Recovery Ranch Relies on QNAP Security Surveillance Solution to Safeguard its Residents Community－觀察筆記

Recovery Ranch Relies on QNAP Security Surveillance Solution to Safeguard its Residents Community

Background
Recovery Ranch, located in Nashville, Tennessee in the USA, is a special rehabilitation center for clients with addictive disorders, eating or mood disorders, or in need of psychosomatic recovery for an improved quality of life.
Recovery Ranch employs 160 therapists and administrative personnel, serving over 75 clients at a time, with 24/7 care for different treatments, hence it is a large facility with residents of diverse backgrounds.

Challenge
Recovery Ranch campus includes two sites: the main campus with 2 buildings and the new campus with 6 buildings, individually located one mile apart. On land stretching over 2,000 acres and multiple campuses, it is necessary to have a powerful surveillance system to secure the community and archive records of any incidents that occur.
The two original buildings, dated back to late 1800s, were not designed with network wiring. Also, they had unstable power quality due to the age of the buildings and the location in the rural area, where bad weather could easily cause a power outage. Therefore, wireless application became very important, and a good mechanism to sustain system power supply was essential too.
Moreover, Recovery Ranch required 16 to 18 cameras installed around the campuses and a system able to store videos for 2 to 3 months. Prior to the installation, Recovery Ranch surveyed CCTV and DVR solutions, but all lacked advanced management functions and did not have sufficient storage capacity.

Solution
In the end, Recovery Ranch turned to QNAP® VioStor NVR surveillance system because of its IP-based, robust design and the many unique management features. Two units of VioStor NVR VS-6020 Pro, powered by Dual-core Intel® Atom™ processor, were installed on each campus, monitoring 25 Vivotek Fixed Domes and MOBOTIX fisheye cameras for state of the art image quality.
“QNAP NVR definitely plays a central role in the video security for Recovery Ranch, as this is a one stop solution that is well integrated with multiple brands of IP camera and hence can fulfill very diverse indoor/outdoor monitoring requirements,” said Jeff Chase, IT Manager of Recovery Ranch. “Moreover, the system is very scalable in camera deployment, and with free software updates bringing more feature at no cost, which also makes this a future-proof investment for many years to come,” added Chase.
The VS-6020 Pro supports High quality H.264, MPEG-4, M-JPEG, and MxPEG recording, and can stream videos efficiently over the wireless network while maintaining high megapixel image quality. Besides, supporting 4TB single hard drive, the 6-bay VS-6020 Pro accommodates up to 24TB large storage capacity to satisfy Recovery Ranch’s needs of storing videos of 2 to 3 months.
The VS-6020 Pro also solves the problem of unexpected power outage caused by the bad weather. With the support for UPS devices, the VS-6020 Pro is programmed with USB connected UPS to ensure 24/7 service. Detailed event logs of system warning, network disconnection and the UPS status are also well recorded for diagnosis.
What Recovery Ranch favored most was the Intelligent Video Analytics (IVA) function. By using the Motion Detection IVA algorithm in playback mode, the security administrator can set up areas of interest and time frame for the NVR to automatically find events of interest. For example, looking for an individual, in a specific area, at a certain time of the day. It is overall less-labor intensive than manually watching each channel at 16x fast-forward play. It is quick to review the day’s video, and reviewing evidence is more efficient than ever.

Result
Since the 2 units of VioStor NVR VS-6020 Pro were installed, they have required little effort to do maintenance. The Linux-based operating system and RAID storage volume is very robust and stable, and at the same time it is more power efficient than running the VMS server on a PC. Therefore, Recovery Ranch does not have to keep the PC running 100% of the time. It shows power consumption changes from 200W to 43W (with 6 HDDs installed) in average, resulting in up to 5 times of savings in utility.
“The VS-6020 Pro is an easy-to-use and intuitive product, enabling the security administrator to fully utilize the features of the surveillance system. We can spend less time on IT, and more time on running the business,” added Chase.