CUSTOMER PROFILE
One of the most ambitious projects to be undertaken on the Las Vegas Strip in over a decade, Resorts World Las Vegas is a massive complex spanning more than 117,000 square feet of gaming space and three separate hotel brands.
IT CHALLENGES
- Cost-effectively support thousands of networked surveillance cameras with small staff
- Ensure video recording and management servers remain online and operational with minimal downtime
- Ensure data is not just being stored but also that previously recorded data is available at all times
- Comply with strict gaming and regulatory requirements
- Fully test and deploy surveillance system in a compressed six-month schedule with on-going testing as required
THE SCALE COMPUTING SOLUTION
- HC3 software can be deployed quickly and is easy to manage
- Self-healing, intelligent automation enables IT and security surveillance teams to spend less time on menial tasks
- Integrate with Milestone XProtect VMS and other third-party operational technologies
- Support advanced video storage and analytics capabilities
- Modular cluster architecture provides instant scalability
CUSTOMER RESULTS
- Instantly scalable: 4,700 digital cameras are currently supported across eight Scale Computing clusters with plans to scale out to up to 14,000 cameras once the property is complete
- Plug-and-play deployment: Pre-configured and standardized builds of infrastructure components enables accelerated deployment as new cameras are brought online
- Seamless redundancy: Automated failover of clusters ensures downtime is minimized as there is no single point of failure
- Streamlined virtualization: Simple, fast and cost-effective virtualized environments that can be set up in seconds compared with VMware
Building virtual machines at my old property was a process that might take between 10 to 30 minutes per instance. With Scale Computing it takes just 20 seconds - a vast improvement especially when downtime is not an option.
Building an IT Foundation for the Innovations of Tomorrow
The intelligence and self-healing capabilities of Scale Computing’s HC3 Platform has also meant that Adams and his small team can spend less time grinding away on manual tasks such as break/fix emergencies and hardware maintenance and more time focused on strategic initiatives, which is all the more critical given the team’s limited headcount and the many competing demands placed on them on a daily basis.
In his previous life as a surveillance technician at another mega-casino on the Las Vegas strip, Adams remembers the challenge and expense of managing his VMware environment, “building VMs at my former property was a process that could take anywhere from 10 to 30 minutes per instance – multiply that by dozens of virtual machines and it really takes a toll on productivity. With Scale Computing, once we create a ‘golden image’ of what the machine should look like it simply becomes a matter of copying and pasting that image and the entire process takes less than 30 seconds. The fact that Scale Computing does a lot of the backend setup and configuration beforehand means that it’s just a matter of spinning up the VMs on our end and we’re operational.”
As with any new system, there’s always a learning curve to account for - especially for technicians whose experience has been focused on surveillance systems. “Because the Scale Computing platform is so automated, there really isn’t all that much to teach our staff. We were able to get everyone on the team certified on Scale Computing in a single morning. It was also really helpful that the team at Scale Computing built a training platform that mirrored our actual production environment so when we had questions, the sales engineer could provide answers specific to how our particular environment is set up.”
While the team hasn’t had an opportunity to conduct a full ROI analysis at this point, Adams anticipates that their team will save a significant amount of capital just by avoiding VMware’s annual licensing fees which can easily run into five figures on an annual basis. Beyond surveillance and security, Adams also anticipates that they will introduce a number of experiential enhancements that leverage their digital surveillance network: “Once our network is fully deployed, we’ll be able to do things like use our digital surveillance cameras for a wide range of video analytics such as facial detection and heat mapping to identify high traffic areas which can be used to improve the guest experience.”
The HE150 Series edge computing servers are the next step in simplicity, said Scott Mungall. He continued with these servers, installing a highly available hyperconverged edge infrastructure on a ship takes less time and takes limited space. Sending a new node to any location in the world in case of a node failure is now, due to the extreme small size of the cluster, much easier as well.
