Just the Facts

Customer: Glass House Farms

Location: Santa Barbara, California

Challenge: Securing a massive cannabis growing, drying and packing operation.

Solution: Around the clock video surveillance, access control, motion control and alarm system. 

Results: A modern enterprise-level security system that complies with California regulations for cannabis operations.

About the Customer

Within a sprawling expanse of gleaming glass and steel, sits Glass House Farms. 

From the moment one sets foot on the property, the reason behind the name Glass House becomes clear—the property houses a collection of cannabis-growing glass greenhouses.  

Once a hub for traditional crops like tomatoes and cucumbers, this site has been transformed into a cannabis grow operation. 

After acquiring the facility, the Glass House team phased out old crops and rebuilt the interiors to accommodate cannabis production. What began as a modest operation has expanded into a sophisticated network of grow houses—now housing five major facilities, with renovations underway on a sixth.

Customer Challenge

Growing cannabis in California is legal but also a highly regulated enterprise. To comply with California cannabis regulations, facilities must employ advanced security measures, which include surveillance cameras with a minimum resolution of 1280 x 720 pixels.

In addition, the video surveillance system must:

• Have permanently mounted cameras in fixed locations that capture activity within 20 feet of all entry and exit points.
• Employ cameras capable of clearly identifying individuals and activities in the area.
• Record continuously 24 hours a day, at a minimum of 15 frames per second (FPS).
• Use a secure and tamper-resistant storage device for surveillance recordings.
• Maintain surveillance recordings at least 90 days and make them easily accessible for regulatory review.
• Incorporate a failure notification system to alert the licensee of interruptions or failures in the video surveillance or storage system.

With 250 cameras in place, the security infrastructure at Glass House Farms matches the scale of its current operations. However, the massive system also needed the ability to expand. 

“As they take over other buildings on the property, they will need security in them. Each building needs cameras, access control and alarms that are monitored by a full security team 24/7,” says Safe and Sound Security Project Manager Zachary Palmquist. “They have a security operations center where security guards watch cameras all day long.”

The sheer size of the operation demanded an enterprise-level system. In the end, Milestone video management software (VMS) and cameras were selected to survey the property.

The resulting installation uses:

• Milestone XProtect VMS
• Milestone cameras
• Brivo access control
• DSC alarm systems, monitored through Alarm.com
• Two recording servers to store camera footage

“The reason we chose all these different manufacturers is we knew this system would continue to expand and we wanted something we could layer, so there wasn’t a growth limit to it,” Palmquist says.

Camera System Design

The initial install occurred on Glass House 1, Glass House 6, and Pack House 1, but soon Safe and Sound Security got to work securing Glass House 2, Glass House 5, and Pack House 2. In a few months, they will start work on Glass House 3, according to Palmquist.

The buildings are massive, which complicated security camera placement and installation, according to Palmquist. He explains that Glass House 1, the first building they secured, is 1,215 feet by 675 feet.

“Our Cat6 cable lengths can only span 328 feet,” he says. “So, running all these cables back to one location would not work. We had to create IDFs (intermediate distribution frames)” to manage and connect cables between security devices and the main distribution frame (MDF).

Ultimately, techs installed nine IDFs with PoE (Power over Ethernet) switches housed in vented, fan-cooled NEMA enclosures mounted near the ceiling. “This let us create different sectors for cables to come back to from the cameras,” he says.

But before this design could work, they needed power. Glass House had its on-site electricians run power to all NEMA enclosures, so technicians could run the Cat6 cabling.

Another issue that arose was getting camera footage to the server. “They had fiber throughout all of these buildings. They also had a managed service provider that handles all of their IT and Internet,” he says. “We had to work with them to get fiber connections to an IDF location in each building so we had a logical link from each building back to their Main Distribution Frame (MDF).” 

Cameras also needed to be placed 15 to 20 feet high to provide views of the entire facility. Palmquist explains California law also requires a camera within 20 feet on each side of any door that cannabis will travel through. 

“Those cameras must operate continuously, 24 hours a day,” he says. “For a single grow house, there are 32 cameras. There are also cameras in packing rooms and trimming rooms and more. It’s a massive number of cameras.” 

Milestone cameras were the logical choice because of the enterprise-level functionality they provided, according to Palmquist. 

“Searching through footage is a really clunky experience without an enterprise-level solution like Milestone and the servers we put in place,” he says. “All of that horsepower, the CPU and RAM, gives the security operations team instant access to the footage they need, and the ability to control multiple screens. We have quad monitors on eight viewing stations throughout the facility.”

Redundant Server System

In the State of California, the Department of Cannabis Control (DCC) can pop in at any time for an audit. “As you can imagine, these facilities get audited often,” he says.

DCC officials want to view the 90 days of playback footage during these audits. For this, security personnel use XProtect Smart Client on viewing PCs built by Safe and Sound Security. 

