POE Camera System | TheaterFire

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Biggworm@reddit

https://techcrunch.com/2022/11/28/fcc-huawei-zte-hikvision-hytera-dahua-ban/

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ardaingeal@reddit

We use HikVision and Milestone. Been working beautifully for years. Now I just need to find the budget to upgrade to the starlight / darkfighter cameras.

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Biggworm@reddit

Hikvision is Chinese garbage spyware. Jeez, don't you read the news? My company would never install those. If a customer wants to install them, we will not do the job.

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Where do you come from with that? They're the largest suppliers of cameras in our country, so we don't have much choice. But even if we did, I would still use them as they are fantastic cameras. And if there was spyware, well no camera should be directly connected to the internet anyway. All cameras are on a separate VLAN with zero breakout, they only get to communicate with Milestone and clients only get to communicate with Milestone so no direct communication. But that should be standard practice anyway.

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greaseyknight2@reddit

Lets start with actually answering the question: 1. Cloud for cameras is not yet prime time (not saying that its not a viable product) but generally on-prem is still better. 2. Major reason for not going cloud is still cost, storage & bandwidth requirements for high resolution cameras is a major factor. 3. I work with and quote camera systems as a security intergrator, and for large numbers of cameras, you can replace a server every x years/months for the cost of the cloud storage (it depends, but its still a high number) 4. Generally you still need a local bridge/storage device to cache the footage so it can upload in the off hours. Either built in SD card type storage or spinning disks. 5. Hanwha Wave is a robust system (not as good as Avigilon/Genetec etc) but a very good value especially with the features it offers. Your not going to find something substantially better without spending substantially more money. 6. Get input from the stakeholders what they are looking for (Analytics, less maintenance, better mobile app etc, whatever it is) 7. Eagle Eye is a big player (Hanwha resells it branded as theirs) Turning is making large moves with AI on the lower end of the market. 8. What brand of cameras? Consumer 4k cameras are junk compared to a Hanwha/Axis/Avigalon or even a good Chinese brand. 9. Cloud for smaller systems makes alot of sense (Small retail, multiple small diverse locations etc). 10. Sometimes, a system of the scale you have, just needs some cleanup and tweaks to get it back to 100% vs forklifting everything. 11. Hanwha Wave does Motion recording, and the recommended setting is 24/7 on the low resolution stream and motion on the high resolution (this will give you a bunch more storage 12. RAID on the servers (presuming that you have surveillance class drives already) is your ticket to redundancy.

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Drunken_IT_Guy@reddit (OP)

Currently we have lorex bullet cameras, they seem to work ok. We probably have 3 die per year, usually exterior ones. Personally I think our Hanwa system is fine, thats why I said management decided. It does not require much maintenance at all, it just runs and works all of the time.

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greaseyknight2@reddit

Ahh, Lorex cameras....I just replaced a bunch of 4k ones at my church with 5mp Hanwha, for a MUCH better picture (even though the resolution is slightly lower). If management wants improvements, upgrading the cameras is where I would start. The one thing I don't like about the lower end Hanwha cameras is the night vision is only for 30 feet. Uniview cameras are a good value that will provide an upgrade over Lorex, or if management wants analytics and such, go with Hanwha cameras (you can mix and match as much as you want)

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LastGuyOnCallList@reddit

We use Axis Communications. Don't use cisco discovery protocol on the port for the camera; use LDAP instead. CDP acts weird about suppling enough power to Axis cameras.

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SassGoblin@reddit

> use LDAP instead Did you mean LLDP?

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LastGuyOnCallList@reddit

Yes, sorry about that. Too many abbreviations and acronyms in the computer field.

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BenjaminKorr@reddit

I haven’t used Axis’s management software but their cameras have proven to be a great value/performance proposition.

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KillingRyuk@reddit

Axis camera station server is really nice. We have one at each site that holds all of the recordings and then we can connect to all of those with one central server for live views. Currently running on an 85 inch tv so we can display 30 ish cameras at a time.

