Storage recommendation for large site (32 cameras)

[jfmd]

Hi all!

My company has recently undergone a very large renovation and has made the decision to install IP cameras around the whole site.
Fortunately this was decided just before construction work began so we were able to run CAT5e cables to 32 camera locations. All the cables then run back to a server room.
The maximum distance a camera will be from the server room will be approximately 70 metres so they all can be powered by PoE.

Does anyone have any experience with managing storage of this many cameras and if so what solution did you use?
I am currently leaning towards getting 2no. 16 channel NVRs with 16 POE ports each but I am still new to IP cameras so would love some advice.

Camera wise the plan is to use Hikvision brand cameras as we are most familiar with them.

Mike

 

[nayr]

if your going to use multiple NVR's then use an external PoE switch, this way any super-critical cameras can be added to both NVR's for redundancy.. if you dont have super long retention rates the 2 disk NVR's should be plenty for 16ch w/a couple very large (6TB+) disks in it.. if you have compliance or something then you might want to buy 4 disk NVR's or larger depending on retention rates.

Consider Dahua instead of Hikvision, just as reliable but performance is much better and they dont play games with firmware (cant downgrade, cant upgrade, cant get variants working together, etc)

 

[whoslooking]

Although I wound normally agree with @nayr if your going big 32+ cameras, Hikvision is your better option, but not with Chinese imports!
Agreed that I would go for a non POE NVR and use a quality POE switch with 4+ 4tb WD Purple drives with RAID setup.

If you want Local viewing at another location, that's on your local network I would suggest using another NVR (cheaper one) as it give far better control for spot monitoring.

 

[nayr]

RAID makes little sense for video surveillance when you can run a redundant NVR and achieve better availability.. JBOD and you can have multiple disk failures and keep on kicking at a merely reduced capacity while your getting replacement disks.. you'll get higher availability that way and if you require redundancy its often for compliance obligations that make high availability a critical part of the design.

Ive tried to manage stacks of Hikvision NVR's with IVMS and it sucked ass in comparison to Dahua's SmartPSS, Hikvision wants you to buy into there more advanced VMS solutions to make it easy as dahua does out of the box.. You can also cluster a backup NVR to hotswap replace a downed NVR w/Dahua NVR's and Ive never seen a Hik NVR w/that capability.

I'd rather run a rack of BlueIris Servers than Hikvision NVR's personally.. I'm actually building a bid right now to do just that because its far too late to replace the 80+ Hikvision cameras at this site and mixing matching brands w/hardware NVR's rarely works out well

 

[jfmd]

Thankyou for the quick replies!

nayr - I hadn't thought about the redundancy benefit but that's a very good idea! I've read a lot of really good things on here about Dahua cameras but havent found any good UK suppliers for them. Do you know of any? The main reason we are using Hikvisions is that I have used them before and that we have a local supplier on our doorstep.

whoslooking - The 3rd NVR for local viewing is also a good idea.

I think I'll do what you both suggest and recommend we purchase high quality PoE switches to power the cameras.

Thanks again!

 

[whoslooking]

ADI-Global, or Enterprise are the Cheapest of the UK suppliers, but is trade only you would have to visit a branch (for cash sales) or find someone whom can get them on your behalf, They both stock Dahua and Hikvision brands