Overland scores Euro CCTV goal

Racism documentary sparks additional security concerns

Storage vendor Overland has been signed up to store CCTV data for a football stadium hosting some of the Euro 2012 games, including tonight's match between England and France.

The Donbass Arena in Ukraine has installed 12 of the US company's SnapServer product across nine datacentres.

SnapServer is a platform for storing and blocking data pioneered by Overland, whose revenue last year stood at £70.2m, according to its full-year results.

During the run-up to the tournament, which will attract worldwide attention, stadium bosses decided to upgrade its video surveillance in order to meet high safety standards.

Last month's BBC Panorama programme explored claims of racist abuse on the terraces, leading former England captain Sol Campbell to warn fans to "stay at home."

Alexandr Kayun, security systems engineer at Donbass Arena, agrees that match security is important, and explained why the old system was in need of an upgrade.

He said: "The video data from the [old] cameras was typically generated in a large number of small files; as many as several million on one volume.

"This large number of files on one volume, along with the fragmentation of the logical volumes, caused a dramatic decrease in performance, which led to frequent data loss.

"It took the arena's technical team two weeks to install and configure the 12 SnapServers, connect up to the cameras and users and set up the email alerts."

The $400m (£257m) stadium (pictured), which is home to FC Shakhtar Donetsk, has played host to games during the group stages of the tournament, and will also do the honours in both quarter and semi-final fixtures.