Before adding NAS volumes to client accounts

Before adding a NAS volume to your client accounts, there are certain factors that you need to consider to ensure optimal storage usage of your NAS.

• Make sure that your NAS volume meets the minimum hardware requirements.
• Make sure that the NAS volume is supported by Stratocast™. To avoid potential issues, install the recommended firmware version for your device.
  Note: Support for edge recording devices does not depend on the storage type (SD card or NAS volume). If a camera can store recordings on an SD card, it does not necessarily mean that it can store recordings on a NAS volume, and vice versa. Depending on the model of the camera, edge recording cameras can support either an SD card or NAS volume, exclusively, or support both.
• Calculate the storage space of your NAS volume. Proper planning can help you determine whether you need to increase or reduce your storage requirements. To avoid having insufficient storage space or exceeding your recording quota, consider the following when planning your storage:
  • The number of cameras that you want to record on each one of your NAS devices.
  • The number of days (retention period) that you want the video recordings to be stored on your NAS.
  • The video quality that you want to achieve for each of the cameras recording on your NAS. Higher configuration presets (resolution, frame rate, and so on.) produce a higher quality of video, however, they take up more space on your NAS, and they need a higher bitrate to stream video, thus requiring more bandwidth.
• Designate a dedicated NAS for Stratocast™—one that is used solely to store your video recordings. Having a dedicated NAS ensures that you get accurate storage estimates of the hard disk on your NAS, and that you do not risk deleting other personal files that are not related to Stratocast™.
• Install the NAS. For information on installing a Synology NAS, click here; for a Buffalo NAS, click here.
• Install the latest firmware for your NAS.
• Create a NAS volume for each camera whose recordings you want to store on a NAS. For information on creating volumes on a Synology NAS, click here; for a Buffalo NAS, click here.
  Important: You can only have a maximum of one camera record on a NAS volume. Each NAS volume can store a maximum of 2 TB of video files, and you can only associate a maximum of 16 cameras per NAS device.
• Make sure that the date and time of your cameras and the NAS volumes that they will record on are synchronized.