How do I use Milestone XProtect with Wasabi using Lucidlink?

Wasabi is certified for use with Milestone XProtect Video Management Software.   More info on this joint solution can be found here.  The XProtect application does not natively support an S3 object storage interface for connection to a S3-compatible service like Wasabi. In order to use Wasabi with Milestone, you will need to use a third party application like Lucidlink to convert Milestone's file system interface to S3 object storage interface.  

Requirements

• Milestone XProtect Management 2019 version R2
• LucidLink application and an active subscription
• Wasabi cloud storage account

Reference Architecture

Configuration

1. LucidLink 
2. Milestone XProtect

• LucidLink Configuration

To Install LucidLink application – following information available here

1. Login in to your LucidLink webportal account

2. Once logged in, click on “Create a new Filespace”

3. If you already have a Wasabi account choose “Bring your own storage”, if you don't have a Wasabi storage account, you can sign up for Wasabi storage via LucidLink or directly via Wasabi. If you choose to sign up via LucidLink, click on “Use LucidLink Storage”

4. Provide a name for your Filespace and click “Next”

5. Choose Wasabi as your cloud storage provider (Note: in step 3, I chose “Bring your own storage”)

6. Choose Wasabi region and click “Next”

Note that this config example discusses the use of Wasabi's eu-central-1 storage region. To use other Wasabi storage regions, please use the appropriate Wasabi service URL as described in this article 

7. Review and confirm the configuration choices and click “Create”

8. Once the Filespace has been created, click “Initialize”

9. In order to Initialize the Filespace, the LucidLink client application needs to be installed and operational, click “Launch the desktop client”

10. Once the LucidLink application launches, input your Wasabi S3 keyset

Note : review following article to access Access & Secret keys via Wasabi console 

11. Once you input the S3 keyset, set LucidLink's root account password and click “Initialize”

12. Once initialization completes, LucidLink will create a local copy of your filespace metadata (the file index), whilst the data itself will reside in Wasabi Cloud Storage. Once complete, click “Open the folder”, At this point all of the videos to edit and/or alter can be moved or migrated to this folder on your workstation via a drag and drop or other file copy operations.

13. Your LucidLink Filespace namespace will appear as a shared drive on your workstation as shown below.

14. The ‘test' LucidLink namespace points to Wasabi storage account bucket name “milestonelucidlink” All of the data stored on “test” will physically live on Wasabi cloud storage as objects. These objects aggregate upto all the assets stored on “LUCID (L:)” share.

• Milestone XProtect Management 2019

The Milestone XProtect should be installed and configured with the video surveillance cameras that are setup to be ‘recording'.

The rules within the Milestone application are configured to “start recording immediately on all cameras”. This triggers the Milestone application to record all the camera output (irrespective of motion sensed) and write it to storage.

In the Storage settings (shown below), the live Recordings are written to a local storage (C:) for a short duration of 2 hours after which the videos are then archived over to Wasabi's cloud storage via the LucidLink shared drive (L:).

Use Cases

Retention

XProtect Corporate manages the transfer from multiple recording server's live databases to Wasabi using LucidLink, as well as the number of days of retention for the archived data. LucidLink copies the archive database using S3 protocol to Wasabi. Wasabi's bucket retention policies can then be enforced to purge the data based on the set retention time.

Retrieval and Playback

LucidLink's distributed file service allows users to view the video within the XProtect Smart Client. LucidLink is a distributed file system that splits the data and the metadata layers allowing simultaneous user access. It streams, prefetches data and offers caching support.