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OtisB@reddit

Another vote for Axis. Their hardware is great. Pick a camera mangement software that works well with Axis hardware. Often times, it's a good idea to go through a security vendor for this kind of thing. That's how I do it.

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voltagejim@reddit

We've had nothing but problems with Axis. Every week we have cameras with video loss that I need to unplug at the switch and plug back in to get working again. Could be the way the company we contracted to install them did things though

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avenger5524@reddit

We have over 50 Axis cameras, and never had any sort of problem like that. We run Axis Camera Station, though, not 3rd party.

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OtisB@reddit

I'd contact axis directly for warranty coverage wherever applicable. I've sent 3-4 cameras to them for repair/replacement in the 6 years I've used Axis, and I'm happy with their work overall. I've had cameras freeze, lose video, etc over the years but rarely does the same camera become a problem and generally a reset/reboot fixes it. Of course you'll need to make sure that it's actually a problem with the camera.

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ranger_dood@reddit

I have over 175 Axis cameras and have never had this issue. Sounds like it could be a switch power or communications problem.

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Model_M_Typist@reddit

I run into this occasionally, but it's my NVR (OnSSI/Ocularis) and not the cameras themselves. Atleast I think it is. THe cameras are up if you browse to them directly, but it takes rebooting them for the NVR to start displaying it properly again

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korbektech@reddit

is it the cam, switch, or cable? losing power or losing feed?

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dchawk82@reddit

As long as you have the money, Axis is probably the way to go. We're forced to buy Axis cameras that are nearing end-of-support and those things are always dying.

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bythepowerofboobs@reddit

Another vote for Axis here. We have close to 300 cameras now all recording locally to Axis Camera Station. Cameras and the software are great. Verkada is the other option I would look at, though they are about the same price as Axis so I would go with Axis instead if I were you. Meraki is just rebranded Verkada, no need to pay the premium to Cisco for that.

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ranger_dood@reddit

Axis cameras and their in-house Camera Station software both work great.

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gorbusak@reddit

Geutebruck as NVRs, and any decent ONVIF poe cameras.

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FletchGordon@reddit

Verkada is the shit. Each camera holds the recordings so there is no on site server needed. Point and zoom, license plate reader, face recognition. They have been rock solid for us for years now.

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NoUsername189@reddit

You can get the same exact stuff with Digital watchdog but still have all the compatibility necessary for other types of systems AND a more user friendly client.

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FletchGordon@reddit

....but you get terrible enterprise scale management  What do you mean by this? We only have three main buildings that we have cameras in but we can arrange them into whatever groups we want, all in one dashboard.

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NoUsername189@reddit

Do you have admin privileges and ever needed to create a custom role? If you need a role that only has access to certain cameras/sites in a server group, you have to click every single camera individually. There is literally 0 way to select them in bulk. I can't select all in my search, I can't select all by the direct server, I can't even shift/ctrl-click them. It's probably not a big deal to most people, but I have several server groups with over 500+ cams and two server groups with almost 2000+ cams. Some roles in our company need access to only a few hundred or dozen at a time.... well.... that means for every custom role, I had to click my mouse AT LEAST once for every camera they were to receive access for. Also, no way to edit, add, or remove users in bulk and I'm sure you can understand the frustrations that come with that one.

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FletchGordon@reddit

I get it now. No our amount of cameras does not make that difficult but i can totally see what you mean.

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PVDnerd@reddit

We switched from Axis to Verkada. It's been great, just plug in a camera, adopt it in the cloud and youre all set.

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localgov_it@reddit

How do you feel about their previous security breach? https://securityboulevard.com/2021/03/150000-verkada-cams-hacked-but-it-gets-worse/

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llDemonll@reddit

We use verkada. Doesn’t bother us at all. Our account manager called us the day that was released, before it was even in the news, gave us the 101, and told us what verkada was doing to fix it and prevent the same in the future. They moved to a granted support access system with a token that you provide to support (along with what support has access to and how long the access is for) and have far more robust logging around system access than they used to. Zero concerns.

