3 ms·

Correct me if I'm wrong, but wouldn't tape drives be cheaper for surveillance?

• mc32 10y ago
  I guess that depends on the streams and ingestion rates.
  • atYevP 10y ago
    And "degestion" rates - as tape would typically have longer "restore" times.
• ChuckMcM 10y ago
  You are not wrong. But its useful to ask the question, "Why don't current surveillance camera set ups use tape? Its cheaper per gigabyte right?" When NetApp was successfully selling their Nearstore line (SATA drive based filers) and replacing StorageTek robot tape libraries in surveillance installs the winning factor was "time to time-code" or specifically when someone said "We'd like to see what happened on this day, at this time, on this camera, how long will that take?" And generally it was many many minutes, and while they were doing that nobody else was looking at any other times/cameras. With a lot of disks online, the footage could be called up quickly, and multiple analysts could be looking at different times/feeds at the same time. As a result it was the cost of Analyst time, not the cost of media, that dominated the "value" of the surveillance storage device.
• protomyth 10y ago
  Even small operations end up viewing the footage which requires a lot of back and forth search. This isn't really an easy thing on tape which has made the hard drive option the best. Plus, most of the newer cameras are HD and that upped the speed requirements for recording. Never mind how many cameras you end up getting just to provide coverage of buildings, particularly non-rectangle setups, and that's just the outside.