redistribution or publication of copyrighted material, no changes in, or deletion of, author attribution, trademark legend or copyright notice shall be made. This product is covered by one or more of the following US patents: 5,216,744 5,457,782 6,246,752 6,615,193 6,865,604 7,010,106 7,305,082 7,474,633 7,587,454 7,705,880 7,751,590 RE41,292 5,274,738 5,911,134 6,249,570 6,694,374 6,871,229 7,010,109 7,333,445 7,532,744 7,599,475 7,714,878 7,761,544 5,289,368 5,937,029 6,252,946 6,728,345 6,880,004 7,058,589 7,346,186 7,545,803 7,631,046 7,716,048 7,770,221 5,325,292 6,044,355 6,252,947 6,775,372 6,937,706 7,085,728 7,383,199 7,546,173 7,660,297 7,720,706 7,788,095 5,339,203 6,115, ,194 6,785,369 6,959,079 7,152,018 7,386,105 7,573,421 7,664,794 7,725,318 7,801,288 5,396,371 6,122,665 6,330,025 6,785,370 6,965,886 7,203,655 7,392,160 7,577,246 7,665,114 7,728,870 7,822,605 5,446,603 6,192,346 6,542,602 6,856,343 6,970,829 7,240,328 7,436,887 7,581,001 7,683,929 7,738,459 7,848,947 NICE Disclaimer: NICE Disclaimer: We own the following trademarks in different countries: 360º View, Alpha, ACTIMIZE, Actimize logo, Customer Feedback, Dispatcher Assessment, Encorder, enicelink, Executive Connect, Executive Insight, FAST, FAST alpha Blue, FAST alpha Silver, FAST Video Security, Freedom, Freedom Connect, IEX, Interaction Capture Unit, Insight from Interactions, Investigator, Last Message Replay, Mirra, My Universe, NICE, NICE logo, NICE Analyzer, NiceCall, NiceCall Focus, NiceCLS, NICE Inform, NICE Learning, NiceLog, NICE Perform, NiceScreen, NICE SmartCenter, NICE Storage Center, NiceTrack, NiceUniverse, NiceUniverse Compact, NiceVision, NiceVision Alto, NiceVision Analytics, NiceVision ControlCenter, NiceVision Digital, NiceVision Harmony, NiceVision Mobile, NiceVision Net, NiceVision NVSAT, NiceVision Pro, Performix, Playback Organizer, Renaissance, Scenario Replay, ScreenSense, Tienna, TotalNet, TotalView, Universe, Wordnet are trademarks and/or registered trademarks of NICE Systems Ltd. All other trademarks are the property of their respective owners. All contents of this document are: Copyright 2011 NICE Systems Ltd. All rights reserved.

3 7Industry Overview Video surveillance systems have been deployed extensively in various organizations around the world. The capabilities and features of video surveillance systems assist security officers to improve security operations; deterring, managing and mitigating possible threats to the organization security and safety thus reducing the overall TCO (total cost of ownership) of the security array. One of the main concerns of security managers in modern organizations is to have a video surveillance service that is operable and accessible at any given time, for 24x7x365 live monitoring and ongoing investigation operations. 0Building a Resilient Video Surveillance System for IP Environments To achieve the required reliability for the security organization, it is necessary to ensure resilience on several layers. This concept is referred to as Multi Layered Resilience (MLR). The MLR approach integrates the resilience of the various layers, reinforcing overall system resilience, and ensuring that all system operations are always available to the security force, even in cases of failure. The MLR approach is depicted in XFigure 1X: Due to the increased importance of the video surveillance system, a failure in the system, which results in service downtime, can cause severe implications to the security of organization assets, customers and employees. Moreover, the financial impact of a failed video surveillance system can be critical to the organization. For example, failed video surveillance can initiate a costly evacuation of an airport due to a late noticed suspicious object, and in some cases can even lead to personal liability lawsuits against organization managers. System reliability is thus a critical factor in the successful operation of a security organization, which is charged with protecting lives and assets within a business. In traditional video surveillance systems, the reliability of the video surveillance system depended mainly on the reliability of the specific CCTV components on-site. On the other hand, IP-based video surveillance solutions can be installed in centralized as well as highly distributed architectures. The network-based solution demands the resiliency of the overall video surveillance architecture and its underlying layer, namely the IP network to enforce the required reliability in order to avoid the degradation of the security force s performance and capabilities. Figure 1 Multi-layer Resilience 1Networking Resilience The IP network infrastructure constitutes the foundation of a video surveillance system. The IP network is used to carry IP encoded video data from surveillance cameras to decoding devices. A failure in the IP network, or even a temporary disturbance, might degrade or even completely halt the overall security operations, creating a security risk. Operators must therefore ensure that the networking infrastructure is based upon proven switching and routing components from wellknown vendors, and that it employs highavailability mechanisms, such as Rapid Spanning Tree Protocol (RSTP) in L2 devices Page 1

