Storage
Server storage configuration includes storage directories, size and duration quotas, optional encryption, cleanup time settings and storage differentiation by name for further flexible allocation of the recorded streams.
To access the storage settings for the server via Macula Console, choose the Configuration section, then select Servers from the menu on the left, double-click your target server and then click the Storage tab. Click the Open storage properties button to open the configuration dialog box.
There are also several settings in server settings dialog box itself. These are explained in the end of this chapter.
To save the changes after you have finished with storage configuration, hit the Apply button beneath the storage settings, then hit OK to close the storage configuration dialog box, and then click OK to finally save the storage settings together with the server configuration. Pressing Cancel on the last step will revoke the changes in the storage configuration.
Directories
All available local disks will be automatically listed after the first installation (with empty configuration) and enabled for recording with default archive directories using the Default storage label. By default, system disk (C:) is not listed if other disks are available, as we strongly do not recommend recording to the system disk.
If you are upgrading, re-installing the software, restoring an earlier database configuration, or inserting new local disks into the server after the software has been installed, the local disks will not be listed automatically so you need to add them as new storages. You can also add network paths to remote storage locations.
Use UP and DOWN arrows on the right to change the disk order (priority); use the recycle bin button in the top panel to remove any local or network directory from the storage configuration.
For each storage location, the following information will be displayed:
storage priority: determined by the item position in the list
storage label (see description below)
current quota size
free space on disk (except network storages)
total disk size (except network storages)
Each directly attached storage location will be automatically assigned a quota of 90%; each storage will have 20GB quota by default. We strongly advise that you review all the settings and make sure that all the storage locations have sufficient free space, and, if necessary, free up some space. It is recommended that every recording location has 10-15% of free space: this helps avoid fragmentation effect and also allows highly loaded software to effectively enforce recording quotas.
Minimum quota per each storage location for any storage type is 20GB.
To change the disk quota, simply highlight the desired location for storage from the item list, then enter the quota size in GB and click Apply changes.
If you plan to protect some footage from being erased (this functionality is available via Macula Monitor application), keep in mind that protected archive areas will be ignored when forcing quotas. Make sure there is enough free space on the disk(s) and set lower quotas, if necessary.
To review and/or un-protect such areas, go to the Monitoring section of Macula Console, choose Archive statistics on the left, highlight one or more target channels, and press the Protected intervals button on the top panel.
Storages
You can either use the Default storage category for all locations, or create multiple different storage profiles (types, names, labels). These can be used for manually distributed streaming between storage directories:
storage directories are marked with corresponding storage tags
each channel is assigned to a recording location
To choose a storage profile different from the Default, select the storage location from the Directories list and click the Change button.
Select one of the built-in storage profiles or create and edit a new one.
The built-in storage types are:
Disabled: storage location will not be used
Default: default storage tag
Fallback: storage destination to be used if all the storage units with specified tags have failed
Readonly: existing data will be available for reading and will not be erased; no new recordings will be appended to this location
These profiles cannot be edited or removed. Fallback storage settings are available in the corresponding tab of the Storage properties.
Click + New storage button to create a new storage profile or select an existing one and click the Edit button in the upper-right-hand corner to change its name.
Enter the storage profile title and click OK to save and exit.
The storage tag you have selected or just created will appear as selected. Click the Apply button below to confirm storage configuration settings before proceeding.
Add Storage
In order to add a new local disk or a network storage (NAS, SAN, network share), click + New button on the upper panel, select New local directory or New shared directory, and then enter the setup details.
If you are using a NAS, make sure to disable the Recycle Bin feature (for some NAS models, it is called trashbox or similar). This will ensure that the erased files (e.g., when reaching quota) are actually deleted permanently
If you are adding a previously encrypted storage (e.g., it has been used on another server), make sure to provide the same password. You can track the storage status in the Monitoring section of Macula Console, under Storages.
The table below details the available settings for a shared directory. Enter the settings for the target storage and click Create below: the storage will be validated immediately.
Path
Full network path to the storage directory
\\Server\Share\Macula\Archive Files
Username
User name to connect to the storage
[empty]
Password
Define storage access password, if applicable
[empty]
Quota
Maximum amount of storage in gigabytes to be used for recording; 85-90% is recommended
20GB
Storage
Storage label to be assigned to the target storage directory
Disabled
When adding a local directory, you are first offered to choose the disk from the list of detected ones. If there is just one disk left available, it will be chosen automatically.
Path
Full path to the archive directory
X:\Macula\Archive Files
Quota
Maximum amount of storage in gigabytes to be used for recording; 85-90% is recommended
20GB
Storage
Storage label to be assigned to the target storage directory
Disabled
Storage Encryption
Once you have added all the necessary storages, you can enable encryption and set a password for each storage separately.
Mark the Enable encryption option and specify the password you want. You can change the password at any point, and there is also an additional field that lets you add a hint that may help remembering the password in future: it will appear either as regular text or a tooltip when hovering your mouse cursor over the password prompt field.
The currently available encryption options:
None: no encryption
AES-128 or AES-256: choose the one you need
There is no option to recover the password if you have forgotten it.
Starting from the moment you set the password, all footage recorded to the target storage becomes encrypted; retroactive encryption for the previously recorded archive is not supported.
