Archive storage - Security Center 5.11

Security Center Administrator Guide 5.11

Product
Security Center
Content type
Guides > Administrator guides
Version
5.11
Language
English
Last updated
2024-07-05

In Security Center, video recordings are stored on disk, in small G64 files that each contain one or more short video sequences.

Like the archive database, the archive file storage is specific to each server. The location of the video files and the description of the video sequences they contain (source camera, beginning and end of sequence) are stored in the database catalog managed by the Archiver or Auxiliary Archiver.

Both local drives and network drives can be used to store video. In the Resources tab for the archiving role, all local drives on the host server are listed by default and grouped under Default Disk Group, as shown in the following image:

Disk space cannot be allocated to video archives in advance. Instead, archiving roles can only use a limited amount of the available disk space. This limit is set by the Min. free space attribute for each disk. The recommended minimum free space is at least 2% of the total disk space, or 2 GB per TB.
IMPORTANT: You must ensure that the service user running the Archiver or Auxiliary Archiver role has write access to all the archive root folders assigned to the role.

Archive storage requirements

Because the Archiver role and Auxiliary Archiver roles can control a different number of cameras, you must evaluate the storage requirements for each of these roles separately.
The storage requirements are affected by the following factors:
  • Number of cameras to archive.
  • Archive retention period: amount of time to keep the archives online.
  • Percentage of video files protected from automatic deletion.
  • Percentage of recording time, which depends on the selected archiving mode: continuous, on motion, manual, scheduled, or off. Continuous recording consumes disk space faster than the other archiving modes.
  • Frame rate: higher frame rate recordings need more storage space.
  • Image resolution, which depends on the video data format: higher resolution recordings need more storage space.
  • Percentage of movement: most video encoding schemes compress data by storing only the changes between consecutive frames. Scenes with a lot of movement require more storage than scenes with little movement.
  • Audio: including audio increases the required storage space.
  • Metadata from features such as video analytics, privacy protection, and fusion stream encryption. Included metadata can increase the required storage space.
Tip: Regularly checking the disk usage statistics is the best way to estimate future storage requirements, and to make quick adjustments.