4 and Virtual Router Redundancy Protocol (VRRP) in L3 devices. The design and implementation of a resilient networking infrastructure ensures that the video surveillance service continues without interruptions or failures. To support the redundant structure of the IP network, the video surveillance system itself must provide dual networking interfaces to the network, so that if a specific network switch or router fails, the video traffic is routed to the alternative path without user intervention and delay. 2Video Surveillance Infrastructure Resilience On top of the network infrastructure, the video surveillance components themselves must be designed to be resilient to various failures and problems. place and continues to route the video signals transparently to the user and there is no need for intervention in the process. Figure 2: Encoder Resilience Normal Operation 8Encoder Resilience At the ingress point of the video into the video surveillance networks are the video encoders. Encoders are used to convert analog video signal into digital video and transport it across the IP network. Careful attention should be given to encoder redundancy mechanisms, because failure in the encoding devices results in no video streaming. Firstly, the encoder should include dual power supplies, which are connected to different power sources. This guarantees the video stream during a power failure. Secondly, the encoder should employ dual fans to ensure proper operation even if one of the fans fails. In addition, dual Network Interface Cards (NIC) should be available to route video traffic through the second interface if a failure in the first interface or a network switch connected port occurs. Another important mechanism is complete encoder redundancy. In this architecture, a single encoder is used as a backup device to a group of encoders. This configuration is sometimes referred to as N+1 redundancy, where N represents the number of active devices that are backed up by the additional decoder, which is in stand-by mode. If an active encoder fails, the standby encoder takes its Figure 3: Encoder Resilience - Failover Finally, one of the most important encoder features is multicast streaming. With multicast streaming, the video signal can be delivered directly from the edge devices without the need to pass through the Smart Video Recorder; improving overall system reliability. Note that for multicast support the network video Recorder, decoding devices and IP network must all be able to support multicast protocols such as Internet Group Multicast Protocol (IGMP). 9Smart Video Recorder (SVR) Resilience The network video Recorder is responsible for recording video streams originating from encoding devices (IP encoders and/or IP cameras) to an internal or external storage device. The recording functionality is essential to the investigation capabilities of the security force. The SVR must be designed as a highly reliable computing platform, including all the relevant components: CPU and memory, networking interfaces and storage devices. The latter is one of the most critical components in the SVR system, mainly because video data is physically stored on the hard drives, and Page 2

5 retrieved for later use on a regular basis. Because hard drives (HDD) are mechanical components, they are prone to failure, so failure in a storage device means that the video recorded on the device cannot be used for investigation. To overcome this barrier, the SVR must support Redundant Array of Independent Disks (RAID) configuration, which is a standard technology in IT environments. RAID ensures the possibility to recreate (or rebuild) the original data from the remaining disks when an HDD fails. It is important to emphasize that the data rebuilding operation requires massive computing and storage resources, so that during this operation SVR performance can be limited. It therefore is critical to measure and publish SVR performance under rebuilding conditions; otherwise, the operator risks a significant drop in video quality, and even video loss, due to limited recording and playback resources during this operation. Similarly to encoders, the SVR platform must support an N+1 configuration as well as provide a resilient physical architecture including support of dual power supplies, dual fans and dual networking interfaces. 10Dual Channel Recording Resilience In addition to Recorder resilience as described in the above section, the ability to record the same channel simultaneously on two different SVRs is a valuable functionality which enhances the reliability of recording services. Dual channel recording provides two major benefits: Flexible backup each SVR can store the recorded video for different periods of time. Moreover, the video recording quality can vary between the two SVRs (e.g. different resolution, different frame rate and even a different recording configuration such as events only or continuous). Zero downtime service missionwith a critical installations are supported zero downtime recording solution (without failover time). 11Digital Video Recorder Resilience A video surveillance system can be based on Digital Video Recorders (DVR), which replace both legacy encoder and SVR environments. A video surveillance system based on a DVR should support high-resilience architecture similar to network-based architectures. Like the SVR, the DVR must be designed as a highly reliable computing platform, including all components, and especially support RAID arrays. Furthermore, the DVR platform must provide resilient physical architecture including dual power supplies, dual fans, and dual networking interfaces. The DVR should also support multicast transmission to enable multiple decoders to receive the video stream, and thus overcome possible decoder failures. 12Decoder Resilience The last link in the video streaming chain is the decoding device. Decoding devices can be embedded devices, dedicated appliances, or PC workstations. Decoder resilience should be complemented by advanced application functionalities such as Level of Service and Persistent Video Monitoring (PVM). 3Applications and Services Resilience The video surveillance service is based on the underlying networking and video infrastructure, and controlled by the user via the security application. Both the service and application itself must therefore provide a resilient and consistent user experience to ensure that monitoring and investigation are effective at all times. Level of Service (LoS) support is one of the most important mechanisms that ensures a resilient and reliable user experience. LoS guarantees an optimal video stream according to both networking conditions and decoding platform resources. For example, if the user defines that the required resolution for the video signal monitoring is 4CIF at 30fps (for NTSC), and the IP network cannot sustain the load due to congestion or other related phenomenon, the LoS mechanism is initiated. The LoS Page 3