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FletchGordon@reddit

I feel that they've since gotten much better with security and seem to have learned from that failure.

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localgov_it@reddit

Do you work for them? I’m not sure how you could tell otherwise that they’ve improved their security practices. Have you read about their breach and what it entailed?

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hunterkll@reddit

Honestly, i'm more worried about the vendor that HASN'T had a breach/issue yet and had to learn some hard lessons. Because then you really have no idea what all is in there or lurking around, and that vendor has some (likely) misplaced confidence and/or blindness, etc.

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localgov_it@reddit

But you have to make the assumption that the company that was breached actually implemented changed or improved their security practices. Whereas maybe those that haven’t been breached already have those better practices in place? No? In my instance, my cameras have no need to be “in the cloud”. Therefore, I trust my vendor infinitely more since it’s offline. I’m addition, I think these larger cloud companies make you more susceptible to being involved in a breach as they are probably a larger target than my small infrastructure. But those are just my opinions and I know they won’t align with everyone else’s.

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hunterkll@reddit

>But you have to make the assumption that the company that was breached actually implemented changed or improved their security practices. > >Whereas maybe those that haven’t been breached already have those better practices in place? No?  Two points here: \#1 - That's usually in some ways externally visible. You're not just hoping on smoke and mirrors that it actually happened.  \#2 - It's not a matter if if, but when. Every company will get breached at some point. The vector of attack, response, and going-forward actions are the important part. You can have all the best security practices in the world, you'll still get popped at some point. There's just no way around that.  I'm not necessarily talking about specific types of security practice, be it SOP or development guidelines or dependency management or security software suite selection, whatever aspect it is.  I totally get the non-cloud thing and depending on scenario, it makes sense or it doesn't, but the fact that the company had a shit-tier issue and got popped for it doesn't necessarily make a huge black mark against them and make them blacklist worthy, otherwise i'd have ZERO software or hardware vendors left to chose from.  As for being a smaller target, those are much juicier and nicer especially if externally exposed, to be used to pivot/hide tracks/automatically breach and use as bots/etc and usually far less defended. Easier to get to, useful to help with larger things, or in general just a good target for some kid on a weekend. Smaller, remote access enabled environments scare me more than my 6k servers and 40k users. I know. I used to be that kid on the weekend. Easy low hanging fruit to mess with.  I don't want a device with zero CVEs, I want a device with a CVE history showing me what's been battle tested, what broke, where that component came from, and what risk those types of breakages can present to me. Your web service have no CVEs, but the SSHD, kernel, remote management API, etc have? I might be happy with that, as it shows people have been poking at your device, found stuff, but some of it's stood up to time and the interfaces I might be exposing through a WAF haven't had issues yet, and most of your issues came from external dependencies you drew in. And those CVEs being resolved means that you're updating your external dependencies in your firmware/software product. .... of course, I'll also think the other way if you've got a track record/history of CVEs pointing to ancient software versions, and two years after resolving a dropbear ssh vuln you're still running the same version on a firmware released last week.....  It's not a hard and fast thing, but it gives you more insight and potentially confidence in the vendor's practices and such. It's not a matter of if, but when, you'll get popped. Be it a software vuln in the vendor's product, the SaaS back end, firmware bugs, etc.... it's how it came to be that matters.

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FletchGordon@reddit

No I don't work for them. I happen to work for a company that uses two different camera systems, both start with V. One is complete garbage and the other is Verkada. When we've invested in a product and have many cameras up and running it's rather difficult to just rip and replace. yes they fucked up but if you live your life thinking no person or company can make a mistake you will a substantially harder time. They assured customers that they fixed the issues from 2+ years ago and so far there hasn't been another breach. Do you work for their competition?

