DW Spectrum User Manual

Key Concepts:

•Storage backup duplicates the footage in an archive and saves it to another available location.

•Backup locations can be separate physical drives in the server, network attached storage, or addressable remote locations (FTP).

•The Enterprise Edition of DW Spectrum can select a cloud storage service for (video) archive backup. 

•Each Server only performs backups from it's own storage archives.

•Every Server in a multiple Server Sites must specify a location to backup footage.

•Backups can be performed in real-time or as scheduled function.

•Backups can be configured to copy captured low-resolution streams, or all streams.

•Backups can be configured for specific cameras.

Once a backup has been executed, backup archives can still be directly played and accessed via the Client. For example, a Site can be configured to use local storage for 7 days of footage and backup storage for 30 days. If the local storage is backed up once per week then users could still access all backed up video.

NOTE: To configure either backup or redundant storage it is necessary to define at least one main and one backup storage location as described in "Server Attached and NAS Storage".

To Configure Storage Backup

Make sure to backup storage location has been added to the server. Backup settings cannot be changed if a backup storage location is not defined or is not currently attached. A small alert displays under the Backup Archive section of Server Settings > Storage Management if there is no backup storage drive or if no cameras have been selected.

1.Right-click on a Server in the Resource Panel and choose Server Settings.

2.Select the Backup tab within the Server Settings dialog

3.Select the cameras to backup by toggling the switch on the right side. Toggle the New added devices option to automatically begin backing up a device once it has been added to the Site.

4.Use the What to backup menu to select what aspect of the camera's archive should be backed up:

•All archive

•Motion

•Objects

•Bookmarks

•Motion and Objects

•Motion and Bookmarks

•Objects and Bookmarks

•Motion, Bookmarks, and Objects

5.Use the Quality menu to select which streams to backup:

•All streams

•Low-res

6.Use Bandwidth Limit to set the bandwidth limit for your backups:

•No Limit (redundant) – Footage is written to main and backup location(s) immediately and simultaneously with no bandwidth restriction.

•Schedule – Backup is performed only during the selected days and hours. Fill in the cells of the schedule using the following options: Unlimited, No backup, and Limited to (limit to a certain Mbit/s, but remember that too tight a bandwidth constraint can cause the entire backup to fail). The footage will be backed up since the last time backup was completed. If network bandwidth is insufficient, the backup may not be fully completed within the specified time frame. In this case the date and time of the footage that was backed up will be clearly indicated (Archive backup complete until...). 

•Fixed – The bandwidth remains a specified Mbit/s across all days and times.

NOTE: If Skip Current Queue is clicked, the backup process will ignore existing footage and only backup recordings after that point.

After the backup is finished, an internal archive integrity check occurs so that if an archive file is changed or removed, users who are actively viewing that archive will be notified. See "Archive Integrity Check Failure".

To Configure Redundant Storage

With this structure, each Server will back up footage to all other servers in the Site. This will reduce the overall amount of stored footage but provides healthy redundancy.

NOTE: Each Server backs up the archive for selected cameras, but if a camera is moved to a different server, backup will include only the portion archived before the camera was moved.

1.Make sure each Server is available and accessible through the network.

2.On each server, create a shared folder (\\server\shared) on a separate HDD to prevent Site malfunction.

3.Make \\server\shared accessible through the network with the WRITE permission.

4.Go to Server Settings and add all shared folders as NAS devices.

5.Set to Backup for each one added.

6.Repeat the above steps on all servers.

7.Configure backup parameters as described above. It is best that servers perform their backup at different times, otherwise recording speed may be too low. When many servers use the same drive for recording it can lead to I/O errors or insufficient write speed.