Golden valley casino turns to Dallmeier for security

South Africa is a fascinating country - not only because of its breathtaking fauna and flora but also because it offers premium gaming entertainment. Sun International is South Africa's leading provider of gambling opportunities. The Sun International Casinos are leading the way when it comes to offering visitors a gambling experience at the highest stage. However, the Sun International Casinos are also pioneers in security. The Golden Valley Casino now has South Africa's first video surveillance system with a fully IP-based real-time matrix in operation.

The Golden Valley Casino is located in Worcester, about an hour away from Cape Town and situated amidst majestic mountain ranges, scenic landscapes, noble vineyards and blooming orchards. It mirrors the splendour of the characteristic, Cape Dutch architecture and welcomes its visitors with a variety of entertainment facilities. The casino offers various slots with exciting games and much more. Additionally, the Kuipers buffet restaurant provides sustenance and the Winners Action Bar invites to enjoy a glass of wine while listening to live music.

For those who would like to enjoy the pleasant atmosphere of the casino for more than just one day, the Golden Valley Lodge is the ideal place to stay.

Furthermore, Worcester can now offer delegates an alternative and sophisticated conference facility. The Golden Valley Conference Centre consists of a main conference room accommodating 90 people banquet style. In addition, there is a 10-seater breakaway room ideal for executive board meetings. The modern, high-tech conference facility is totally self-contained offering a comprehensive range of presentation equipment.

Opened in November 2006, the Golden Valley Casino is the first of a range of Sun International Casinos that trust in the latest video surveillance technology by Dallmeier. The Golden Valley is the first casino in South Africa to use a real-time CCTV/IP system with digital matrix.

The decisive factor in choosing the Dallmeier system was first and foremost the applied blade technology provided by the DIS-2/M, whose single-channel approach provides maximum availability and service friendliness.

The Dallmeier DIS-2/M, a modular recording and transmission device conceived for mounting and operation in a 19'' module rack, records directly onto the integrated memory. It thus ensures a maximum availability of recorded data even in the case of network problems or failures. Thereby Dallmeier guaranteed the highest availability of the comprehensive solution because there is no single-point-of-failure. The Dallmeier solution achieves an availability of 99.99994 percent according to the manufacturer. This value is even higher than the "Five Nines" praised throughout the IT world.

In order to further increase failure-safety the system enables on the spot redundant recording, where hard disks of different capacities can be operated within one system (mixed operation of capacities). For all digital hard disk recorders for casino solutions Dallmeier exclusively employs Linux which is deemed highly reliable among experts. In order to further increase stability the operating system was separated from the hard disks and relocated onto a Flash-ROM.

Sun International Management Company director for `Compliance and Tables´ Jaco Coetzee said: "Apart from the high failure-safety, service was also very important to us. Owing to the Dallmeier blade technology it is possible to exchange a malfunctioning component with every single channel. Also, the exchange can be carried out during operation since the DIS-2/M modules come with hot-plug functionality. So, there is very little effort to it and the downtime of the system is reduced to a minimum."

The CCTV system installed at the Golden Valley Casino is a pure IP solution. It's no wonder, therefore, that the network is playing a particularly important role since it acts as an important interface between the operator and the system. The Golden Valley Casino emphasised that the bandwidth requirements should not be too high and Dallmeier provided an ideal solution for this as well. This is because the Dallmeier CCTV/IP systems require network operations only for the work of the operator and the system's management, not for recording. Network bandwidth is only used when necessary.

Frank Oetjen, Dallmeier sales manager: "We are working closely with leading manufacturers of the network industry and are thus familiar with new developments and technologies ahead of everyone else."

The Dallmeier management software SeMSy (Security Management System) allows for the easy and convenient operation of the complete video surveillance system at Golden Valley Casino. SeMSy enables the easy management and administration of different streams of media data and provides live display and recording of video and/or audio data at any point in a networked system. Additional network components can be integrated into the network at later points in time, without limitations. Therefore, systems based on SeMSy are optimally prepared for any future requirements.

The major advantage of SeMSy is that it can easily be adjusted to meet the customer's requirements.

Sun International in its search for a suitable digital product extensively researched and reviewed a number of solutions before eventually deciding on the Dallmeier solution for all of the South African, Sun International casinos. The first installation at the Golden Valley was very successful and a number of other casinos are already being equipped with it. Jaco Coetzee stated: "We believe in standardisation because of all the efficiencies linked to this and Dallmeier proofed to be the better solution for casino operations according to our intensive evaluation criteria. The high failure-safety and the unbeatable image quality as well as the support are simply convincing."