Luxury hotel in Downtown Dubai implements state-of-the-art surveillance system with support of Seagate data storage solutions

Safety and security in tourist capital, Dubai

While the city of Dubai is touted as one of the safest in the world, the city is home to many iconic buildings and properties, which are visited by millions of people every year. As such, for responsible building operators, security must be a priority. Indeed, the attention paid to security enables the city to maintain its reputation for safety that keeps tourists coming back.

Despite Dubai’s high level of safety, Downtown Dubai, home to the Burj Khalifa, the world’s tallest building, Dubai Mall, the world’s largest shopping mall, and a luxury hotel , a popular tourist destination, is glittering envy of the world. With 16.73 million people visiting Dubai in 2019 and Downtown Dubai, one of the city’s most popular areas, it is imperative that building operators can keep track of who and what is going on at their sites 24/7.

Upgrading the Luxury Hotel’s outdated surveillance system

With that said, it should come as little surprise that the a luxury hotel in Downtown Dubai , which is divided into two parts- hotel rooms and residential apartments, features over 1,500 cameras across its facility to protect its visitors, staff, and building. The luxury hotel which is owned and operated by the Abu Dhabi National Hotel (ADNH) and Residences is by Emaar Hospitality. However, the hotel’s security system, which was previously unified by one unified video surveillance system, recently became outdated and was no longer compliant with existing regulations and had an expired warranty With these ongoing operational and running issues of both the hotel and residences, operators of a luxury hotel in Downtown Dubai contracted Dubai-based company Agility Grid to install an innovative video surveillance and analytics solution to replace its outdated security system and both companies mutually agreed to separate the video surveillance. This led to the Seagate storage to be deployed in the hotel as a part of the SIRA compliance, which included recording at certain parameters.

However, installing a brand-new surveillance system is a little more complex than replacing old cameras with new ones. Unlike their older analogue counterparts, digital video surveillance must be supported with sufficient storage space to enable their full and effective functionality. This was especially true for a luxury hotel in Downtown Dubai because not only was a storage expansion required, but also both systems were also upgraded to the latest Milestone XProtect version to comply with Video Guard requirements. Indeed, robust storage infrastructure is essential to switch to the innovative video surveillance system where video streams would be of highest resolution, recorded for a longer period to enable all insights and analytics.  Storage infrastructure and its capacity will essentially determine the number and duration of each video stream, the image quality in terms of resolution and frames per second, and for how long each video stream would be stored. In the case of a building such as the luxury hotel, high-quality video streams, with the highest resolutions and maximum frames per second, are important to be on the top of suspicious or dangerous activity in the area.  But this requires a more substantial storage solution.

The Seagate Exos 2U12 solution

Agility Grid approached the Seagate enterprise solutions team with the request to develop a tailormade storage solution for a luxury hotel in Downtown Dubai’s’’ security needs. Following a proof of concept, the Seagate Exos 2U12 storage solution, a 2U rackmount enclosure unit, was adopted. This Exos solution offers a versatile, space-saving storage building block that is efficient, agile, and scalable. With flexible capabilities to support cables, universal ports, configuration controls, and standard zoning, the components on the modular system are interchangeable regardless of size or budget, making the unit easy to set up, maintain and expand. Moreover, the solution safeguards data thanks to intelligent fault diagnosis, persistent error logging, and monitoring. It is 95% faster than those solutions reliant on low-cost, low-capacity hard disk drives (HDD), often used to minimize storage expenses. Offering speeds of up to 14.4 GB/s in a single I/O module or 28.8 GB/s in a dual controller configuration, the Exos 2U12 storage solution is ideal for high-capacity and transaction-dependent environments that demand faster response times for optimal data availability. Finally, cost-efficient and with energy-efficient features, the solution is well suited to high-capacity environments. Offering exceptional performance and less risk of downtime, Exos 2U12 provides a luxury hotel in Downtown Dubai’s  operators peace of mind that their video surveillance system will operate to maximum capacity, offering its visitors optimum security.

 Final thoughts

Offering the most innovative and easily integrating storage services built on trust, affordability, and performance, working with a luxury hotel in Downtown Dubai  and Agility Grid demonstrated that Seagate continues to deliver a seamless experience at the best value. The company is looking forward to working with future partners to boost and optimize storage capacity to enable a new era of surveillance where second-to-none image quality, archival needs, and the latest features such as facial recognition are taken into consideration. In doing so, our solutions enable governments, businesses, and building operators to guarantee the highest possible levels of safety for their citizens, customers, employees and the general public.