Examining Video Surveillance Storage Clusters

In the next few years, we will see a significant transition away from storing video inside DVR/NVR servers. This 'on-board' storage will be replaced by clustered storage that communicates with servers over an IP network. The economics are becoming very attractive for such a move, especially in larger scale deployments.

This review examines the background, advantages and constraints of storage clusters as a replacement for traditional DVR/NVR storage.

Storage clusters are appliances that are separate from your DVR/NVR and communicate with them across your IP network. Storage clusters are modular and more storage can be added over time, starting from as low as a few TBs to more than 1000 TBs. The most well known specialists offering these solutions are Intransa and Pivot3 .

Recommendation: Use storage clusters when a site has more than ~ 48 analog cameras and/or more than ~ 6 megapixel cameras.

Here is a summary of the key advantages and constraints:

Advantages

1. Price differential between internal storage and storage clusters have dropped dramatically
2. Storage Clusters can reduce storage needs by ~ 30% over internal storage
3. Storage Clusters are actually cheaper for large camera counts and storage durations
4. Storage Clusters are cheaper and better for megapixel cameras
5. Storage Clusters offer RAID 'standard'

Constraints

1. Storage Clusters are not cost-effective for smaller camera counts
2. Storage Clusters cannot centralize storage across most distributed facilities