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localgov_it@reddit

No I don’t work for their competition, I work for a local government as my name indicates. A sales person from Verkada tried to get us to switch to their system but I kindly told them we weren’t interested in switching our current onprem method for their cloud solution. When pushed why, I stated increased costs and that moving our security cameras into a cloud solution seemed unnecessary. For us, there are several other on prem solutions that haven’t had breaches or a known history of poor security practices. They still continue to try and reach other members of our administration to gain a foothold into our organization. Unfortunately for them, it all comes back to me. I personally despise pushy sales tactics and it makes me feel like your desperate for business. If the product was so amazing, it would practically sell itself.

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TheLightingGuy@reddit

I looked into Verkada, but the managers didn't like the quotes so they made us go the super cheap Synology + Cheap cameras route.

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dat_finn@reddit

Yeah they called me too, but they wanted me to rip out all my existing PoE cameras and replace them with their proprietary cameras, so I just hung up on them.

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voltagejim@reddit

Yeah they hit me up last summer and I watched a demo, I liked the system, but we would have had to rip out everything...and we had just closed a deal with another camera company who ahd already gotten bout 60% done with the project.

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dat_finn@reddit

Do they still keep calling you all the time? I actually had to block their number...

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voltagejim@reddit

nah I don't think they have reached out to me again

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netsysllc@reddit

fuck Verkada and their predatory sales tactics. The solution and cameras might be great but if I tell you I am not interested do not keep hounding me and do it through multiple avenues.

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ensum@reddit

what you don't want a small yeti mug?

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lodunali@reddit

They are still digging themselves out of the hole their sales people were digging. Supposedly their sales tactics are much better than they used to be, but for a while it was awful. They got blacklisted by a ton of places due to the crap they pulled. IIRC at my job IT turned them down due to not meeting a bunch of requirements, so they reached out to the CFO directly. Thankfully our CFO just forwarded the email to our director. They were added to our blacklist immediately. Last time I talked to a Verkada sales rep at a conference, they were actually apologetic for the behavior of past sales people, and were pretty chill.

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localgov_it@reddit

Nothing has changed. I told them no recently, and they reached other members of our administration who just circled it back to me. Same scummy practices.

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korbektech@reddit

stored locally? how do you protect against single point of failure?

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ranger_dood@reddit

Generally speaking, camera footage isn’t considered mission-critical. If I lose a cameras worth of data it’s not a big deal. In my case, even if I lose a server’s worth of video footage it’s not a big deal.

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FletchGordon@reddit

We can backup to the cloud

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Drunken_IT_Guy@reddit (OP)

Right now there are 4 separate servers, they are set up such that if one goes down the other 3 compensate and take the cameras over. BUT it all being in one server room is still a single point of failure yes. Also the historical footage goes with the server, so new recordings would continue but old stuff would be gone. Not ideal, but thats how it works.

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Middle-Program-8839@reddit

We have Verkada too! Its great, very pricey though

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Blazedout419@reddit

DW Spectrum/AXIS cameras and DW Spectrum for the NVR software. We roll our own hardware (Dell PowerEdge) and attach storage via iSCSI NAS. The software is free and you buy 1 times recording licenses. The mobile app works great (no ports need opened etc...). Largest system we have installed to date is 83 cameras and resource wise its nothing for a 13th gen Power Edge.

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devicenull@reddit

From the screenshots, DW looks an awful lot like wisenet wave.... I'd guess they're both just rebadged NX witness

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NoUsername189@reddit

Only problem with DW is enterprise scalability which they like to claim they have, but they don't. You can't even shift-click in the cameras and resources tab when creating roles, which when you have 100+ cams a server, with up to 100 servers per merged group, that starts to get annoying very, very fast. No way to add or delete users in bulk either. But I also say that at a certain size, there is no better option than DW.

