A NAS can be more than just a storage server for network folders. In video security, these devices and their more specialized variants can play a central role.
NAS stands for Network Attached Storage, but today’s NAS devices are much more than glorified network drives. The largest NAS manufacturers essentially provide compact and user-friendly servers. Storage remains a primary goal, but increasingly extensive software suites on the devices also make it possible to run more advanced workloads. Think of virtualization or even hosting a complete ecosystem of container applications.
More control than in the cloud
For freelancers, SMEs, or teams within large companies, the NAS offers an easy-to-manage and versatile storage solution. The advantages compared to the cloud are numerous: low latency, predictable costs, and total control over one’s own data are the most significant.
From that perspective, it is logical that NAS manufacturers have increasingly focused their efforts on video and surveillance. After all, video surveillance is a workload that particularly benefits from local storage. It is not efficient to simply send all recordings from security cameras to the cloud. From a privacy standpoint, it is also more interesting to keep your company’s footage under your own management.
Perfectly positioned
In that regard, the NAS is already in the perfect spot. Initially, NAS specialists responded to this by rolling out video security software for their devices. At Qnap, this is the QVR Surveillance application. It runs on every NAS and transforms it into a central storage location for video feeds.
Hard drive manufacturers have followed this evolution closely. Because surveillance workloads have their own typical characteristics, it is possible to optimize HDDs for them. The Seagate SkyHawk HDDs and the WD Purple drives are examples of variants of classic NAS drives, tailored specifically for video surveillance.
Camera footage and AI
As CPUs for NAS have become more capable, video surveillance software has grown along with them. Today, there are NAS devices on the market that have an NPU on board. Just like in PCs, this NPU provides acceleration for AI-related workloads. In the context of storage, this can involve automatic photo recognition, allowing photographers to quickly search through their libraries. However, the NPU is also interesting in a surveillance context.
The AI capabilities make it possible to analyze live footage as well. Think of facial or license plate recognition, or counting people in a store. AI also supports searching for people, clothing color, and more.
All of this is possible on a NAS, but you can go a step further and use a truly dedicated surveillance device. This is called a Network Video Recorder or NVR. An NVR is essentially a NAS tailored for video surveillance.
No need for a switch
Such a device has several built-in advantages. An NVR can do more than just store data. In a traditional setup with a NAS, you need network equipment such as switches in addition to the NAS to connect various security cameras. Management is done via a PC.
We take the Qnap TVR-AI200 as an example. It has space for two internal hard drives, just like a NAS, and supports the aforementioned AI functionality. Furthermore, the NVR has seventeen network ports at the back and supports Power over Ethernet (PoE) across sixteen RJ-45 ports. In other words, you can connect sixteen cameras directly to the NVR and provide them with power without needing extra switches.
NVR and NAS
With such a device, you have everything you need to monitor a site. Those who want to provide video surveillance for multiple sites can place several NVRs and link them to a single NAS. That NAS then takes on the role of a central management console and can also serve as a backup location for the footage.
You can link and manage NVR devices via a central NAS.
In this way, the circle is complete: a classic NAS works together with an optimized NVR for a surveillance solution with AI, entirely under your own management.
Such a solution has relatively low complexity. In the case of a single TVR-AI200, as in our example, you can even connect a monitor and peripherals directly to the device, so you don’t need an extra PC for operation.
The major NAS manufacturers embracing surveillance all collaborate with the leading brands of IP cameras. Finding compatible devices will therefore not be a challenge.
The evolution of the NAS in the world of surveillance illustrates how versatile and capable these devices are today. More than just network storage, they are servers with software that can provide advanced capabilities in an accessible way.
This is an editorial article in collaboration with our partner Qnap. The text is editorially independent, but the examples come exclusively from Qnap.