CUSTOMERS & GOVERNMENT & PUBLIC SECTOR
Frontline officers leverage new data insights — saving $2 million CAD and cutting backup times by 76.9%
About Edmonton Police Service
Edmonton Police Service (EPS) relies on data-driven evidence to assist officers in reducing crime and promoting public safety. Being able to react quickly to the changing needs of the community is vital to keeping people safe — and it's a top priority for EPS.
The COVID-19 pandemic forced EPS to a remote-work model overnight while petabyte-scale digital evidence (CCTV video, audio, digitized records) overwhelmed a legacy storage system that couldn't provision quickly or scale.
EPS now stores 1.4 PB on Scality RING with HPE GreenLake and Veeam, saving about CAD$2 million over five years and cutting backup times from 13 hours to 3 hours — a 76.9% reduction.
The Challenge
Petabyte-scale evidence and a pandemic exposed the legacy system's limits
The COVID-19 pandemic forced EPS to a remote-work model overnight while petabyte-scale digital evidence (CCTV video, audio, digitized records) overwhelmed a legacy storage system that couldn't provision quickly or scale.
The onset of COVID-19 in March 2020 put EPS to the test. Not only did the organization have to quickly transition to a remote work environment, the pandemic also triggered changes in the way police officers conduct their work. This highlighted the need to transition from a legacy system (with inadequate provisioning) to a modern platform that would enable rapid deployment and expansion — without extended procurement cycles.
EPS needed built-in agility to aid staff in responding quickly to a rapidly changing environment and new technologies — whether that be a video solution, cameras installed around the city, or other innovations coming into operation.
To facilitate more efficient use of police resources, EPS had recently implemented a new electronic content management system that stores evidence in a more organized, streamlined fashion. Evidence was previously stored in many different forms — everything from physical pieces of paper, to video on CDs, to audio recordings — in disparate systems. But with the workload for digitally converting and storing massive volumes of evidence increasing, the question became: Where would this petabyte-scale data be stored? The legacy system simply wouldn't suffice.
Suddenly, we had to deploy a large amount of compute and storage infrastructure, but how could we provision this in a timely manner with supply chains simultaneously grinding to a halt? To go from an idea to something being prepared and implemented would take six months to a year previously — we just couldn't operate that way anymore.
Nathan Wong
Director of technology services, Edmonton Police Service
Suddenly, we had to deploy a large amount of compute and storage infrastructure, but how could we provision this in a timely manner with supply chains simultaneously grinding to a halt? To go from an idea to something being prepared and implemented would take six months to a year previously — we just couldn't operate that way anymore.
Nathan Wong
Director of technology services, Edmonton Police Service
Solution
Scality RING on HPE GreenLake — pay-as-you-grow, with Veeam backup
The need to transition to a flexible, scalable, and cost-effective solution prompted a major overhaul of EPS' storage infrastructure environment. The deployed solution includes the HPE GreenLake edge-to-cloud platform, HPE scalable object storage with Scality RING, HPE 3PAR StoreServ 8000 storage, and the HPE Apollo 4510 Gen10 and HPE Apollo 4500 system, as well as Veeam for backup.
Scality RING software-defined storage on the HPE GreenLake Cloud Services platform
With Scality RING on the HPE Apollo platform, we have a great base for all the unstructured data that we know is coming down the line, such as video footage and audio recordings. When you layer all those things together, plus knowing we don't need to pay for all of it up front, it really gives us the capability to meet the needs of the organization.
Gary Wong
Infrastructure section manager, Edmonton Police Service
The EPS is currently storing 1.4 PB of data on its new storage platform. The HPE + Scality solution acts as a base layer for all the virtual infrastructure that supports EPS' new digital asset management system. While the HPE GreenLake platform provides mission-critical, scalable performance, Scality RING offers the flexibility required to scale out the platform, store unstructured data, and put it onto performant hardware that cost-effectively meets the organization's needs.
The Results
CAD$2 million saved, backups cut from 13 hours to 3
Lower TCO
Efficiency
Scalability
Saves $2 million CAD over five years
Reduces backup times by 76.9%
Thanks to the pay-as-you-grow flexibility of HPE GreenLake, EPS doesn't have to outlay so much capital at the beginning for things they don't need. Switching from a CAPEX model to a consumption-based model will save about CAD$2 million over the next five years. And with Veeam rounding out the overall solution, EPS has reduced backup times from 13 hours to 3 hours.
Since deployment, EPS' operations team hasn't experienced any challenges with performance reliability.
To just throw in a brand-new platform and have it run without any ongoing challenges, failures, or performance problems, I think speaks to some of the benefits that Scality has provided us.
Gary Wong
Infrastructure section manager, Edmonton Police Service
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