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lovestojacket@reddit

\+1 for DW. The mobile app is good. I use the cloud tunnel so I don't have to open ports for external access. we have about 40 cameras on ours with minimal hardware. We had a tech support request into them and resolved it in about 4 hours of the initial email. Updates are consistent without breaking everything

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Capital-Cake6940@reddit

We have milestone for the camera service and use Sony and annke cameras. And we got ruckus switches. 60 day recording data

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brofistnate@reddit

Two top voted options at this time are correct. Avigilon and Axis are industry leaders. Both have their high/low points, but both are solid choices.

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Ape_Escape_Economy@reddit

Axis whichever flavor NVR you like for local. Meraki for cloud.

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robvas@reddit

Avigilon DVR and whatever supported cameras you want to buy.

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Mr_Assault_08@reddit

Get the supported cameras. We got some axis cameras and it worked, but hella glitchy. Wasn’t the best quality also compared to avigilon.

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Spiked-Coffee@reddit

It ain't cheap but this is what we use. Have just over 200 cameras with 4 NVR's get 2 - 4 months per camera. Most of our interior cameras are Avigilon (ONVIF) 6.0L-H4F-DO1-IR which are 360 cameras. All are PoE but have rack mounted boosters to assist our switches. If the power blips the load on the switch was too much.

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Sixxsp@reddit

I’ve been looking into standardizing on an access control and camera system for multiple buildings and I’ve came across Avigilion a lot. Can either of you provide an estimated licensing cost per security camera when bringing your own/ using a third party camera?

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919599@reddit

Licenses for ACC is same regardless of the camera manufacturer. Depending on the size of system you will most likely need enterprises licenses pricing varies wildly, depending on project discount and dealer discount. You will want to meet with your local Avigilon sales rep and sales engineer they will come on site and do a demo. For a standard enterprise license is about 250 to 300 before any major discount.

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redog@reddit

This was the pitch I got last week https://www.avasecurity.com/video/aware They wanted an ungodly amount of cash per year

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ArsenalITTwo@reddit

Hanwah and Milestone.

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RickSnacchez@reddit

Milestone or sentinel.

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StaffOfDoom@reddit

Verkada or Rhombus. Fully IP, no DVR.

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jaaydub42@reddit

I would look at a potential Synology solution. You won't get your cloud service, but you will get just your 1 time cost without monthly subscriptions. You can leverage your current remote access solution (VPN) for access. In one of your posts, you note that this is a mutli-site setup (campus). If possible, you could place a Synology unit in each location, sized appropriately for your storage needs. Then just have one additional non-NVR tasked Synology that works as your aggregator of data for viewing. Look at Synology's documentation on Multi-site surveillance. Synology base units come with a single camera license as part of the base os for their Surveillance Station package, and you can purchase additional licenses in 1, 4, and 8 packs to apply to your designated NVR Synology units. These are one-time cost licenses, no subscription lock. Synology supports a wide variety of IP cameras. You may find that you can re-use a number of your existing cameras if they meet the HCL. If you need to get new cameras, like everyone else has said, go Axis.

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thatstig@reddit

Reolink

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Working-Bad-4613@reddit

We use Axis

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Futilizer@reddit

Another + for Axis. We use Blue Iris.

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ZaMelonZonFire@reddit

Check out Digital WatchDog. Terrible name. Wonderful solution. Not cheap, but not as expensive as Verkada and their insanity pricing. Replaced a lot of hallway intersections that had 3-6 cameras covering them with single 360 degrees. They have an outdoor 180 degree wide camera that absolutely rocks.

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Nonstop-Tech@reddit

We use ExacQ across 4 manufacturing facilities. 90 cameras each. Not had any major complaints, but I don't directly interact with them so I can't say much.

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NoUsername189@reddit

ExacQ has not updated their software in a really long time and has several broken features that may or may not be important to you. TLDR; don't do it at all if you're using P2P, other broken features were not as important to me so I don't remember them all

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Nonstop-Tech@reddit

P2P?