6 mechanism dynamically reduces the frame rate or resolution to accommodate the new conditions. A similar overload in the decoding station is handled by the LoS mechanism resulting is a smooth viewing experience for the operator, who does not need to configure the network or decoder parameters. Video monitoring is usually based on nonreliable network transmission protocols such as UDP, which reduce latency and jitter but do not guarantee the orderly delivery of IP packets containing video data. This can sometimes cause a temporary disconnection from the source, for a varying period of time. The application suite should therefore employ a Persistent Video Monitoring (PVM) mechanism, to ensure the automatic video signal display when the data is available. The PVM mechanism should be accompanied by appropriate buffering techniques that guarantee a high-quality experience for the security officer. The video information itself has to be reliable, making sure that the video will be valuable and usable for by the different system s users, and be admissible in court. Therefore the following mechanisms should be applied: Visual Parameter Optimization guarantees the highest video quality in different lighting conditions Camera Tampering Detection protects against camera tampering such as obstruction and dislocation Video Authentication guarantees the authenticity of the digital video image, and making sure that it was not altered by an attacker (also considered as an IT security mechanism) Finally, the overall application, including the virtual matrix functionalities, must be designed in an intuitive manner for quick video recording and streaming problem recognition, facilitating corrective actions, such as monitoring rerouting or configuration of the recording devices to record a certain channel. 4Management and IT Security In addition to the resilience design of video components and services, management operations and system security against malicious attacks must be ensured. The management components are responsible for the ongoing configuration and maintenance of the system, and for the central point of management and enforcement of the connections between different entities of the systems. The Application Management Server (AMS) must be highly resilient, and should employ high-availability architecture. If the primary AMS fails, the backup server continues to control and maintain the overall video surveillance system operations and handling. Figure 4: AMS Redundancy Configuration Furthermore, to provide a truly resilient solution with no single point of failure, even if the AMS fails, all monitoring and investigation operations must be able to continue without interruption. Other management resilience schemes support Disaster Recovery Protection (DRP) solutions. In this solution two or more management servers work in an active-active mode to support seamless failover for service continuity in case one of the management servers fails. The DRP software synchronizes the management servers using virtualization technology. In the event of a failure on one server, applications in the virtual environment continue to operate using the redundancy provided by the other server. All in-process disk transactions and application state are maintained through the failure. To assist maintenance and operations personnel to quickly locate and isolate problems and failures in the video surveillance system, the management system should provide the user with a comprehensive and accurate maintenance alarm application, which provides clear details about the fault source, and enables the maintenance crew to fix the problem rapidly, ensuring the continuation of all security operations. Penetration of the IP infrastructure by hackers must also be controlled; the IP network itself must be protected against cyber attack. Page 4

