CCTV footage storage in Kenya

Keep the footage even when the recorder walks out

Thieves who know about cameras take the NVR with them. A storage server outside your premises keeps copies of recordings and incident clips where they cannot reach it. Run your own NVR software or sync jobs on it with full root access, sized by camera count and retention.

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Cameras recording

8 cameras

We suggest

Storage S2 KES 5,000/mo

Twenty cameras at 151 GB each for 14 days come to about 3 TB, leaving headroom on the 4 TB of Storage S2 for longer retention on key cameras.

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The NVR in the cabinet is the weak point

Most Kenyan shops, warehouses, schools and apartment blocks record to a Hikvision or Dahua NVR with one or two hard disks inside. It works until the day it matters most: burglars unplug the box and carry it off, a fire reaches the store room, a power surge kills the disk, or someone with the admin password quietly deletes the night in question.

Sending a copy of footage to a storage server in another location fixes that. There are two common ways to do it. Some sites run open-source NVR software such as Frigate, Shinobi or ZoneMinder on a small local box and sync finished recordings offsite every few minutes. Others keep the NVR and export event clips or motion recordings on a schedule, so only the footage that matters travels.

The limit is usually your internet line, not the disk. Continuous 1080p recording from many cameras needs a steady upload that many business connections cannot sustain all day, so plan around what your line actually delivers. Footage of identifiable people is personal data under the Data Protection Act, so access to the archive should be limited and logged.

The problem

Why CCTV evidence goes missing

The recorder is stolen with the goods

Experienced burglars look for the NVR before they leave. Once the box is gone, every camera on site recorded the break-in for nothing. Footage copied offsite during the night is still there in the morning for the police and the insurer.

Recordings overwritten before anyone looks

NVRs loop over their oldest recordings when the disk fills. A theft noticed during a monthly stock take may already be gone. Keeping key cameras offsite for longer gives you time to go back and check.

Power surges and dead disks

Surveillance drives run all day, every day, often in a hot cabinet on unstable power. When one fails it usually fails without warning, and the recordings on it go with it unless a copy already exists elsewhere.

Footage edited or deleted on site

Anyone with the NVR password can delete recordings, including staff involved in the incident. An offsite copy under separate credentials, ideally write-only from the site, keeps an untouched record of what the cameras saw.

What runs on it

Software for getting footage off site

Pick the approach that matches your cameras and your upload speed. Everything below is installed and managed by you on your own server.

Frigate

An open-source NVR that runs in Docker and uses object detection to record people and vehicles rather than every moving leaf. Run it on site and sync its recordings folder offsite, which keeps upload needs much lower.

Shinobi

Open-source CCTV software that records RTSP streams from most IP cameras, including Hikvision and Dahua. It can run on the storage server itself for a small number of cameras if your upload can carry their streams.

ZoneMinder

A long-running open-source video surveillance system for Linux with motion detection, event storage and a web interface. Common in setups where an on-site Linux box already records and you want events pushed somewhere else.

rclone and rsync

Command-line tools that copy finished recording files to the storage server over SFTP or SSH on a schedule. Run them from the on-site recorder or a small PC next to the NVR, and add bandwidth limits for working hours.

Hikvision iVMS-4200 and Dahua SmartPSS

The vendor desktop clients can play back and export clips from the NVR. For incident footage, export the clip, record its hash, and upload the original file to the storage server before anything is edited.

Sizing

How much storage do your cameras need?

Set the number of cameras you want copied offsite. We assume 1080p H.265 recording continuously at about 1 Mbps per camera, kept for 14 days.

1–5 cameras Storage S1 At 1 Mbps a camera writes about 10.8 GB a day, or 151 GB over 14 days. Five cameras need roughly 756 GB, which fits the 1 TB disk.
6–20 cameras Storage S2 Twenty cameras at 151 GB each for 14 days come to about 3 TB, leaving headroom on the 4 TB of Storage S2 for longer retention on key cameras.
21–40 cameras Storage S3 Forty cameras for 14 days need about 6 TB. Storage S3 has 8 TB, and its four cores help if you also run NVR software on it.
41–60 cameras Storage S4 Sixty cameras at 151 GB each come to about 9.1 TB over 14 days, inside the 12 TB of Storage S4, with space left for incident clips.
61+ cameras Storage S5 Above 60 cameras, Storage S5 gives 16 TB. At 80 cameras the 14-day archive is about 12.1 TB, leaving room for incident clips kept longer.

