Emerging Video Technologies – Pt4 IP Based Storage

continuing our look at IPVideoMarket.info’s ‘Emerging Video Surveillance Guide 2010’, today we look at IP Based Storage (SAN)

Ok, Potential Benefits?

Traditional video surveillance deployments combine video management software and hard drives inside a single appliance (usually a DVR). In larger systems, this can result in hundreds of hard drives inside of dozens of DVRs. This can be difficult to manage, inefficient and difficult to upgrade. Also, DVRs often do not provide redundancy for storage.

IP based storage provides centralised storage clusters that offer built-in redundancy and simple expansion. Each video recorder transmits surveillance video from the recorder to the storage cluster. This also reduces wasted storage as all video is ‘pooled’ in a central repository.

Cost:- For larger systems (20TBs or more), IP Based storage is often cheaper than storage inside of DVRs. However, the startup costs for purchasing a SAN often make it significantly more expensive than simply adding an extra hard drive inside a DVR, For isntance, SANs usually start at around £3000, far more than the incremental cost of adding a few hard drives inside DVRs or NVRs.

  • End User Risks:
    Overall risk is quite low. Some DVRs do not support external storage (usually as a business policy rather than a technical restriction) so that should be checked. Using a SAN that is remote from IP cameras or existing DVRs (essentially the source of the video streams) can be a problem. Specifically, it is generally not feasible to use a SAN to store video from remote offices/branches. This is due to limited and costly bandwidth connecting facilities to each other (WAN Bandwidth)
  • Installer Risks:
    Setting up a SAN (depending on the supplier) can be significantly more complicated than storage on-board DVRs. At least one person on staff should be trained in installing and maintaining SAN systems.

Taken from the ‘Emerging Video Surveillance Guide 2010’ from http://ipvideomarket.info/

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