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NoUsername189@reddit

Peer 2 peer, often used in CCTV systems to connect directly to an NVR. I'm not the most technical, I'm more of a data analyst who works with a lot of CCTV systems so I'm afraid you'll have to look it up to find out more

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Nonstop-Tech@reddit

We haven't had the need for this as our cameras are on the same broadcast domain as the NVR so they're automatically connected/discovered. I could see it being a pain, but definitely not a deal-breaker.

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NoUsername189@reddit

The only reason it'd be a deal breaker if you HAVE to use P2P because it's currently not even possible in Exacq, the feature is so broken. The vast majority of people do not HAVE to use P2P, I really just wanted to make sure it was mentioned just in case. Also, since the software hasn't been updated since 2014, I can only imagine the potential security flaws, but again I am overstepping my lane of technical knowledge with that. It may be a nothing burger

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Nonstop-Tech@reddit

The latest server package is on version 23.03.6.0, released 03/23/23. Where are you getting that date?

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NoUsername189@reddit

Haha, don't mind me. I'm an idiot. Their user manual has not been updated since 2014, their only issue was the P2P being unavailable and when I checked the manual, I chopped it up to being an old system.

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TheLightingGuy@reddit

I do like Exacq. Also like how I can set a location to automatically offload footage if we go over how much is in the server running it.

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ranger_dood@reddit

Do you really need continuous video recording? That’s going to eat up storage space like crazy for that many high-res cameras. Make sure you’re looking at H265 for the best compression. Some cheaper devices are only H264. My vote is for Axis with their Camera Station software. I run 175 cameras across 3 servers and maintain 90 days of record-on-motion video.

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NoUsername189@reddit

>Do you really need continuous video recording? That’s going to eat up storage space like crazy for that many high-res cameras. Make sure you’re looking at H265 for the best compression. Some cheaper devices are only H264. Just venting my frustrations here to people that understand lol I'm in the cannabis industry and we have a lot of crazy regulations with our CCTV systems. Some states/counties are very lax, some are very.... not. For example, a normal requirement across some states is 15FPS min, 45-60 days retention, 24/7 coverage. But... there is one county, that I'm sure made this rule specifically to count us out, that requires 100% retention rate. Any footage that needs to moved offline must be exported in one way or another to a local jurisdiction as required by law. Absolutely bonkers what some industries have to do for CCTV.

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ranger_dood@reddit

Ah, yes... Not the industry I work in, lol. It's part of the cost of doing business, at least. Meaning, no question of "well I'd LIKE to have this..."

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NoUsername189@reddit

Ha! It just turns into "Can we even make profit with this...?" instead I can tell ya, in that county? It's a resounding NO lol

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accidentpronehiker@reddit

Synology Surveillance Station has been great for us.

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JDH201@reddit

I am using VideoInsight with Panasonic cameras. Lisences for the cameras is included with camera purchase or can be bought separately for other brands cameras. Just rolling out their AI people features in Active Guard now. Can’t beat their pricing model and you can install it on your own hardware. Have also heard Axis camera station is doing much better now.

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dogcmp6@reddit

Axis for Cameras, and Axis camera Station or Milestone X protect for software.

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wwbubba0069@reddit

If in the USA, and deal with gov, have to worry about NDAA compliance, that will cut the list down a bit. TLDR: Axis

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JLOBRO@reddit

We run lots of cameras for a major City and deal exclusively with Panasonic i-pro. They had a lot of legacy Axis that are nearing their EoL and being replaced with Panasonic. Working well for us. Ballpark estimate of cameras in place is at least 3000 so far.

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JLOBRO@reddit

We run lots of cameras for a major City and deal exclusively with Panasonic i-pro. They had a lot of legacy Axis that are nearing their EoL and being replaced with Panasonic. Working well for us. Ballpark estimate of cameras in place is at least 3000 so far.

