Milestone Solution Partner IT Infrastructure
MTP Certification Report
2 Scality - MTP Certification Technical Summary
Table of Contents
Introduction
... 4
Certified Products... 4
Key Findings
... 5
Solution Architecture
... 5
Test Process ... 7
3 Scality - MTP Certification Technical Summary
About Scality:
Scality is the industry leader in software-defined storage at petabyte scale, serving over 500 million users worldwide. A perfect fit for the open VMS platform, the Scality RING provides 100% reliable storage with unmatched performance, and is designed for capacity-driven workloads such as high-definition video, cloud services, and enterprise archiving. It runs on any standard x86 servers powered by Linux, such as the ones of HPE, Dell, Cisco, SuperMicro, or Seagate, and creates an unlimited storage pool for file, object and OpenStack applications. Thanks to its underlying object storage architecture, the RING scales to exabytes of data and trillions of files. Seven of the top twenty telecommunication companies, petabyte-scale cloud services, and Global 2000 enterprises rely on the RING for mission-critical applications. Scality is headquartered in San Francisco, with offices throughout the world. Try the Scality RING online at http://www.scality.com/
trial
Follow us on Twitter @scality and visit us at www.scality.com to learn more.
About Milestone Systems:
Milestone Systems is the world’s leading provider of open platform IP video surveillance software. Milestone has provided easy-to-use, powerful video management software in more than 100,000 installations worldwide.
Milestone XProtect® products are designed with open architecture and are compatible with more IP
cameras, encoders and digital video recorders than any other manufacturer. Because Milestone provides an open platform, you can integrate today’s best business solutions and expand what’s possible with future innovations. Visit www.milestonesys.com for more.
GENERAL DISCLAIMER:
4 Scality - MTP Certification Technical Summary
Introduction
This report highlights the performance results of certification tests performed on the Scality RING running on standard x86 hardware as the active archive storage location for Milestone XProtect Video
Management Software (VMS). The RING was used as the storage location for the active archive during this certification test, and the redundancy features of the solution were highlighted during the test. The Milestone Technology Partner (MTP) Certification program seeks to confirm that server, storage and network solutions provided by qualified MTP vendors meet the performance benchmarks required to support the Milestone XProtect VMS applications, and to measure the maximum performance available to Milestone customers if they choose to build a solution using certified MTP products.
Certified Products
Scality RING Software-Defined Storage
Milestone XProtect Corporate 2016
Listed Scality products are certified for use with the entire XProtect product line. Performance of the solution may vary if different XProtect products and/or other system components not listed in the test details are included.
5 Scality - MTP Certification Technical Summary
Key Findings
The Scality RING performs as a video storage platform within the Milestone XProtect VMS system at a level that is 250% the benchmark levels defined by the Milestone Server and Storage Calculator. The Milestone calculator indicates that the storage configuration and infrastructure used for these tests should support 19 cameras at the benchmark level. Testing revealed that the system was able to support a maximum of 50 cameras. The maximum number of cameras was defined by the hardware’s capability to support running video feed simulator. But the Scality RING did not limit scaling of capacity for the storage archive. The RING has a proven, scale-out architecture, so it can continue to scale performance and capacity linearly as the system grows.
The system performs at a high level of data throughput, and consistent read/write latency when using the optimal logical disk configuration. The Scality RING Software-Defined Storage is a certified MTP solution. The maximum performance for the test system is listed below, in each of these scenarios there was one XProtect Recording Server installed in the system which was recording video through an iSCSI
connection to the video databases, located on the product.
Test Scenario Storage Solution Maximum Cameras Individual Video Stream Size (Mbps)
Max Disk I/O MBps
Archiving Scality RING 50 5.2 195
The product was also tested to provide an additional layer of redundancy in the form of dual storage controllers, which can operate in an active/standby configuration.
Integrators and end users designing, installing and operating surveillance systems which incorporate these solution components can have confidence that the system will record and archive video reliably. Customers who wish to gain the maximum value and performance out of their surveillance system can also refer to the best practices and performance limitations outlined in this document to help design a system that exceeds the benchmark limitations for video recording defined by the Milestone Server and Storage Calculator.
Solution Architecture
The test surveillance system was configured at the Scality Lab. The system topology included one server running a Microsoft Windows x64 based Server 2012 R2 operating system hosting the XProtect
6 Scality - MTP Certification Technical Summary
Scality – Milestone Digital Video Surveillance Reference Architecture
One instance of the video feed simulator and video content files were placed on the Recording Server. In this configuration video streams are sent across the IP network to be recorded on the Scality RING storage. Placing the video stream sources within each recording server removes any potential network bottlenecks between cameras, encoders, or other video sources and the recording servers themselves. The specific configurations detailed above were chosen in order to conform to the recommended Milestone storage configuration; providing a live database and an archive database for each recording server.
7 Scality - MTP Certification Technical Summary
Live and archive video database sizes were of 1 terabyte and 500 gigabytes respectively, and were used to support an efficient testing process. Increasing these sizes in operational video surveillance deployments will not impact performance results.
Test Process
After installation and configuration of all required system components, the first step in the test was to establish a benchmark performance level against which to measure the performance of the system under more data-intensive levels of video recording. Once the benchmark was established, the system would remain in operation at this level long enough to completely fill the archive video database. At this point the test process calls for increasing the parameters of the video streams to add more data to each stream and each recording server, including the number of cameras, the video codec format, resolution, frames-per-second, and compression levels.
