Storage calculator for NAS volumes

2016-08-25Last updated

Before creating a NAS volume on your NAS, you can calculate the storage space that must be allocated to each volume on your NAS by applying a simple formula.

The following video unit settings are the two most important factors when calculating the storage space that is required on a NAS volume:
Average bit rate
The average amount of data that is transferred per unit of time (Kilobits per second). Higher configuration presets (resolution, frame rate, and so on) require a higher bitrate to stream video, so it requires more bandwidth. You can refer to this field when planning the Internet connection speed and bandwidth requirements of your recordings.
Retention period
The number of days that the video recordings are stored on the NAS volume. Once the retention period expires or the NAS volume runs out of storage space (whichever comes first), the oldest recordings are overwritten so that you can continue to record on the NAS volume. It is recommended to set a retention period that can be supported by the storage available on the NAS volume.
When planning your NAS volume storage needs, use the following formula to calculate how much storage space you need on your NAS volume:
GB of storage = (bitrate in Kbps ÷ 8) x (60 x 60 x 24 x retention days) ÷ 1000 ÷ 1000)
Note: The bitrate is the average bitrate of the video stream (in Kilobits per second), assuming that video is always recorded continuously. You can obtain the bitrate from the Estimated Data Transfer Rate field when choosing which camera plan is right for you.

How the formula works

  1. Divide bitrate by 8 to convert bits to Bytes
  2. Multiply by 60 seconds
  3. Multiply by 60 minutes
  4. Multiply by 24 hours
  5. Multiply by number of days that you want to store the recordings on the NAS volume
  6. Divide by 1000 to convert from Kilobytes to Megabytes
  7. Divide by 1000 to convert from Megabytes to Gigabytes
If the video unit whose recordings you want to store on the NAS volume streams video at an average bitrate of 500 Kbps, and you want to store the recordings for seven days, the total storage space required for the NAS volume is 37.8 GB.

Once the network attached storage (NAS) volumes have been added to Stratocast™ and video units have been assigned to each volume, you can use the storage estimation feature in Stratocast™ to refine your storage needs and get more accurate estimates.