Calcasieu Parish Sheriff’s Office Deploys Cloudian Hybrid Cloud

The Calcasieu Parish Sheriff’s Office in Louisiana has deployed a hybrid cloud with Cloudian’s HyperStore object storage system. The Cloudian solution stores and protects the department’s large volumes of video surveillance, body cam, and digital evidence data, and has reduced costs by more than 50 percent when compared with alternative solutions.

With more than 400 body-worn cameras and at least two cameras in each of its more than 200 patrol and prisoner transport vehicles, this Sheriff’s Office generates a vast amount of data. Digital evidence in the form of crime-scene photos and digital forensic captures from storage devices, computers, tablets, smartphones, and vehicle information systems add to the storage requirement. To store, manage, and protect this information, the organization deployed a Cloudian solution with 600TB of capacity on-premises and replicates data to Amazon S3 for disaster recovery.

The Cloudian solution is used in conjunction with a video capture and digital evidence management system from Getac. “We needed the performance and locality of storage in our data centers and the enhanced protection of storage in the cloud,” said Adrian Quintela, information technology director at the Calcasieu Parish Sheriff’s Office. “With Cloudian, we were able to combine scalable storage on-premises with cloud data-management, all in one platform.”

To ensure robust data protection, the Calcasieu solution includes policy-based data replication both to a Cloudian system at a remote DR site and to the public cloud. Replication processes are managed entirely via Cloudian’s integrated management tools, thus saving costs and reducing management complexity. Additional cost efficiencies were achieved with the solution’s small footprint. Consuming just 3U of rack height per location, the Cloudian system saved more than 70 percent on space, power, and cooling.

Deploying the Cloudian system was a quick process for the office’s IT team. “It took no more than a day to set up Cloudian at each data center, and the Cloudian support team even helped us resolve a problem that turned out to be unrelated,” said Paul Hite, senior systems engineer at Calcasieu Parish Sheriff’s Office. Quintela added, “Storage availability is critical to our ongoing operations, so it gives us the confidence to know the Cloudian team is ready to help out when needed.”

“Law enforcement today requires always-on data access to support operations, making bulletproof data durability a must,” said Jon Toor, CMO of Cloudian. “We are thrilled that Calcasieu Parish Sheriff’s Office selected Cloudian for this highly innovative, mission-critical deployment and look forward to supporting them as their data management needs grow.”

INDUSTRY

Law Enforcement

REQUIREMENTS

• On-premises storage with AWS S3 cloud integration
• Quickly accessible media
• Self-describing assets
• Integrated data protection

SOLUTION

Cloudian HyperStore appliances, 600TB

RESULTS

• Simplified management
• Mission-critical performance
• Multi-site data protection
• Cost savings of 50 percent

“With Cloudian, we were able to combine scalable storage on-premises with cloud data-management, all in one platform.”

Adiran Quintela, IT Director
Calcasieu Parish Sheriff’s Office