NICE News Special Edition - Volume 2, Issue 2

	JIM PARK UPDATE NEWARK POLICE ST. GALLEN MULTI-NATIONAL COMPANIES SELECT NICE MARCH NUG TELECONFERENCE TELECOMMUNICATOR OF THE YEAR RECORD RESULTS NICE IN THE NEWS QUICK SURVEY - WIRELESS 9-1-1 RETHINKING REDUNDANCY SEE NICE AT...




	Contact NICE: Email: Welcome@nice.com On the web: www.nice.com North America: Customer hotline: (888) 217-0593 Customer support: (800) 642-3611 (800) NICE 611 Europe, Middle East, and Africa: +44 (0) 207 2642064 +972 97753800
	NICE Systems, Inc. 950 Herndon Parkway Suite 250 Herndon, VA 20170

RETHINKING REDUNDANCY: PSAPS RE-EXAMINE APPROACH TO RECORDING

In the wake of recent disasters, public safety stakeholders are realizing the importance of systems that enable reliable and redundant emergency communications. They're also placing greater emphasis on ensuring that the technology they put in place to capture these interactions is reliable and failsafe too. This article examines some of the different ways you can build redundancy into your NICE recording solution and takes a look at public safety operations that have taken redundancy to new heights (with a little help from NICE).

Evolving technology paves path toward redundancy
Remember the old "analog" days when 9-1-1 recordings were captured on reel-to-reel or VHS tapes? If you wanted redundant recording, you had to double-up on recording hardware, too. That meant adding bulky reel-to-reel recorders which cost more money and took up extra space.

Then in the 1980s, recording entered the digital age. Systems fashioned on computer technology leveraged hard drives to store calls, in tandem with removable media (like digital audio tapes). But that built-in redundancy came at a premium, and not many agencies could afford to keep more than a few weeks or months of calls online.

In contrast, today's recording systems, such as NICE Systems' NiceLog®, are light-years ahead of these earlier generation systems. Equipped with RAID 1, NiceLog offers mirrored hard drives to capture and store voice recordings and the data that goes along with them - not once, but twice.

NiceLog with RAID 5 provides an even higher level of recording redundancy by replicating recorded voice and data (and the recorder's operating system) on three hard drives. If one RAID hard drive fails, the other(s) will continue to record emergency communications. The RAID drives on the NICE system are hot-swappable (as are the power supplies), which means you can swap one out while the recording system is still online and operational. Once a new hard disk is inserted, it is automatically formatted and reloaded with all of the data. RAID storage offers other benefits too - not the least of which are: the ability to store more calls online for longer periods of time; faster access to calls; and time savings from eliminating tasks associated with managing tapes or other media.

Of course, if you want to achieve added redundancy by capturing calls in parallel on removable media, such as DVD and AIT drives, you can do that too.

RAID storage is one way to achieve added redundancy in your recording system. Another way is to configure your system for hot standby recording, also referred to in the industry as "N+1." For example, if you have a system that consists of 3 primary recorders (N=3), you can designate a fourth recorder (the "+1" recorder) to be a standby recorder that will automatically begin recording and archiving in the event that any of the 3 primary recorders fail.

If your 9-1-1 center wants complete voice and data protection, another option is to employ a parallel recording system that duplicates the recording "path" all the way from the telecom or radio interfaces to the storage devices. Such a system would include redundant interfaces, redundant recorders and multiple RAID hard drives.

Taking redundancy to the next level: the "enterprise"
Thanks to the modern marvel of computer networks that connect the enterprise, today's solutions for capturing and storing 9-1-1 recordings are no longer constrained to a single site. They can be dispersed across multiple sites, enabling 9-1-1 centers to achieve geographic redundancy.

For example, for added data protection, PSAPs can store their recordings both locally and off-site to a SAN (storage area network), NAS (network attached storage device), or DAS (direct attached storage device). Many PSAPs now-a-days are employing backup sites and this approach to recording can facilitate recovery of data in the event of a disaster. If there's a catastrophic failure at one site, the PSAP can be assured that their recordings at the other site are protected and intact.

This approach also lowers cost of ownership because PSAPs can leverage their existing storage infrastructures for their 9-1-1 recordings. They can set up rules in the system to automate the process of transferring and backing up files (in a way that minimizes any negative impact on their network); and they can configure the system to automatically archive, retain or delete recordings based on their specific retention requirements.

Lastly, keep in mind that recording systems don't just capture voice (that is, the actual 9-1-1 and radio communications). They also capture data along with those communications (like an ANI or ALI, or in the case of trunked radio systems, radio IDs, talkgroup IDs, and so on). Lacking this data, it can be difficult if not impossible to retrieve recordings and piece together events. But sometimes, due to a problem on the radio system end, the data may not there for the recording system to capture. For that reason, if you're in the market for a recording system, you may want to look for one that can redundantly capture data from different sources or points within your trunked radio system.

From the drawing board to the comm. center floor: real-life examples of redundant recording
Public safety operations of all sizes and types are taking advantage of NICE's redundant recording technology to improve service and enhance their comm. center operations. Here are a just a few examples:

The New York Police Department (NYPD)
The NYPD PSAC (Public Safety Answering Center) handles more than 12 million 9-1-1 calls a year. All of these emergency calls and radio transmissions are captured on a 10,000-channel NICE recording system and retained for 180 days. The NYPD PSAC consists of two sites (a primary and a backup site). The sites are connected by dedicated T3 lines. The NYPD uses primary and backup recorders and RAID storage for redundant recording and data capture. Each call coming into the primary site is redundantly recorded and captured on RAID. It is then replicated and sent across the network to the backup site, where two additional copies are stored on RAID storage devices.

Harris County Regional Radio Center
The Houston, TX-based Harris County Regional Radio Center operates a large, multi-site trunked radio network for hundreds of local law enforcement, government and other user organizations. The County relies on NICE to capture over 230,000 radio interactions per day from 1,200 plus talkgroups and 20,000 radios, to ensure flawless operation of the network. NICE designed a redundant solution for the County that captures trunked radio interactions from the Motorola SmartZone^TM controller and also captures trunked radio data from each of the 27 tower sites. The system offers additional fault tolerance with dual power supplies and RAID storage.

Monroe County Emergency Communications Department (ECD)
The Monroe County (NY) ECD employs a fully redundant NICE solution which it purchased from independent distributor and NICE partner, Wilmac. The ECD handles over 1.2 million calls per year for 76 different agencies. All of these communications are captured on a NICE system that includes two primary recorders. A third recorder is employed in a "N+1" configuration should either of the primary recorders unexpectedly fail. The system includes redundant power supplies and stores each recording in three places: on a hard drive and on dual DVDs for added backup. The County's director, John Merklinger, can cite examples of cases where 9-1-1 recordings have resulted in convictions, and he says this level of redundancy is essential given the importance of the recordings.