High-megapixel cameras can have a profound impact on the storage capacity of a network video system. As a security professional, one of the trickiest areas to address is how much storage will a particular customer site require?
Calculating video storage can be a challenge, especially with the widespread use of higher megapixel cameras, which can quickly consume storage space while bandwidth constraints can impact video clarity. Because of this, it’s important to consider a few factors when determining video storage needs. First, how many cameras will be part of the system and what is the resolution of each camera? Second, how much archived video will the customer store and for how long?
Some end-users need to retain high-quality video for 30 days, 60 days or longer. In addition, specific industries require the retention of surveillance video for a set number of days. For example, in the cruise industry that requirement is 120 days. Financial institutions must retain their video for at least 180 days.
Compliance requirements can also change from one year to the next, meaning that storage systems need to have additional capacity to handle future scalability. This can happen one year, two years or three years after the initial system installation.
Few security integrators also realize that video analytics typically requires greater horsepower. The average CPU alone cannot handle all that data, meaning that Quadro and Tesla video cards need to be used, which in turn increases the storage requirements.
Another factor to consider is the full impact of a software patch, which can quickly consume 20 percent of the CPU capacity. Future software patches should be accounted for, as they are essential to help protect a system from being hacked and should not be skipped out because of the impact on the storage system.
As a result, video storage can be expensive and also difficult to calculate. This is why it is critical to make sure that security integrators accurately calculate video storage needs the first time, plus include additional space for future scalability as part of those calculations.
BCDVideo provides a custom bandwidth and storage calculator to ensure the calculations are accurate and guarantees its systems will work as promised. A wrong calculation can quickly turn a system that you thought could handle a customer’s storage requirements for years to come into one that is obsolete.