CCTV
How to Plan CCTV Storage for Factories (Without Surprises in Month Six)
A practical framework for bitrate, retention, and RAID sizing — written for plant IT teams who need predictable performance.
Start with the question: what must be provable after an incident?
Retention should be driven by incident types you actually investigate: theft, safety near-misses, quality disputes, or contractor incidents. If those investigations typically cover 7–14 days, your storage design should not barely meet day one — it should survive growth as cameras are added.
Write down the maximum simultaneous review users and whether remote viewing is continuous or occasional. These assumptions change uplink and internal switching headroom.
Bitrate planning beats camera count planning
Two sites with the same number of cameras can need wildly different storage if scenes are noisy, low light, or high motion. A warehouse aisle with constant forklift movement generates more entropy than a static lobby wall.
We recommend validating bitrates with a short on-site sample recording window before locking NVR SKUs.
When to segment surveillance traffic on the plant network
If cameras share the same VLAN as ERP systems, a broadcast storm or misconfigured loop can hurt both operations and security. VLAN separation, DHCP reservations, and documented uplinks reduce correlated failure risk.
Voice of the customer: most industrial IT teams prefer a dedicated surveillance VLAN with controlled routes to the NVR and controlled outbound internet paths.
FAQ
- Is cloud recording mandatory for modern CCTV?
- No. Many plants prefer local recording with controlled remote access. Cloud can be useful for distributed estates but must match your data residency and uptime expectations.
Want this implemented on your site?
Share your city, plant type, and what you are trying to prove with data (security, compliance, or operations). We will recommend a realistic deployment sequence.