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vroomery@reddit

Axis and Avigilon are the best options in my opinion. I would avoid cloud systems because many times with them you don’t own the camera, just the subscription. It’s also data intensive on your ISP bandwidth.

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versello@reddit

We use Exacqvision running on a standard Dell server with a bunch of disks. The benefit of Exacqvision is ONVIF, so it supports thousands of cameras so you never run into a problem of being locked into one hardware manufacturer.

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pinkycatcher@reddit

I just got two quoted out, I would say don't do cloud storage unless you really need it, onsite will likely be cheaper and easier to use. You can use cloud management though. We have two main competitors, it's just a cost thing: 1. Axis - Top end stuff, they really do good work and there's a lot of cool features 2. Openeye - Good midline quality stuff but comes in thousands cheaper over the course of a whole project

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Bane8080@reddit

We use SCW www.getscw.com They work great. They have a cloud based remote access for mobile programs. So you don't have to open ports or anything like that.

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Library_IT_guy@reddit

I've been very happy with our Amcrest NVR and cameras. That said... we're running at a much smaller scale; only 10 cameras with a single dedicated NVR. I had an awful experience previously with gen 1 Ubiquiti cameras. They dropped support for them very quickly and wanted us to buy new cameras as well.

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wwbubba0069@reddit

Amcrest is not NDAA compliant so on the no-no list for Gov facilities, so if that is something you have to worry about, go with Axis.

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Library_IT_guy@reddit

Interesting. I don't \*think\* this applies to public libraries, but I'm reading up now to make sure. Thanks for the info.

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dessimus@reddit

It applies to us in Higher Ed, and we had to replace a bunch of cameras for that reason. So I would CYA with someone at the top signing off.

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Library_IT_guy@reddit

My understanding from what I'm reading so far is that this applies to "Federal facilities". Public libraries are kind of weird... we're not exactly considered local government even. At least in my state, public libraries are separate political subdivisions and not a division under city or county government.

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wwbubba0069@reddit

I have to worry about due to the gov contracts we have. So we have to compliant, not sure where a library would fall either.

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torbar203@reddit

Does the Amcrest need any sort of plugin/application to use it? Or can you just access it with Chrome?

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wwbubba0069@reddit

last one I used before the NDAA ban, there was an app and chrome access. Needed extensions installed.

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Library_IT_guy@reddit

We use their free Amcrest Surveillance Pro app. It seems to work pretty well.

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cheetahwilly@reddit

Genetec Security Center

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Smotino1@reddit

We currently have around 180ish camera (at 1080p with bandwith of 500/500 mbit to and from the servers), most of them are poe enabled but we have some old cams with 12v poe like thing... Cameras are mainly hikvision and its rebranded kinds from the nvr sw supplier. I would highly against any cloud solution myself. Does your legal team allows this kind of exposure? The country law allows you to (the org) send these highly sensitive datas to the cloud? If eu based theres gdpr as well.

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peterAtheist@reddit

mobotix.com

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t53deletion@reddit

Verkada.

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ngosney@reddit

Where I work we use a system called Luxriot and have been very happy with it. We have close to 1000 cameras all POE. The licensing is set up so you have a centralized management server and unlimited recording servers. We have over 20 remote sites all with cameras that record locally but we can manage and view footage from our main management server. It is also integrated with Active Directory which makes permissions to the cameras much easier to deal with. Luxriot offers a per computer client for viewing cameras with access managed at the central server it also has a mobile app that can be configured to work on and off the network (if you are comfortable with your camera system being exposed to the internet). AFAIK, you do have to use all of your own infrastructure (storage, switches, etc.). One of the best parts of this system for us is that it is camera agnostic. If the cameras are ONVIF compatible they will most likely work with Luxriot. We currently have a mix of Vivotek, Axis, Reolink, and Amcrest cameras all managed through Luxriot.

