Q500-P10 IP-SAN (iSCSI) appliance is a turnkey storage solution, and to take the manufacturer Qsan's request of evaluating this product is also a challenge because it needs a lot of resources to test a comprehensive system with expandability. The following review of Qsan's mass storage products highlights their major advantages for surveillance storage.
Common Misconceptions about IP-SAN and NAS Applications
Before reading the full article, there are some misconceptions about IP-SAN that need to be clarified.There is a common comparison about NAS and SANs, in particular IP-SANs, which leads users to have a misconception that using NAS was better than using SANs when it comes to performance, cost-efficiency, and convenience. Customers then prefer those solutions than NAS-like NVRs for security and surveillance applications.
As a matter of fact, adopting any of these two storage solutions doesn't create big differences in results.
First, let's take a look of P500-P10's type of IP-SANs. This product functions as a storage area network, where external storage devices and servers are connected using Ethernet (IP-SANs), Fibre Channel technology (FC-SANs), disk-arrays, hard disk cabinets for example, and SANs allow multiple servers to share a pool of storage, making it appear to the server as if it were local or directly attached storage. Despite that the price and the complexity of IP-SANs have reduced, most mass storage equipments are still mainly for midrange and enterprise applications.
Network-attached storage (NAS) is conversely a file-level computer data storage connected to a computer network providing data access to a heterogeneous group of clients. Traditionally, NAS has been used for file services only and SAN for all other applications. Even that NAS not only operates as a file server, but is specialized for this task either by its hardware, software, or configuration of those elements, and provides both storage and a file system. This is often contrasted with SAN. Similar with SAN, NAS systems contain one or more hard disks, often arranged into logical, redundant storage containers or RAID.
While the development of SANs was in part a solution to the problem of slow access to network-attached storage, where a stripped-down operating system is often used and delivers lower transmission performance, there are also some NAS vendors offering some standalone NVR NAS suited for small scale surveillance projects with limited scalability compared to a SAN. Therefore, NAS and IP-SAN are not mutually exclusive in applications.
To conclude, an IP-SAN deals in blocks of data to perform directly the transmission, a NAS operates at the file level to transfer data with networks; they have different deployments and scales.
IP-SAN (iSCSI) vs. FC-SAN
For the mass storage, there is another debate on the IP-SAN (iSCSI) vs. FC-SAN issue even though they are both block-level networking architectures. Take Q500-P10 IP-SAN for example, it adopts common Gigabit Ethernet ensuring easy deployment while FC-SAN requires more expensive and sophisticated Fibre Channel implementation, which makes preferences for low cost IP-SAN solutions than FC-SAN ones.
Even that, some FC-SAN appliances such as Q500-F21 and Q500-F20 embed both FC-SAN and IP-SAN supports so that users can allocate internal disk capacities according to their own provisioning requirements. Delicate Package and Interface Design Ever since we opened the box of Qsan Q500-P10 appliance, Qsan's delicate package has proven their manufacturing capabilities: they provide three layers of foam protection for one hard drive tray and use compartments of interlace design to prevent any bumps and scratches with or without hard disk drives installed.
The front side of Q500-P10 enclosure features an aesthetic and lockable net cover to prevent any intended or accidental removal of HDDs. This appliance has 24 HDD slots with SAS interface to ensure stability and functionality. The power switch and operating status LEDs are hidden under the handles at front sides. There is also a reset button to prevent unintended manipulation which ensures the ease of operation.
To further enhance the safety of use, there are three switching power modules on the back panel of Q500-P10, that have handles and are easy to pull out, as well as lock devices to prevent against the looseness of power plug.
AegisSAN Q500-P10 features Intel's newest low-power chip, the world's first atom-based SAN solution with the benefits of increased energy efficiency. It has six 1GbE iSCSI ports, one 1Gb Ethernet port, another 2 hot swappable/redundant fan modules and RS233 port. These connectors on the rear panel are well arranged and designed for great ease of operation.
High Availability and Reliability
AegisSAN Q500 series of storage appliances feature dual active controllers plus the fully redundant and modular hardware components to make the disk array highly available for mission-critical applications. It offers multiple paths and load balancing designs as well as hardware RAID to better ensure the reliability and to provide continuous services.To satisfy the ever-growing business demands, Q500-P10 delivers high scalability supporting up to 256 drives. Q500 series includes snapshot and replication functions to perform remote replication for disaster recovery enhancing the data security and integrity.
SAN is generally designed to lower the total cost of ownership and enable increased availability and reliability, Reliable Storage for Video Surveillance Applications The continuous data storage and protection are crucial in video surveillance applications. During our verification, Q500-P10 has proven that it can work with DVRs or NVRs to collect their analog and digital signals and store them in the central system.
According to Qsan's Q500-P10 storage scenarios, one Q500-P10 system supports up to 512 ip cameras and data from multiple NVRs or other IP nodes. The recorded data could be distributed to NVRs for further analysis or event processing. Each list of Q500-P10 storage system can accommodate the maximum video data from connected 32 NVRs. The system is able to provide more reliable storage that satisfies users' demands or mirroring methods. Q500-P10 system is easy to operate and have superior expansion potential delivering high reliability for video surveillance applications.
Easy Management and Storage
Qsan's Q500-P10 features multiple user interfaces to enhance the management and integration. Users can take the advantages of its Web-based interfaces to perform the configuration and monitoring tasks via mouse clicking. All functions in the user interfaces with the advanced data protection and status monitoring capability of storage devices are fully accessible and easy to manage. Administrators can use this storage system to control and monitor various NVRs and DVRs. The associated settings are easy to be exported from the current configurations. Hence, Q500-P10 administrators can quickly import all of the system configuration settings into their storage appliances.This system provides great ease of setup and installation. Simply following the steps of its central management software, users can succeed to integrate Qsan's monitoring and management features into the operating windows.
High Expandability
In conditions that users need to expand their Qsan Q500-P10 system with larger amounts of IP cameras and NVRs, or to keep the data for longer periods of time, and to have higher resolution demands of the video quality, Q500-P10 storage system is easy to scale up without degrading the server performance. It is verified that Q500-P10 can use single RAID controller to handle the data streams from up to 16 NVRs and 192 units of 1080P full HD cameras.If users want to keep the recorded data for longer periods of time, Q500-P10 scalable units can be quickly added in the system without any down time. When incorporating with more IP Cameras and NVRs, the second controller can non-disruptively and immediately take over the jobs. Such advantages allow Qsan's AegisSAN Q500-P10 storage appliance to be easily adjusted and expanded without any down time issues.
Ideal Solution for Security and Surveillance
To meet the crucial security requirements in verticals such as banks, airports, financial organizations, and retail stores, Qsan AegisSANQ Q500-P10 features hot swappable and fully redundant hardware components from dual active RAID controllers, power supplies, fan modules to JBOD expanders. All these components are hot pluggable ensuring 24/7 continuous service for security applications.In security and surveillance industry, above benefits are essential for a good storage system to keep recorded data for a longer period of time.
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