Benefits and summary
As covered in this white paper, XProtect Corporate, XProtect Expert and XProtect Professional+ are built on a flexible multi-tiered client-server architecture where the architecture ensures a perfect fit with standard IT technologies, servers, network, and storage. The architecture also provides flexibility and scalability, making the VMS fit installations of any size ranging from small single-server systems with a few cameras to distributed multi-server and multi-site installations with thousands of cameras.
The modular system architecture also permits cost-efficient expansion and maintenance of deployed systems since additional recording servers can be added as needed. Secondly, the camera drivers, server components and client applications may be upgraded independently, making it more simple and flexible to upgrade the VMS.
To meet the strictest needs for system security and reliability, the XProtect VMS products offer the possibility to separate the camera network from the client network. This configuration will eliminate any interference in the video communication between the cameras and the recording servers on the one side and client-network traffic on the other side. This physical separation furthermore prevents users, or other unauthorized persons, from gaining access to video directly from the cameras or tampering with camera settings. In addition to this, XProtect VMS products provide an array of built-in security and high-availability mechanisms, including support for secure camera communication via HTTPS, fault tolerance using cold-standby or hot-standby failover recording servers and native or 3rd party failover methods for other VMS components.
Embracing standard IT technologies and concepts, such as standard IPv4 and IPv6 network communication, VLAN, VPN, Microsoft Active Directory, virtualization technologies, SQL databases and SNMP, XProtect VMS products fit into the existing IT topology. This allows system administrators to apply existing knowledge and IT tools when managing the VMS system, as a complement to the native central management and monitoring functions available via the VMS and the Management Client. This not only reduces the cost of equipment and training of system administrators, it also reduces the overall cost of maintaining the system in production.