North Canyon achieves robust, reliable backups and simplified surveillance with Synology

Previously, NCMC had backup appliances configured for their main production servers, but the hardware was not easily expandable to meet their growing data storage needs and did not offer enough resiliency to satisfy their data protection needs.

NCMC was also encountering issues with the digital video recorder (DVR) systems used for camera surveillance at their main campus. Several DVRs were needed to monitor, record, and analyze all of the hospital's security cameras and in order to investigate events or manage their deployment, staff would need to access each system separately.

With a main campus and three off-site clinics, NCMC needed a reliable, multi-layered backup solution that would protect the critical data on their production servers. Additionally, they needed a centrally managed surveillance system that would consolidate footage storage in one place and streamline management.

Across all their locations, NCMC decided to switch to Synology for backing up their main production servers. At the main campus, the team deployed two rackmount Synology storage systems in parallel to protect data on their main production servers. Both servers are running Synology Active Backup for Business, a license-free solution that allows NCMC to automatically back up their production servers at regular intervals, then quickly restore data to the main servers in case of data loss or corruption.

For additional protection in case of a fire or natural disaster at the main campus, NCMC uses Synology Hyper Backup to back up production server data to two other Synology NAS located at off-site clinics. NCMC also uses Hyper Backup to copy that data to C2 Storage, Synology's public cloud storage solution, for an additional layer of redundancy.

To address their surveillance concerns, NCMC switched from separately managed DVR surveillance at their main campus to Surveillance Station, Synology's software for surveillance monitoring, recording, and management. To unify management and monitoring across servers, NCMC uses Surveillance Station Centralized Management System (CMS), a solution that allows them to manage multiple Synology recording servers simultaneously. Through CMS, NCMC can consolidate surveillance management and monitoring to a single point of access.

Synology allowed NCMC to consolidate multiple critical business functions across their locations onto a single platform, all while increasing reliability and retaining cost effectiveness.

Active Backup for Business allows NCMC to automatically and reliably back up their production servers, and the versioning provided is critical to fully recovering lost or corrupted data and minimizing downtime for their organization.

Additionally, Hyper Backup allows NCMC to duplicate all their backup data off-site, both to Synology devices at their remote clinic locations and to Synology C2 Storage for redundancy in the cloud. Having multiple off-site copies of data helps protect business information and records in the case of a fire or natural disaster at NCMC's main office.

Surveillance Station provides NCMC with a distributed surveillance solution that accommodates a wide range of third-party cameras, allowing them to integrate their existing range of IP cameras. Additionally, CMS allows the clinic to centrally manage all their recording servers, while also giving them the ability to merge security camera streams from all locations into a single pane for easier viewing and management.