The process of increasing the parameters involved adding additional simulated cameras to the Recording Server. This process used typical 1280x720 (1-megapixel) resolution streams, with compression of 60% and frame rate of 30 frames per second (FPS). As far as codec options: H.264 was chosen as the only codec with which all tests would be performed due to the overwhelming utilization of this codec in new IP video surveillance installations.
The performance was monitored as the number of cameras was increased until we reached an
unacceptable level of write latency, CPU consumption, archive event duration, or video frame loss. At that point the data load was reduced, and the performance was monitored again. If the system operates at the reduced level of data load within acceptable parameters, then a full data capture takes place and the maximum performance of the RING storage is defined to be at the observed levels of data and video stream parameters. Acceptable levels of operation are defined according to the following statistics:
Less than 0.1% video frame loss
CPU values under 70% average
Archive event duration equal to live database retention (1 hour)
Write latency values under 200ms
8 Scality - MTP Certification Technical Summary
streams being played back simultaneously was 19 in the benchmark test, and 25 in both the maximum and failover tests.
The failover or high-availability test scenario concluded the testing on the Scality RING storage solution. This failover test scenario sought to add an additional layer of redundancy to an XProtect system by testing the failure of one storage, and the impact this would have on the recording process when the standby controller was activated. Any noticeable operational impact on the surveillance system and any measurable performance metrics captured during the failover event were both included in making a determination on the effectiveness of this feature. The physical server running the Recording Server was limited in how much data it could generate. The software and the RING storage was capable of scaling to handle more data and throughput. Configuring a larger server (faster CPU and more disks) would have helped to generate more data to maximize the utilization of bandwidth and more scalable storage.
Performance and Results Summary
The performance workload is determined by the available hardware, the number of cameras, image attributes, and the number of streams. Milestone’s server and storage calculator was used to determine the benchmark value for the storage solution. With 15 total disks at 7,200 RPM spindle speed set in a RAID 5 configuration, the calculator indicated it would support 19 cameras at the chosen settings during the benchmark test.
The video stream profile used for the calculator included H.264 as the codec, a resolution of one megapixel, 30 frames per second, and 60 percent compression. The video stream profile remained the same for all three tests. The only video data load factor which changed at all between the tests was the number of cameras.
We reduced the total number of cameras used in the failover test scenario to 40 total cameras in order to ensure that the system would be operating under a predictable and easily maintained data load. This would allow the analysis of the measured data to focus on the changes brought about by the failure event, and not any stress applied to the system when under the maximum level of video recording possible.
The goal of each maximum performance test was to determine the maximum amount of video data which could be recorded to the storage given the current configuration without creating a negative impact on the long term health of the surveillance system. Performance levels were determined to be at their maximum based on any one of three factors during each test scenario. If the archiving time for each process increased to over 40 minutes, the CPU utilization of the recording servers was measured consistently over 70%, if write latency was observed to be over 200ms, or there was repeated frame loss, then the test was stopped.
Maximum Test Workload
50 cameras
1-megapixel resolution (1280x720)
H.264 video codec
30% compression
15 frames per second
100% recording
Live RAID 0 using 6 x 600GB 15,000 RPM disks (3.2 TB database)
9 Scality - MTP Certification Technical Summary
Maximum Test Workload Results
Average Archive Database Write Throughput
42.17 MBps
Average Individual Camera Stream Size
5.2 Mbps
Average Archive Connector Server CPU Utilization
3.73 %
Average Ring Server CPU Utilization
4.91 %
% Frames Lost
0.0%
The maximum test workload above showed that the primary limiting factor in the performance of the system was the ability of the Milestone XProtect Recording Server software services to move video from the live database to the archive database as quickly as possible. There were no problems with frame loss, video latency or CPU utilization caused by the hardware or software integration.
Failover Test Scenario
The primary concern in this scenario is to see what impact the failure of the active controller and
activation of the standby controller had on the operation and performance of the system. There were two manually induced failures which were caused during this failure test. The first was triggered by restarting the active controller about 15 minutes after the beginning of the test. The second failure event was triggered by restarting the newly active controller about 30 minutes after the first failure event. Since this event occurred in the middle of an archive process there was a spike in read latency. Also when the archive process nears completion, any additional data which had been placed into queue was recorded to disk quickly and caused an increase in recording server activity and CPU utilization. This data had clearly already made it to the recording server but hadn’t had a chance to be written to the archive database since it was disrupted by the failure event. All of this data indicates that the failures had only a momentary impact on the performance of the system, and didn’t cause any long-term loss of functionality. During the test the Smart Client application was also consistently displaying video, and there was no noticeable loss of video replay capability.
Failover Test:
40 cameras
1-megapixel resolution (1280x720)
H.264 video codec
60% compression
30 frames per second
VMD recording
Live RAID 5 using 6x 7,200 RPM disks
Archive using the RING storage solution Failover performance results:
Average Live Database Write Throughput 26.13 MBps Average Individual Camera Stream Size 5.2 Mbps Average Recording Server CPU Utilization 13.62%
10 Scality - MTP Certification Technical Summary
Scality RING Software-Defined Storage is a Certified MTP Solution
Scality RING is a certified storage platform for use with the Milestone XProtect VMS. With the chosen hard disk configuration used in the test, the RING easily supported the benchmark level of performance. The calculator indicates that the storage solution should support 19 cameras at the benchmark level, and it was able to support a maximum of 50 cameras. The performance testing determined that the Scality RING storage solution can support at least 250% the number of cameras as recommended by the calculator.
