Kangwon Land is a casino resort in the province of Gangwon-do in Korea. They’re unique among the 17 casinos in the country in that they’re the only one where Korean citizens are allowed by law to play. They’re more than a casino: as Jun-Ho Jeon describes it: “We’re a five-star resort with golf, skiing and other recreational activities. Kangwon Land is focused on ensuring that everyone enjoys themselves and has a world-class experience.”
Kangwon Land is also focused on ensuring that they meet industry regulations. This includes video surveillance of every table in use. Their video surveillance infrastructure is large, complete with 1400 high-definition and 300 standard-definition cameras in constant operation. It’s believed that this is the largest centralized IP video surveillance environment in Asia.
In 2012, Kangwon Land significantly overhauled their surveillance infrastructure to match an overall expansion of the entire resort—casino and recreational facilities. They knew they were going to be generating far more data than could be well managed with their existing storage. Capturing and storing all that data was important. Just as important was ensuring that it was always available for instant analysis, especially for cases of suspected fraud and debt.
Updating an entire surveillance ecosystem—cameras, networks and servers, and storage systems—required specific, well-defined, goals: reduce costs, expand coverage, and improve the overall efficiency of their operations. Jun-Ho Jeon explains that the primary technology goal was “to couple all our video equipment with a storage system that was scalable, reliable and easy to administer—and up to the job of handling our video analytics applications.”
Kangwon Land deployed EMC Isilon Scale-Out NAS storage because of its scalability, large capacity and single point of management. The review process was very complex and lengthy, with many criteria, including:
- First, were the basics: Isilon had the capacity, ability to scale, and processing performance to hold up under the demands of even a constantly full-capacity house.
- The Isilon OneFS® Operating System was critical. Kangwon Land needed the efficiencies and the simplicities of the single volume, single file system scale-out NAS architecture and its high performance data-in-place analytics capabilities.
- Isilon was fully compatible with the Video Management System already in place.
- EMC was an important partner from the beginning. They offered Kangwon Land sound best practices recommendations and compatibility benchmarking that provided valuable guidance during configuration and installation.
With EMC, Kangwon Land expects to improve operational efficiencies and reduce IT services costs across the entire surveillance system. It’s already carrying its weight. In its brief six months in operation, Isilon has flawlessly stored, managed and analyzed 11 petabytes of raw footage, at peak performance and efficiency.
The ultimate business impact of Kangwon Land’s EMC infrastructure is best told by Jun-Ho Jeon:
“EMC Isilon enabled us to move to a more innovative and agile video surveillance environment. With the establishment of the video surveillance system, Kangwon Land is now equipped with the cutting-edge facility fit for its world renown as a world class casino resort.”