“We built six viewing PCs from scratch,” Palmquist says. “They are high-end computer systems with dedicated video graphics cards, 32 GB of RAM, and i7 processors. They’re basically gaming PCs built to handle tons of video processing.”  

The initial install also included two 270-terabyte servers, which have up to 24 hard drives in each running Intel Xeon processors and Windows Server 2019. These servers run a RAID configuration to accommodate 90 days of video storage. 

“With a RAID configuration, if one drive fails, there are multiple copies residing elsewhere, so we never lose footage,” Palmquist explains. 

The system also has:

• Redundant power supplies in each server, so if the one fails, the other takes over 
• Quad interface cards, so there are always two backups. 
• UPS systems for the servers and battery backups. 

“The goal is zero downtime,” Palmquist explains.

Servers automatically send alerts when a camera goes offline or there’s a hard drive failure. Because Glass House has a service level agreement (SLA) with Safe and Sound Security, a technician logs in to fix the problem or comes on site to handle any issues they cannot resolve remotely. 

“We manage all of their systems, so if there is a problem, they just call us and we take care of everything,” he says. 

Active Alarm System

While Palmquist concedes that it may seem excessive, California law demands an alarm system at cannabis grow operations, including those that operate non-stop.

“Per regulatory bodies they must have an alarm system to pass licensing requirements,” he says. 

The alarm system needs to secure all perimeter doors with strobe-siren combo alarms. Motion detectors also must be placed in common walkways, he says.

Ample Access Control

California law does not require cannabis operations to install an access control system, but operations the size of Glass House usually do, according to Palmquist.

He explains, “They are required to log every single person who enters or exists a door where cannabis product is being stored, trimmed, etc. Can you imagine the sheer chaos of having to pick up a clipboard every time someone walks in or out a door? So just to calm the chaos, Glass House needed a digital solution.”

Technicians accomplished this by installing Brivo access control card readers on every single exterior door and interior door that enters an area where cannabis is being grown, trimmed, dried or packaged. 

“This system gives them a digital log of every entry and exit,” he says. “Every employee gets a key card to enter and exit these areas, and admins can quickly add or remove access as needed.”

Installation Challenges

They say when you are in glass houses, it’s best not to throw stones. Initially, Palmquist admits it seemed like you shouldn’t install a security system in a glass house either. Although that’s an extreme example of the installation difficulties, the glass construction did present some challenges, he says. 

The main issue was that to control the lighting so cannabis plants would thrive and grow, the facility installed an automated shade system that worked on timers.  

“When these huge tarps come out, they black out the facility,” he says. “But that posed issues for how we could mount our cameras. Our cameras, cables and NEMA enclosures could not interfere with any moving parts.”

In addition, the glass roofs get very dirty, which requires regular cleaning inside and out. 

“They have teams that go through with fire hoses to spray down the interior twice a year,” he says. “You can imagine how well electronic parts get along with water. So, we had to get extremely specific about the enclosures we used to ensure water wouldn’t damage any electronics. We used NEMA 3 enclosures to properly protect everything. You can spray a fire hose at these enclosures and not get water inside.” 

System design also posed a few challenges in that Palmquist had to fly to their facility twice. Typically, he goes on Google Maps and runs layouts, then visits, but in this case, there were too many unique considerations to do this process remotely. 

“We needed to know how much water would get on the system, how we would get access to power, where our cameras could live, and what the daily operations of the facility looked like,” he says. “I mean, just in the dry rooms, we needed to know how high their racking would be so that our camera views were not obstructed. Or in the trim room, how were the trim tables going to be laid out? Every camera in this place took a lot of thought and consideration about where it would reside and how we would get it there.” 

Glass House Farms brought on Safe and Sound Security during the construction phase, which also presented a few obstacles, he adds.

He explains construction crews gutted the place, then there were people pouring concrete, running electrical wires, and building all at the same time 

“Our management team had to work hand in hand with their general contractor,” he says. “We were part of the full production schedule so that once they poured concrete, we could come in a few days later and work with the electricians. It was a huge undertaking. But it had to go that way because they could not operate without security.” 

He notes the entire system also had to be roughed in and installed at the same time, versus roughing in before concrete and installing later. 

“We had to jump from one Glass House to the other because we would get too far ahead and catch up to the crew in front of us,” he says. “We didn’t want to sit there tapping our toes with nothing to do, so we would jump over to the other Glass House and work for a while.” 

Challenges aside, the resulting systems are state-of-the-art, ensuring that Glass House Farms can grow cannabis safely and securely, and in compliance with California law.

If you’re looking for security system services or low voltage services, feel free to reach out to our local Safe and Sound Security office near Santa Barbara, CA.

Safe and Sound Security
445 S Figueroa St suite 3100, Los Angeles, CA 90071
+1 213-513-5659
https://getsafeandsound.com/locations/los-angeles/
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