Reliable Backup

Jul 1, 2007 12:00 PM, By Ashley Roe

           

Founded in 1829 by four members of the Sisters of Charity service organization, St. Joseph's Orphanage (sjokids.org) is a mental health, education and residential treatment agency that helps abused, cognitively challenged and emotionally disturbed children and their families. With two campuses in Cincinnati and four additional offices in northern Kentucky and southwestern Ohio, the orphanage offers day treatment, live-in, community transition and educational programs to help guide children and families to recovery. The various facilities also offer foster care for children as young as one day and as old as teenagers entering adulthood.

At the Altercrest, Ohio, campus, just outside of Cincinnati, agency personnel treat and monitor program participants around-the-clock. “We have about 30 kids who live on campus and more who attend our day-treatment programs,” says Jim Fletcher, security manager. Although the orphanage does not have a defined security department, agency IT officials and supervisors recognized a need for video camera surveillance around the three-building campus. “Our security goals were to have a surveillance system in place mainly so we could store data and view it after the fact,” Fletcher says. “If an incident occurs, we want to be able to review the video and find out exactly what happened.” As a result, the orphanage required a system with an adequate storage capacity.

When the campus's previous digital video recorder (DVR) systems proved unreliable in storing large amounts of data, the search began for an alternative system to alleviate the problem. “We chose Mitsubishi DVRs because after researching different brands, we found that the DX-TL4516U met all our needs and was the most cost-effective for us,” Fletcher says. With an internal storage capacity of up to 1 terabyte (TB) and an optional 7-TB external storage capacity, the DX-TL4516U DVR fit the IT department's storage needs.

Fletcher and other support specialists installed three DX-TL4516U 16-channel DVRs in the campus's supervisory office to provide live viewing of the 48 cameras dispersed throughout the facility grounds. Four IT specialists remain in the office and conduct periodic checks of the surveillance video, which is displayed on three flat-screen monitors throughout the day. The DVRs contain built-in multiplexers for viewing live and recorded video simultaneously from the Web or via a PC through Mitsubishi's remote viewing software. In addition to monitoring video live, the IT specialists will retrieve specific portions of video to review incidents on the campus if necessary.

Fletcher and other staff installed the DVRs and remote viewing software in less than a day without the help of an integrator. “Now, we don't have to worry about not having the means to back up and store our video data,” Fletcher says. The DVRs also provide synchronous audio recording, emergency recording and alarm partitions.

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