As one of the largest malls in the world, Mall of America in Minneapolis, Minn., chose to improve the quality, speed and reliability of its video surveillance system with Pivot3 Inc.’s Serverless Computing Array. The installation was part of a major upgrade to protect the mall’s four miles of storefronts, 13,000 employees and 40 million annual visitors.
The Pivot3 Serverless Computing Array runs on Genetec’s Omnicast video management system software. The video surveillance system covers 4.2 million square feet of enclosed space, including a seven-acre indoor amusement park and a 1.2 million gallon aquarium.
“We have been working on a plan to double the size of this mall, and the Pivot3 combined storage and server solution provides us with the flexibility and the scalability needed to expand much more efficiently than anything else we have evaluated,” says Chris Lake-Smith, director of IT at Mall of America.
In the planning phase, the security group considered a Dell Storage Area Network (SAN), but system integrator VTI Security suggested the Pivot3 Serverless Computing, which uses 40 percent less power than a separate fiber channel SAN and server combination.
Because the specification called for 15 days of storage at 24 frames per second and 4-CIF resolution (704 x 576), the mall’s IT department selected six Pivot3 CloudBank appliances. The appliances fit 72 terabytes of storage capacity and six embedded servers into less than two feet of rack space.
“With the Pivot3 CloudBanks and the Genetec system, we are getting a much clearer image than before, the image retention time has been expanded, and the system is reliable and easy to maintain,” says Lake-Smith. “We can now concentrate on managing the security of the mall and not the security system. We are very happy with the decision we made.”
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