7 Additionally, the video surveillance system must provide extensive user configuration and operational capabilities to define relevant operational profiles. Configurability ensures proper segmentation between users and departments, so that only relevant personnel are able to perform specific actions with specific equipment, thus limiting the potential damage from malicious attacks or even incorrect operation. This should be enforced using an advanced Role-Based Access Control (RBAC) mechanism that defines user profiles and their associated properties, managed entities, and operations. To complete the protection of the system, the video surveillance management application should include an extensive password protection scheme, with comprehensive password configuration capabilities, and an option to perform a Single Sign-on login to the organizational Active Directory repository as this hinders potential intruders from gaining access to the system. 5System Availability Figures The system architecture influences the system availability figures. System availability is the percentage of time that the system provides its users with a service (in surveillance system the service is video recording and display). Availability is often measured by number of 9 s. For example a 5 9 s system is a system which is available % of the year (5 minutes downtime. These figures are extremely important for planning operations and services accordingly. NICE has conducted extensive research that calculated availability figures, based on the resilient architecture which was described throughout this document. Below are the availability figures for several layers of resilience options. System Redundancy Resilient Components System Availability (MTTR=4 hours) System Yearly Downtime (MTTR=4 hours) System Availability (MTTR=24 hours) System Yearly Downtime (MTTR=4 hours) Complete Redundancy AMS, Encoder, SVR >99.999% <5.26 minutes >99.99% <52.6 minutes Partial Redundancy No Redundancy Encoder >99.9% <8.76 hours >99.8% <17.52 hours None 99.9% 8.8 hours 99.4% 2.2 days Notes: All figures include a Mean Time To Repair (MTTR) of 4 or 24 hours. MTTR of 24 hours usually corresponds with an SLA of Next Business Day which is the common SLA, where MTTR of 4 hours usually corresponds with a more advanced SLA. The complete details and calculation method can be found in Technical Note # 154. All figures relate to a high capacity system, which represents an enterprise grade system. Page 5

8 6Conclusions The table below summarizes the different resiliency mechanisms which apply to each component in the system: Components AMS Encoder Smart Video Recorder Application Information Security Resilience Mechanisms Hardware Redundancy (Dual Power Supply, Dual NIC, RAID) Cold backup (manual database backup) Hot-standby (database redundancy) Active Active redundancy (Geo-Clustering) Hardware Redundancy (Dual Power Supply, Dual NIC) Encoder N+1 cluster architecture Hardware Redundancy (Dual Power Supply, Dual NIC, RAID) Recorder N+1 cluster architecture Dual Recording Central Storage Server Archiving Level of Service Persistent Monitoring Visual Parameter Optimizer Camera Tampering Role Base Access Control privilege mechanism Single Sign-On and Active Directory Integration Video Authentication To truly achieve the sought after reliable security service, both the security officer and IT manager should pay special attention to the design of overall system reliability and resiliency, including all video surveillance components, applications and services, as well as the IP network infrastructure. As the video surveillance arena is rapidly moving towards IPbased video surveillance systems, supporting either DVR or encoder/svr, the resilience of video surveillance systems is strongly dependent on the IP network. This trend is accelerating mainly due to business and operational drivers, such as reduced TCO and improved ROI, along with improved security operations and new business applications. However, this migration must be accompanied with the introduction of highly resilient and reliable video surveillance solutions that ensure operational continuity of the security service, and lead to a safer, more secure organization and business environment. About NICE Systems NICE Systems (NASDAQ: NICE), is the worldwide leader of intent-based solutions that capture and analyze interactions and transactions, realize intent, and extract and leverage insights to deliver impact in real time. Driven by cross-channel and multi-sensor analytics, NICE solutions enable organizations to improve business performance, increase operational efficiency, prevent financial crime, ensure compliance, and enhance safety and security. NICE serves over 25,000 organizations in the enterprise and security sectors, representing a variety of sizes and industries in more than 150 countries, and including over 80 of the Fortune 100 companies. Page 6

9 ABOUT NICE systems NICE (NASDAQ: NICE) is the worldwide leader of software solutions that deliver strategic insights by capturing and analyzing mass quantities of structured and unstructured data in real time from multiple sources, including, phone calls, mobile apps, s, chat, social media, and video. NICE solutions enable organizations to take the Next-Best-Action to improve customer experience and business results, ensure compliance, fight financial crime, and safeguard people and assets. NICE solutions are used by over 25,000 organizations in more than 150 countries, including over 80 of the Fortune 100 companies. ABOUT NiceVision NiceVision helps leading organizations enhance their security operations and improve performance using intelligent digital video solutions. NiceVision integrates real-time analysis, IP networking, recording and management to enable automatic threat detection, instant verification, event resolution and effective investigation. CONTACTS Global International HQ, Israel, T F Americas, North America, T F EMEA, Europe & Middle East, T F Asia Pacific, Singapore Office T F The full list of NICE marks are the trademarks or registered trademarks of Nice Systems Ltd. For the full list of NICE trademarks, visit All other marks used are the property of their respective proprietors. DATE 04/2013 P/N WP CONTENTS OF THIS DOCUMENT ARE COPYRIGHT nice.com

All contents of this document are: Copyright 2010 NICE Systems Ltd. All rights reserved.

All contents of this document are: Copyright 2010 NICE Systems Ltd. All rights reserved. NICE Perform Releases 3.1 & 3.2 Insight from Interactions TM Information in this document is subject to change without notice and does not represent a commitment on the part of NICE Systems Ltd. The systems