In this blog post, we’re going to take a look at all of the archive backup options available in Nx Meta and Nx Witness VMS v5 and how the new features in v5 provide the most flexible, granular way to backup video out there today.
Traditional Video Archiving and Backup
Powered by Nx intelligent video products (built with Nx Meta) like Nx Witness VMS exist to allow companies and individuals to capture, review, and store video from IP cameras, webcams, and other types of streams and devices (RTSP, HTTP, UDP, DVRs, NVRs, etc). The Nx Server application is installed on a computing device (or set of computing devices, in larger Systems) and the Server application captures and writes this information to local HDDs that are located on-prem.
Some companies or organizations have a need for off-site storage (e.g. cloud-based storage) or on-prem backup to a different computer or NAS for data continuity and redundancy purposes. The traditional approach to backing up archives is to backup everything on demand or on a pre-set schedule (e.g. once a day, once a week).
This approach works well for smaller systems and/or systems that have been configured with specific rules to minimize extraneous recording of events. However, once a System reaches a larger size (e.g. dozens of cameras) the amount of data being recorded often makes the backup of that data slow and/or impossible, depending on the underlying network and Internet speeds, throughput capacity of connected NAS devices, and compute power of underlying computing hardware.
Why Metadata Driven Backup is Better
Driven by AI Video Analytics/ Computer Vision
Metadata Driven Backup - introduced in v5 - gives operators far more granular control of what gets backed up and when. As AI-powered video analytics solutions continue to spread and become a standard feature in higher end IP video cameras, the ability to backup video based on what objects are detected or present becomes not only possible - but hugely beneficial.
Keep What's Important / Reduce Costs
Instead of investing in recording "boring movies" and then keeping that data for 30 or 60 days, which requires a hefty investment in hard drives and compute power, companies can now invest in intelligent video analytics that identify people and objects and keep video in which a person or object is present. This reduces up-front costs of hardware and networking infrastructure while improving video search capabilities and video based investigations.
Backup On Prem or Off-Site
The new Metadata Driven Archive Backup feature also allows for backup to any available backup location - HDDs, local or remote NAS devices, and event cloud-based locations (check out Tiger Technology).
Backup Options available in v5.0
What to BackupAll Powered by Nx products built with Nx Meta (like Nx Witness VMS) give operators the ability to back up either all recording or individual video clips from the whole archive. The function can help the user to back up the motion clips, object-included clips, bookmarked clips and/or any combination of them. Backup options include: All archive, Motion, Objects, Bookmarks, Motion and Objects, Motion and Bookmarks, Objects and Bookmarks, Motion, Bookmarks, and Objects.
Backup Individual Cameras - or All
Backup can be applied on a per-camera basis, or can be applied across all cameras and Servers.
Backup Quality
System Administrators can choose to backup All Streams from cameras (high res + low res) or any combination of high res or low res streams.
Bandwidth Limit
Backups can be set using the No Limit, Fixed, or Scheduled options.
No Limit – The entire archive will be backed up immediately and use the fully available bandwidth. The footage will be written to the main and backup storage immediately and simultaneously. The footage will be backed up since the last time backup finished or since the very beginning if this is the first time backup occurs. Afterward, the server will continuously
back up live streams.
Fixed – The backup will be performed immediately but with network bandwidth usage control (i.e. the bandwidth remains a specified Mbit/s across all days and times.). The footage will be backed up since the last time backup finished or since the very beginning of the archive if this is the first time backup occurs.
Scheduled – The backup is performed only during the selected days and hours. Fill in the cells
of the schedule using the following options: Unlimited, No backup, and Limited to (limit to
a certain Mbit/s, but remember that too tight a bandwidth constraint can cause the entire
backup to fail). Note that the footage will be backed up since the last time backup was
completed or since the very beginning if this is the first time backup occurs. If network bandwidth is insufficient, the backup may not be fully completed within the specified time frame. In this case, the date and time of the footage that was
backed up will be clearly indicated (Archive backup complete until...).
How Metadata Driven Backup Works
Watch the Youtube video embedded below to learn more about our new Metadata Driven Backup feature in Nx v5.
