Long-Term Video Storage

[ShawnM]

I have multiple BI installs at a number of sites and the requirements dictate that video is stored for a certain number of months. To do this, I physically swap the hard drive where "Stored" clips go and then reuse the drives after the retention period has expired. However, while the hard drive is sitting in cold storage, it is likely that some video will need to be reviewed; I currently manually copy the BVR files needed to the current "Stored" hard drive so that they can be viewed in BI. In terms of how much is sitting in cold storage, we are talking about hundreds of TBs.

Does anyone have any suggestions on how to better handle this? I realize that I could open an individual file in Blue Iris to review, but the files that need to be reviewed typically involve multiple cameras and multiple clips, which makes opening individual files impractical.

Thanks!

 

[SouthernYankee]

How many cameras at each site? What is the total number of GB or TB stored per day per site ?

 

[ShawnM]

Some sites have 20-30 cameras at 100 GB/day, the main facility will have 70+ cameras across a couple BI servers (in process of migrating right now).

 

[SouthernYankee]

So a site has about 30 cameras at 100GB/day storage. That number seems low, I would have expected a number between 1 and 2 TB per day for between 20 and 30 cameras . Assuming 2-4 MP camera at a frame rate or 10 to 15 FPS for a 24 hour day and continuous recording. Please check your storage requirements.

If it is only 100 GB/day that would be 1 TB for 10 days. Assuming stored for 100 days that is only 10 TB. Just add 2 WD purple 10 TB drives to your BI system this would more than cover your storage requirements. A WD Purple 10 TB drive is about $280.

Or go with a 4 drive NAS and store your video there, using 1o TB drives this would provide 40 TB of storage.

How big are the drives you are swapping out ?
How often do you swap out ?

 

[ShawnM]

I am recording on motion at low frame rate and pretty low resolution. When I say there is a retention period for a certain number of months I should have specified, it is usually years and there is some video that needs to be saved permanently.

So at the end of the day, no matter how much storage I throw at the server, I will need to be able to put some hard disks into cold storage and be able to review their video (preferably not by opening one clip at a time)