BANDWIDTH, STORAGE & ACCESSIBILITY

In video surveillance storage, it’s all about bandwidth, storage and accessibility. Depending on the organization’s requirements, number and type of cameras, retention requirements and number of locations, a fully onsite model may be needed—or, in some cases, an organization can benefit from a hybrid onsite model with a cloud back-end solution for archive and retrieval.

Most organizations still manage video assets onsite and have not yet taken advantage of the cloud for storage, archive and deep archive.

Since surveillance is all about transferring “heavy” video data across different networks, proper bandwidth is required. The cloud can deliver tremendous benefits by way of elasticity and accessibility. Better still, migrating video assets to the cloud can deliver a lower TCO, especially in cases where longer or permanent storage is required for compliance or other mandates.

BREAKING DOWN THE ELEMENTS OF VIDEO SURVEILLANCE DATA STORAGE

There are two key components to storage of video: delivery of video, often over the cloud, and storage, which is the archiving and retrieval of video. Since video uses a lot of bandwidth, the costs of storing and accessing video can add up quickly, as can the needed hardware costs for an on-premise solution.

Operators need to plan on provisioning bandwidth specifically for video surveillance data so as not to reduce day to day business application performance for end users.

Even for smaller applications, video storage could easily reach 1TB a month or more. Remember too that hidden costs for storage can include data transfer costs (access the video) and data redundancy costs (how many copies of your video are stored and where are they stored)—all of which can escalate costs exponentially.

Using the cloud for deep archive of video assets gives organizations a smart storage location for video assets that are not likely to ever be accessed again, but that must be retained in the event of a compliance audit or for some other business reason. Such solutions give the business the ability to move older assets to the cloud without the risk of losing them, helping to reduce storage costs overall.

WHY CONSIDER TIERED STORAGE

A tiered storage model allows for data to be stored on various types of media based on performance, availability and recovery requirements. This option gives the organization not only the ability to optimize storage specific to its requirements, but the ability to optimize costs so the company is not over-extending (and therefore, over-paying) for storage space.

Modern tiered storage infrastructures range from a simple two-tier architecture model consisting of SCSI or fibre channel attached disk and tape—to more complex infrastructures, some of which entail five or six tiers.

Regardless of the number of tiers, migrating video assets to a tiered storage model can lower cost and improve operational efficiency.