Genetec, MediaSolv, Microsoft. SQL Server. Results ... the department's production data center to a disaster recovery si
NORMAN POLICE DEPARTMENT
Oklahoma police force fights crime with EMC Isilon and MediaSolv Evidence Management ESSENTIALS
OVERVIEW Norman, Oklahoma, is the third largest city in the state, with more than 118,000 residents. The Norman Police Department’s community-oriented policing philosophy encourages officers and citizens to work together in the fight against crime, helping to keep the city’s crime rate low.
BUSINESS CHALLENGE Video has become an essential tool in law enforcement for documenting police interviews, beat officer activity, and surveillance of facilities. In fact, the majority of Industry Law enforcement
police departments serving populations of 75,000 or more now use police car videos. With the growing use of video at the station and in the field, the Norman Police
Company Size
Department will be facing an enormous surge in video data in the coming years. In
235 employees
fact, the department expects data to grow by 10,000 percent in the next five years.
Business Challenge •
storage system that was close to running out of capacity, was not going to be able to
surveillance driving massive
support this growth.
data growth •
The department realized that its previous video storage solution, an EMC® unified
Growing use of video
Legacy storage nearing maximum capacity
Solutions
Making the strategic decision to pursue new video projects involving Genetec unified security systems and MediaSolv evidence management for in-car, body-worn, and surveillance video, the Norman Police Department began seeking a storage solution that would provide massive scalability.
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EMC Isilon
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EMC Isilon SmartQuotas
scale-out storage to support the police department’s rapidly expanding video
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EMC Isilon SmartConnect
environment.
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VMware vSphere
Robert Gruver, network support supervisor for the City of Norman, notes, "The other
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Genetec, MediaSolv, Microsoft SQL Server
Results •
Gained scalability and performance to pursue leadingedge video projects
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Improved law enforcement with fast, reliable access to evidentiary video
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Simplified control over storage usage across different video systems
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Increased efficiency of
After evaluating several solutions, the City of Norman IT Group selected EMC Isilon®
vendors offered iSCSI or block-type storage that just couldn't match Isilon’s scalability and performance. Those are the two biggest capabilities we need for video. “Plus, we've been with EMC for several years—we're extremely happy with the products and the support. So that tipped the scale even more in EMC's favor."
SOLUTIONS The Norman Police Department deployed a five-node EMC Isilon X-Series cluster. Isilon supports the department's entire video storage environment. This includes video feeds from approximately 30 building security cameras managed by Genetec Security Center, and dozens of other cameras across the city that eventually will be integrated into the Genetec system. The Norman Police Department also relies on Isilon for its MediaSolv Evidence Management Solution, which provides police station interview room recording, in-car video for approximately 66 police vehicles, and body-worn cameras for 175 officers.
managing fast-growing video assets
CUSTOMER PROFILE
MediaSolv offers the Norman Police Department a complete digital evidence management solution that has the critical law enforcement tools to track all assets, maintain a full IACP compliant chain of custody and authentication of digital evidence, and connectivity to the DA’s evidence intake with the MediaSolv Virtual Client. When Body Worn, Interview Room and In-Car video is in use on one network, Isilon and MediaSolv delivers a safe, secure, and robust system that saves law enforcement thousands of hours when compared to traditional CD-and DVD-based evidence management. In addition, the Norman Police Department uses EMC Isilon infrastructure software, including EMC Isilon SmartQuotas™ data management and EMC Isilon SmartConnect™ resource optimization, for streamlined storage administration. EMC partner, ISG Technologies, provided design and implementation services for the Isilon system. The Norman Police Department also uses EMC unified storage for Microsoft SQL Server, CIFS file shares, and VMware infrastructure. With the EMC RecoverPoint® remote data protection solution, the department replicates EMC unified storage from the department's production data center to a disaster recovery site.
VIDEO EVIDENCE FOR A SAFER COMMUNITY Isilon provides the Norman Police Department with extensive scalability and high performance, enabling the department to aggressively pursue its strategic video projects. In fact, the Norman Police Department will be among the first of only a handful of police departments across the nation to roll out both body-worn and in-car video. Blaine Davison, Detective, Norman Police Department, remarks, "Putting cameras on officers and recording essentially every contact they make is extremely useful from an evidentiary standpoint. It also protects officers if they are falsely accused during an incident. “Moving forward with both body-worn video and in-car cameras will help us serve the community better by helping to make Norman safer and a great place to live. We chose MediaSolv for our digital evidence recording and management systems because they correctly process evidence in a law enforcement certified manner and have forensic tools to verify and authenticate digital evidence. MediaSolv met and exceeded all of our requirements and increased our efficiency by 90 percent in evidence recording and processing.”
“The challenge for IT is making sure investigators can quickly get their video no matter how big the data stores have become. A solution that scales without losing performance is imperative, and Isilon has definitely met both those needs.” Kari Madden, Network Support Supervisor, City of Norman, Oklahoma
EXTREME SCALABILITY With Isilon, the Norman Police Department can reliably access video evidence collected by its network of security cameras and field recording systems to help with investigations or support criminal prosecution. Isilon also provides the extreme scalability the department needs as the volume of video data skyrockets from approximately 50 terabytes to a projected five petabytes within five years. Kari Madden, network support supervisor, City of Norman, says, "Digital video produces a vast amount of data that often must be retained for many days and weeks.
“The challenge for IT is making sure investigators can quickly get their video no matter how big the data stores have become. A solution that scales without losing performance is imperative, and Isilon has definitely met both those needs."
MANAGING EXPLOSIVE STORAGE GROWTH WITH EASE In addition to smoothly handling rapid video storage growth to aid police work, Isilon makes it easy for IT to provision and manage storage capacity. Isilon SmartConnect and SmartQuotas play an important part in streamlining administration. "We had Isilon up and running in just one and a half days, including build and configuration," reports Gruver. "The system is very reliable, and we spend almost no time on managing it day to day. Creating new CIFS shares also is a snap. And tools like SmartQuotas make it especially easy to control how much storage space our different video systems consume." Madden adds, "As an IT organization, we want to provide the police department with the best service possible. Isilon lets us give them the storage they need, but manage the environment in a really cost-efficient way."
A MODEL FOR OTHER POLICE FORCES With a solid storage infrastructure in place, the Norman Police Department has set a strong example of how to get the most value from video technologies. Detective Davison concludes, "We hope the video systems and EMC Isilon infrastructure we’ve put in place will be a model that other city police departments will want to emulate for both the tremendous value it provides to law enforcement and the ease of managing such rapid storage growth."
CONTACT US To learn more about how EMC products, services, and solutions can help solve your business and IT challenges, contact your local representative or authorized reseller, visit www.emc.com/Isilon, or explore and compare products in the EMC EMC2, EMC, the EMC logo, Isilon, RecoverPoint, SmartConnect, and SmartQuotas are registered trademarks or trademarks of EMC Corporation in the United States and other countries. VMware is a registered trademark or trademark of VMware, Inc., in the United States and other jurisdictions. © Copyright 2014 EMC Corporation. All rights reserved. Published in the USA. 11/14 Customer Profile H13681 EMC believes the information in this document is accurate as of its publication date. The information is subject to change without notice.