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bythepowerofboobs@reddit

Another vote for Axis here. We have close to 300 cameras now all recording locally to Axis Camera Station. Cameras and the software are great. Verkada is the other option I would look at, though they are about the same price as Axis so I would go with Axis instead if I were you. Meraki is just rebranded Verkada, no need to pay the premium to Cisco for that.

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Drunken_IT_Guy@reddit (OP)

Thanks everyone for the comments, looking at Axis as we speak as it seems very popular.

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AgainandBack@reddit

We use Merakis, in part because they meet all requirements and in part because they integrate well with our Meriki network.

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kotletalv@reddit

Axis

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BeanBagKing@reddit

I've never been the one directly dealing with the camera system, so take what I say with a grain of salt. That said, Axis has been the only business solution I've seen that'd I'd trust. Some other things that you might want to think about: 1) Do you have/do you want any kind of AI detection (people, cars, animals, etc.)? If so, do you want that work done on the camera or at the NVR? Consider what that might mean for future upgrades, e.g. you can pretty easily upgrade hardware and AI on the NVR. However, camera upgrades tend to be more maintenance focused without any big leaps in the detection. It's easier to farm out detection to each camera though, than have to have a shitton of horsepower doing it on the NVR(s) for 108 cameras. 2) If you are doing any kind of AI detection, some systems will allow you to record continuously at a lower resolution (.6MP) and switch to a higher resolution (4k) only when detection occurs. This can save a TON of bandwidth and storage (depending on the number of detections), either allowing you to reduce the space needed for storing 2 continuous weeks, or allowing you to store a lot more historical data. It does mean that most of the time video won't be super crisp, and you might miss something, but most of surveillance footage is boring with nothing to miss. 3) I'm sure this is already on your radar, but when thinking about a cloud solution, consider the bandwidth and latency, especially if you're streaming full resolution everything. 4) I'm not sure how deep into the weeds you're personally getting with this, but higher resolution isn't always better for a given scenario. Higher resolution cameras tend to do worse in the dark for example, assuming the same sensor size. Point #4 and #5 here explain it better: https://protectfind.com.au/security-cameras/night-vision/#t-1635488669148 - Along those same lines, it might help to familiarize yourself with DORI (Detection, Observation, Recognition, Identification) and common features (BLC vs HLC vs WDR for instance). Don't forget audio. 5) If you're trying to capture license plates, those will often take a dedicated camera. 6) Do you want backup recordings on the cameras? Some of the ones I've familiar with also have an SD card that will keep some backup recordings, just in case the connection to the NVR is lost somehow. Usually this isn't continuous, and is just motion based or AI based if AI is built in.

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ANAHOLEIDGAF@reddit

If you have that many, skip the BS and look for cloud cams. We partnered with Verkada and have been using them in-house and at clients, they're amazing. That said, with a setup like that it'll probably be around 125-150K for 3-5 years of licensing. More if any cable needs run/replaced. All managed from a browser dashboard. Eliminated most of my problems with on-prem NVRs.

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korbektech@reddit

what cables do you use? why no cloud storage?

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Drunken_IT_Guy@reddit (OP)

Its an older system, probably first installed 6-7 years ago. No cloud storage was a decision made at the time because they were not interested in monthly payments. I believe however at this point that opinion has changed. I am open to cloud options, like I said, I have not really looked into anything yet. Our network is 6 buildings connected with fiber to a central server room, all cameras are connected to their respective switches via cat5 cables currently.

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SceneDifferent1041@reddit

I use a Symantec box with dlink cameras. Does the job surprisingly well on a budget.

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CoolNefariousness668@reddit

I’ve got a mix of Hikvision, Unifi and Axis. All good, Unifi probably easiest to set up. Hikvision is not long for this world for obvious reasons

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spikerman@reddit

I’ve done synology/qnap with axis or other cameras. Works well. Looking at ubiquity for my next setup, door access seems interesting too.

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