Easy to deploy, simple to manage, and cost-effective
Northern Marine immediately noticed enhanced performance and simplified management as soon as the solution was deployed. With the Scale Computing rollout, Northern Marine was able to build a single virtualized server, export it and send it to all of the vessels, saving around four hours per build. Other immediate benefits included:
Simplified and reduced management time
Complete redundancy – always on 24/7
Business continuity
Snapshot replication and backup
Ready for future deployments at sea
90% less time to rebuild: Restoring a system/VM on a vessel, for example after a cyber-attack, takes a fraction of the time, with less hours and stress for crew and shore-based support staff
90% less time to install a Docker application: Installing a new Docker application takes a fraction of the time compared to the same installation on the old Hyper-V environment
While the team hasn’t had an opportunity to conduct a full ROI analysis at this point, Northern Marine is looking forward to deploying more Scale Computing HC3 Edge clusters in the future.
The way the Scale Computing team helped us, both from a commercial and a technical point, made a huge difference in the beginning. I am very pleased with how Ingram Micro and Scale Computing worked together, allowing us to sell and implement the SC//HyperCore solution with confidence. Our experience with the Scale Computing support team is very good as well. Compared to the support we get from other vendors; Scale Computing’s ScaleCare technical support is very fast and the knowledge level of the engineers we talk to is very high. They know what they’re talking about, and this helps us to identify any issues and provide a solution very quickly.
Applications
The Zillertaler Gletscherbahn runs 24 virtual machines on the Scale Computing clusters for a variety of business administrative and operational applications, including ski pass management and payment applications. Many applications are mission-critical and require continuous availability.
Internet Of Things
The Zillertal Gletscherbahn also sees an explosion of the Internet of Things devices - not only in building management but also on the snow machines preparing the slopes. The Zillertal Gletscherbahn owns hundreds of snow machines. All of these are equipped with IoT devices to manage and provide insight into the activities of the machinery while on the slopes. The software of these IoT solutions runs as a virtual machine on the Scale Computing cluster.
Significant Benefits
Savings – It takes 50% fewer hours to manage the infrastructure at the Zillertal Gletscherbahn. As a result of the simplicity of SC//HyperCore and dramatically reduced management time, GiGaNet lowered the monthly managed services bill to the Zillertaler Gletscherbahn by 75%, a huge saving.
Lower initial acquisition cost - To upgrade to a new Hyper-V environment was costly and about 30% more expensive than the Scale Computing environment that was offered.
Updates – Updates were done after business hours. This was not only more costly, but it also took significantly longer and systems were not available during the upgrade process. Upgrading with SC//HyperCore is easy, and just as important, the clusters continued operations and users never experienced downtime during the upgrade process.
Security – This is important to the Zillertaler Gletscherbahn as well. It must keep downtime to a minimum and if something happens, recovering from a security breach is much faster and easier compared to their old environment.
“For us, one of the big benefits SC//HyperCore is that we can explain how the system works in a very short time. This means new technical engineers quickly build up knowledge about the system, saving us time and money. No expensive training courses are required.”
Next Steps
More and more of the older infrastructures will be replaced with Scale Computing. The Tiroler Zugspitzbahn installed a cluster at the end of 2021. While it is also possible to expand existing clusters with additional nodes, GiGaNet is thinking even bigger. Additional solutions like VDI and CCTV are also seen as an opportunity. It can easily extend existing clusters to run these applications or even have dedicated CCTV clusters that can expand its services across its clients. Especially with the new fiber networks that are installed throughout their region, GiGaNet sees more possibilities for the SC//HyperCore Video Surveillance.
ABOUT GIGANET
Scale Computing is a leader in edge computing, virtualization, and hyperconverged solutions worldwide. Scale Computing HC3® software uses self-healing and automation to maximise application uptime and performance, simplify management, and protect data. When ease of use, high availability, and total cost of ownership matters, Scale Computing HC3 is the ideal IT infrastructure platform for distributed enterprises, global retailers, and SMBs alike. Scale Computing is highly rated and highly reviewed on Gartner Peer Insights, Spiceworks, TechValidate and TrustRadius.
ABOUT SCALE COMPUTING
Scale Computing is a leader in edge computing, virtualization, and hyperconverged solutions worldwide. Scale Computing HC3® software uses self-healing and automation to maximise application uptime and performance, simplify management, and protect data. When ease of use, high availability, and total cost of ownership matters, Scale Computing HC3 is the ideal IT infrastructure platform for distributed enterprises, global retailers, and SMBs alike. Scale Computing is highly rated and highly reviewed on Gartner Peer Insights, Spiceworks, TechValidate and TrustRadius.