Why Onsite Solutions Are Still the Best Choice for Video Surveillance Storage

Synology

Video surveillance is no longer an option; it’s a must. You need recorded footage to prove your case, make your home, store, warehouse, or office safer, and give you peace of mind. But a lot of people make a big mistake: they only pay attention to the camera and forget about the most important part: the storage system that keeps recordings safe, accessible, and reliable.

We help businesses and homeowners at Epis Technology build surveillance systems that are private, can grow with their needs, and are ready for the future. If you can’t find your footage when you need it, a great camera doesn’t mean anything. Below, we explain why onsite storage solutions, especially those powered by Synology, give you the best control, reliability, and value for your money.

The Secret Issues with Cloud Surveillance Storage

Cloud-based surveillance systems are the most popular among consumers, but they have big problems that many people only find out about after they sign up for a long-term subscription.

1. High Subscription Costs

Cloud surveillance companies make you stay in their ecosystem.
You have to use their storage, their prices, and their limits.

You pay a monthly fee for each camera
It can get expensive quickly to store 7 to 30 days of footage
It doesn’t make sense to add more cameras if you can’t afford it

Cloud storage can cost hundreds, and often thousands, of dollars a year for people who travel a lot or businesses that need to keep data for a long time.

2. Few options for recording

Cloud systems often limit:

Days of maximum retention
Recording all the time
Length of time before the event

What happens if the event starts before the motion trigger if your camera only turns on when it sees motion?

You might get a picture of a foot walking away instead of the person doing the crime.

3. Bandwidth Load

The cloud must store every second of video.

Cloud surveillance can cause:

Notifications that come late
Frames that were dropped
Video playback is slow
Not being able to record when the network is very busy

Adding more cameras makes things worse.

4. Risks to Privacy

For cloud cameras to work, they need to be connected to the internet all the time.

This makes:

More ways for hackers to attack
Possible exposure of private home videos
Policies for third-party access or retention that you can’t fully control

Homeowners keeping an eye on their kids or businesses recording sensitive areas must have privacy.

Why Onsite Storage Is the Better Option

Onsite surveillance storage gets rid of cloud limits, lowers costs, and lets you keep all of your recordings.

Most businesses, and more and more homeowners, have to choose between:

• NVR (Network Video Recorder)
• NAS (Network Attached Storage)

Both store footage on-site, but NAS systems are more flexible, secure, and scalable.

NVR vs. NAS: The Main Differences Network Video Recorder (NVR)

NVRs are easy-to-use, dedicated surveillance devices, but they do have some drawbacks:

Usually only works with certain camera brands and is proprietary
Software has few features
Few choices for redundancy
Not easy to scale

Your footage could be lost if your NVR breaks.

Why Synology NAS Is the Best Way to Keep an Eye on Things

A Synology NAS is a strong, dependable, and adaptable center for all of your surveillance footage. It works with more than 6,000 camera models, so you can choose whatever you want.

The Best Reasons to Use a Synology NAS for Security
1. RAID Redundancy Keeps Footage Safe

You can still access your recordings even if a drive fails.

This is not something that NVRs often offer.

2. Advanced Software for Surveillance

Synology’s Surveillance Station offers:

Smart motion detection
Search by date
Analytics based on AI (with cameras that work with it)
Monitoring in more than one place
Access from a phone
Backing up and archiving automatically

You get features that are as good as those of a big business without having to pay big business prices.

3. Very scalable

Begin with a few terabytes and add more as your camera network grows.

4. Capabilities for more than one thing

A NAS can do more than just record video.
It can also:

Make a backup of your business data
Sync files between places
Run a private cloud
Stream media

This makes it a much better long-term investment than an NVR that only does one thing.

Perfect for businesses with multiple locations

A NAS-based surveillance architecture gives you the following if your business has more than one building or store:

Management from the center
Backups that are all in one place
Unified monitoring
Less use of bandwidth
Easier to grow

Synology’s ecosystem and Epis Technology’s experience with deployment make sure that businesses can see and control all of their cameras from one central interface, even if they are at different locations.

About the Technology of Epis

Using Synology’s advanced hardware and software, we at Epis Technology build Surveillance + Storage infrastructures that are safe, scalable, and cost-effective. Our professionals make systems that put the following first:

Architecture that puts privacy first
Extra storage that won’t fail
Monitoring from many places is easy
Advanced analytics and finding motion
One-click expansion as your camera network grows

Epis Technology makes sure that your surveillance system is always reliable, future-proof, and completely under your control, whether you need it for a small home or a large business with multiple branches.