This is an estimate: real bitrates vary with resolution, scene activity and codec settings, motion-only recording needs far less, and every continuously copied camera needs about 1 Mbps of steady upload.

Storage S1

KES 2,000/mo

1 core
2 GB RAM
1 TB SATA storage
2 TB transfer

Order S1

Storage S2

KES 5,000/mo

2 cores
8 GB RAM
4 TB SATA storage
8 TB transfer

Order S2

Storage S3

KES 7,000/mo

4 cores
16 GB RAM
8 TB SATA storage
16 TB transfer

Order S3

Storage S4

KES 15,000/mo

6 cores
24 GB RAM
12 TB SATA storage
24 TB transfer

Order S4

Storage S5

KES 20,000/mo

8 cores
32 GB RAM
16 TB SATA storage
32 TB transfer

Order S5

Before you go live

Setting up offsite CCTV storage

0 of 8 done. Tick them off as you go.

Check each camera bitrate in the NVR settings and multiply by your retention days before choosing a plan.
Measure your real upload speed at different times of day, and decide which cameras go offsite continuously and which send events only.
Never expose the NVR web interface or RTSP ports to the internet; push footage outwards over SSH or SFTP instead.
Give the site a dedicated user that can write new files but not delete existing ones, and keep the admin login separate.
Add a scheduled clean-up job on the server that deletes footage older than your retention period, so the disk never fills.
Encrypt the disk volume or the footage folders, and limit who can download recordings.
For incidents, export the original clip, record its SHA-256 hash and the export time, and store both together.
Set an alert for when a camera stops sending files, so a cut cable is noticed the same day.

Built for Kenya

CCTV storage in the Kenyan context

Upload bandwidth decides the design

Many business lines in Kenya have far less upload than download, and some sites share one connection between tills, Wi-Fi and cameras. Check your upload speed first. If it cannot carry every camera all day, send key cameras continuously and the rest as motion events.

Footage as evidence

Kenyan courts can admit electronic records under the Evidence Act, subject to conditions about how they were produced. Keeping the original exported file, a hash, and a note of who exported it and when makes footage easier to rely on later. Ask your lawyer about specific cases.

Cameras record personal data

Images of identifiable customers, staff and visitors are personal data under the Data Protection Act, 2019. Keep footage only as long as you need it, limit who can view the archive, and display clear CCTV notices at your entrances.

Questions

CCTV footage: your questions, answered

Can I back up my Hikvision or Dahua NVR to a server?

Not usually by pointing the NVR at it directly over the internet. The practical routes are exporting clips with iVMS-4200 or SmartPSS and uploading them, or adding a small on-site PC that pulls the RTSP streams with Frigate, Shinobi or ZoneMinder and syncs the recordings to the storage server.

How much upload speed do I need for offsite CCTV?

Roughly the total bitrate of the cameras you copy continuously. Eight 1080p H.265 cameras at about 1 Mbps each need around 8 Mbps of steady upload, all day. If your line cannot spare that, copy motion events only, or reduce the bitrate on the stream you send offsite.

How many days of CCTV footage should we keep?

Long enough to notice an incident and pull the footage. Many businesses settle on two to four weeks for general recording and keep incident clips separately for as long as a case or insurance claim is open. Under the Data Protection Act, do not keep footage longer than you need it.

Can I run my NVR software directly on the storage server?

You can, with full root access, but every camera stream then crosses the internet all day. It suits a handful of cameras on a good line. For larger sites it is usually better to record locally and sync finished files offsite, so a slow connection does not drop frames.

Are SATA disks suitable for CCTV recordings?

Yes. Video recording and archiving is mostly large sequential writes, which is what high-capacity SATA disks handle well. They are a poor fit for random-access database work, but holding weeks of footage from many cameras is a sensible use for them.

How do I keep footage safe from staff who want it deleted?

Use separate credentials for the offsite server that on-site staff do not have, give the site upload rights only, and let a server-side job handle deletion by age. Then nobody at the premises can remove a specific recording, even with the NVR admin password.

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