When the storage password is changed, the new password is used for encryption from then on. If storage encryption is disabled for some time and then enabled back, that part of the archive will remain unencrypted.
Duration Quota
Set the global recording duration limit for your server here: enable quota management and then enter desired number of days. All recordings older than the number of days specified will be erased.
Note that the global duration quota has priority over the individual (per-channel) duration quota that is set in the Recording Configurations.
Retention
You can set the software erasing mechanism so that it cleans up old recordings only during specific periods of time, e.g., when the recorder is less overloaded or when the quality of recordings are less important.
To do this, enable the cleanup hours setting and specify the time period during which erasing is allowed.
This control has priority over the storage quota. Setting insufficient cleanup time may lead to storage overflow and result in recordings being lost. We strongly recommend that you do not enable any cleanup hours' restrictions unless you absolutely know what you are doing.
Fallback
You can dedicate a specific recording location to serve as a failover storage, called fallback storage. Such storage location will be used for recording only if all specified target storages of the certain type have failed.
Macula server automatically detects when a channel or channels cannot be written onto their normal destination storage and switches to the fallback storage after the specified timeout has been reached. Minimum and also default timeout is thirty seconds, and maximum is five minutes. A default system event is raised when fallback is activated.
After setting the desired timeout, switch to the Directories tab and specify, which storage will serve as fallback.
Usage example:
Consider a system where all main streams are recorded to the storage with the tag Main and all secondary streams are, in their turn, recorded to the Substreams storage. If either or both of these storages fail, recording will automatically proceed to the Fallback storage.
The fallback storage must be able to handle the load and have enough free space to keep the recordings until the main storage gets back online.
Server checks if the main storage is available if one of the conditions has been fulfilled:
server has finished and closed a data file (4GB)
the data file has not reached 4GB in size but six hours have passed
server was restarted
In other words, the recording mechanism checks if the main storage is available every 6h OR every 4GB of recorded data OR after a restart (upon startup). If the main storage is OK, Macula server continues to record onto it; the recordings made onto the fallback storage stay there and are not transferred anywhere.
To save the changes, hit the Apply button beneath the storage settings, then hit OK to close the storage configuration dialog box, and then click OK to finally save the storage settings together with the server configuration. Pressing Cancel on the last step will revoke the changes in the storage configuration.
Archive Protection and Deletion
Outdated archive is erased automatically once any of the quotas is reached (storage or duration, server wide or individual). Oldest recordings are removed to free up some space for the newer recordings. However, there are some exceptional cases when the footage is not or may not be erased:
storage marked as Readonly will not be used for writing and no data will be erased from such storages based on quotas (however, footage from such storages can be removed using selective erasing from the Macula Monitor application)
no erasing will be conducted outside cleanup hours (by default, erasing is allowed 24/7 and this setting is recommended)
protected archive intervals will be also ignored by the erasing mechanism until you un-protect them
Archive protection is a feature available in the Macula Monitor application, in playback mode. You can mark certain footage from being erased if it is important to keep it for longer (e.g., as evidence). To unlock the protected intervals, go to Archive statistics in the Monitoring section of Macula Console.
If there are too many protected recordings on a disk, the storage may be filled up to 100%: this may negatively affect the overall recording operation. Pay attention to the amount of free space on every storage unit in case you are using archive protection:
set lower recording quotas so that there are always 10-15% of free space on each storage,
un-protect the archive that no longer needs to be protected from erasing.
When you protect a short period of the archive (e.g., several minutes), in fact, the whole file containing this period is protected from erasing. Therefore, intervals adjacent to protected period will also be locked. You can verify the exact protected interval by opening Macula Console >> Monitoring section >> Archive statistics >> Protected intervals.
Keep this in mind when protecting too many short intervals: as all files containing them are locked, they will not be erased when forcing quotas, so you may come to a point when there is not enough free space on the disk. If you know you will use the archive protection feature a lot, it may be wise to set a lower disk quota - for example, 80% instead of 90%.
Macula Monitor application allows users with corresponding privileges to delete certain parts of the archive. This mechanism can delete recordings from storages marked as Readonly but cannot erase protected archive from any storage unit.
If the footage is not protected, it will be removed as outdated when the server eraser reaches one of the quotas. Also, the unprotected footage can be removed manually by someone who has a permission to delete archive. However, as such a feature may be may be regarded as a potential threat for the archive integrity, it is disabled by default. You can enable it in the server storage settings by marking the Allow manual deletion option.
Enabling manual archive deletion will automatically enable the admin user to do so, as admin is a root user who has all possible privileges. The same is true for all users belonging to the Administrators group. If you are enabling this feature, make sure that no unauthorized personnel have access to the administrative accounts.
Time Restricted Access to Archive
There is a possibility to grant archive access permissions for a limited time: for example, for the last N days or M hours. The access permissions are a part of the channel permission set.
Here, in the server settings dialog box > Storage tab, you can define the allowed archive access period, starting from the present moment.
Depending on your needs, the duration can be expressed in minutes, hours, or days. The minimum period is 10 minutes and the maximum value is 366 days (1 year).
Example: if the recent archive interval is set to 30 minutes, all users having a Restricted video playback permission will be able to browse the last half an hour of the target channel archive in all archive playback modes of the Macula Monitor application.
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