F&M Tool and Plastics is a growing plastic molding manufacturer located in Leominster, MA. Earlier this year, the company needed to upgrade its video surveillance system for its manufacturing facility, a 220,000 square foot warehouse. With people in the building at all times, it’s important for the company to have cameras on the manufacturing floor for site security, in case of an accident, or if materials are put in the wrong place. In some cases, F&M’s customers even require video monitoring. Externally, additional cameras monitor materials handling on the company’s back lot, while others keep an eye on its shipping gates.
The company needed to be able to record in 1080p for better visibility and hold onto video storage for 14 days. However, keeping cameras up and running proved to be a constant challenge, and they kept running out of storage space..
After looking at various video management systems, F&M chose to stick with Ubiquiti Networks UniFi for its low cost of entry and ease of use, and were in the process of evaluating Dell, NetApp and HP for storage purposes. They had been attempting to place an older installation of UniFi video onto a Windows box with Ubuntu, but couldn’t get it to work. When they needed to install two new cameras, they decided to give Scale Computing a try based on the attractiveness of its licensing model. F&M installed UniFi running on an Ubuntu VM onto the Scale Computing HC3 and were able to migrate the new cameras over quickly.
With Scale Computing HC3, F&M is able to run its video surveillance system in a virtualized environment, allowing them to record at 1080p and retain video for 14 days, consuming around 800GB. F&M currently have 10 surveillance cameras and are planning to increase that total to 24.
