Camden Market Secures 240 Cameras with Scalable Synology Surveillance Station

Jac Timms, Head of IT had used Synology before in previous roles and also uses Synology at home.  In the past Timms has worked using NAS devices from competitors but feels Synology has features within the DiskStation Manager (DSM) operating system that others do not. 

These include offsite backup support from an onsite Synology NAS device to an offsite Synology NAS device as well as additional backup security to 3rd party cloud providers with the Cloud Sync function (in particular the compatibility with Amazon Glacier, S3 and Google Drive) and remote access. 

Setting up different user accounts, folders and privileges has enabled a swifter, sleeker work process.  Staff can now work in a more stress-free environment; whether they are in the office, working from home or on a business trip they know they can access the documents they need and have a productive day.

The business has over 2 acres of land, all of which needed securing with CCTV.   Surveillance Station as a package and DiskStation Manager (DSM) as an operating system ticked all the boxes required by the business which included abilities such as notification alerts, live view analytics, and fast data transfer speeds (the transfer of old data to the new Synology solution took a matter of days with no errors or downtime).

Surveillance Station
8 of the Synology NAS devices have been set up specifically to run Surveillance Station as they support up to 40 or 90 cameras each, at 1080p quality.  So far the business is running 240 cameras. 

Surveillance Station has been highly beneficial to the company as it has made the work place extremely efficient with video analytics, motion detection and the ability to have 1 central control room for several different geographical locations.  There is currently over 105TB of surveillance data saved on the NAS units. Using the Central Management System (CMS), users can easily deploy new cameras, manage and maintain the surveillance system from one central location, even though cameras may be setup in other geographical locations.

Scalability & Reliability
Each NAS unit bought by the business can be scaled up when the time requires. For example, the RS815RP+ (used as the main data storage for the business) was expanded recently. RX415 expansion units were added with SSD drives to support SSD Caching. At the same time, a second RS815RP+ was added and set up in a High Availability Cluster where one NAS backs straight up to its corresponding other, offering redundancy. 

The business also uses a DS1515+ unit installed in a different building, which is set up as a complete replica of the RS815RP+ cluster, providing an on-site stable, reliable and accurate backup straight from NAS.

Having the functionality of notification alerts for Surveillance Station, and backup task, brings peace of mind to the team knowing that if any errors do occur, they don't need to be searched for by the team, the message will detail exactly what has happened when, and to what file saving critical business time. 

The DSM operating system is easy to use and staff members who had not used Synology before have learnt it quickly and hassle-free.  It can be managed from anywhere and the team has never had to call Synology support for assistance.