Western Digital Expanded Portfolio of Storage Devices for Surveillance

Western Digital Corp. expanded its portfolio of storage devices purpose-built for the surveillance market, introducing three offerings: the industrial-grade 3D NAND UFS embedded flash drive (EFD) for surveillance; an expanded Purple microSD card series to support up to 256GB ⁽²⁾ capacity; and the Device Analytics, this device analytics technology enabling OEMs and system integrators to proactively manage their storage subsystems and maintain optimal operation.

These devices and tools address the complex and dynamic data demands of a surveillance market in transformation, supporting the performance, capacity and endurance required by networked and AI- enabled camera systems, as well as other smart video devices operating at the edge.

“As the adoption of higher resolution and AI-enabled cameras expands, and traditional centralized surveillance video systems become more distributed, fast and reliable storage with higher capacities are essential for enabling surveillance devices to capture, analyze and transform greater amounts of data, locally, and in real-time,” said Oded Sagee, senior director, product marketing, Western Digital. “With the new devices and analytics capability introduced today, we are excited to enable the new era of smart video and AI-driven surveillance systems with the industry’s most comprehensive offering for surveillance, from the edge to the core.“

In modern video surveillance, video and its rich metadata provide valuable insights for use in both forensic analyses and predictive actions, ranging from consumer behavior in retail environments, traffic patterns in cities or crowd control in public environments. Whether in an NVR, IoT gateway, multi-access edge computing node (MEC) or other configurations, surveillance cameras and edge systems are key elements of real-time, AI-enabled systems, driving increased demand for more reliable and storage solutions that can operate efficiently in rugged, 24/7 environments.

Industry 3D NAND UFS-based EFD for surveillance

Built on the company’s 3D NAND architecture, the iNAND IX EU312 UFS EFD brings UFS speeds combined with industrial grade high endurance and capacities to cameras and smart video applications at the edge. This device delivers read speeds of up to 750MB/s ⁽¹⁾ and write speeds of up to 320MB/s ⁽¹⁾, which support read- and write-intensive use cases,

including AI-enabled video cameras and edge devices. Support for up to 768TBW provides the endurance levels required for the continuous recording conditions. The EFD features NAND flash management firmware, including ECC, read refresh, wear-leveling and bad block management.

Expanded surveillance-class storage for 4K- and AI-enabled video at edge

In April 2018, the company introduced the Purple microSD card designed for surveillance cameras, bringing the Purple series’ performance, endurance and reliability to always-on video surveillance cameras at the edge. Now leveraging 3D NAND technology and available in capacities ranging up to 256GB ⁽²⁾ with support for up to 1,000 P/E cycles, the Purple microSD card line delivers long-lasting, on-camera storage for the 24/7 continuous operation workloads required by AI-enabled and high-resolution professional surveillance cameras.

The microSD card supports operating temperatures ranging from -25°C to 85°C and is humidity resistant to support continuous operation in extreme weather conditions and a variety of indoor and outdoor environments. (see Purple surveillance portfolio)

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Proactive storage management with Device Analytics

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Supported by Purple HDD, Purple microSD cards, and the company’s IX EU312 UFS EFD, the device analytics technology provides system integrators and end users ability to proactively manage storage on their surveillance systems. Device analytics provide a set of parametric operational and environmental data to the host system that ultimately helps users pre-empt potential issues. Through its analytics capability, device analytics can extract insights and provide integrators and users with recommended actions that will allow improved monitoring and proactive management of their systems to help maintain optimal storage operation, and in turn contribute to reduced TCO.

Enables surveillance data to thrive

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The iNAND UFS EFD, high capacity Purple microSD cards and Device Analytics technology together complement a portfolio of storage devices for today’s surveillance needs. It includes the WD Purple Surveillance HDD for high-capacity support for NVRs and DVRs, the Ultrastar HDD series for use in back-end storage, video analytics servers, and learning systems, and the company’s industrial grade iNAND e.MMC, SD and microSD storage solutions for use with surveillance cameras and a variety of connected surveillance applications. Together, they provide OEMs, surveillance system integrators and installers a complete edge-to-cloud solution to capture, preserve, access and transform data.

⁽¹⁾ 1MB/s = one million bytes per second. Based on internal testing; performance may vary depending on your hardware and software components and configurations.
⁽²⁾ As used for storage capacity, 1GB = one billion bytes. Total accessible capacity varies depending on operating environment.