The Bayleaf Hotels Improved Storage Reliability and CCTV Performance with Synology

While we have many very good stories to tell about Synology, for this study, we would like to focus on our challenge with surveillance.​ Towards the end of 2015, with limited budget and knowing that there's potential savings of about 50% in reduced storage requirement when using H.265 compared to H.264, it was clear to us that we needed to pursue a solution that supports a higher compression rate provided by the H.265 standard. Unable to wait for Synology for a DSM that supports this in time for the opening of our hotel in Cavite, we made a decision to get a particular brand of CCTV for our requirements then. While it has provided us with what we need in terms of compression and reduction in storage space, the stability of the entire system is what brought us considerable pain. While support is available, we have experienced multiple crash of the NVRs over the years, mainly due to storage issues. One of the units also totally broke down on its 3rd year of operation after the warranty has lapsed.​

​Our experiences in the past brought us to the realization that the weakest part of any CCTV implementation is the underlying storage system.​ 

Until we are able to secure the funds to replace the broken NVR, repurposing some of our existing Synology equipment for surveillance use has proven to be a quick solution for our problem in our Cavite hotel. Synology allowed us to be versatile and we just needed camera license packs to make an NVR that works like a charm. While the cameras we were running are not listed on Synology's officially supported brand of cameras, with its ONVIF support, we were able to test and run these devices to record with motion detection through Synology Surveillance Station without an issue.​

Having the ability to tap on the same reliable storage technology that we have been using for varied purposes including file services, backup and archiving, for our CCTV needs, it brings simplicity and ease of management in an otherwise more complex environment. From our own recollection of good experiences of Synology's reliability and armed with the knowledge that it already fully supports H.265 video compression on a wide selection of cameras across brands, it was very natural for us to continue using Synology boxes, this time for this specific purpose.​

Each iteration of the DSM provides better features and functionality and over the years we have realized that its user interface has become highly intuitive. In our experience, this enterprise NAS is a joy to learn and administer. It is exceptional.​

What we particularly liked with Synology is the ability to manage various RackStations used as NVRs through its Centralized Management System (CMS) and the flexibility it gives us to move camera licenses from one NVR to the other. This means that even if one unit is down, there will still be other Synology equipment that can handle the load, assuming they have not been over-provisioned. In contrast, many known brands in the market tie up their camera licenses with their NVR hardware which makes their solutions more costly and inefficient in terms of redundancy and resiliency.​

For our enterprise storage, Synology brings us peace of mind with its 5 years of hardware warranty. The regular DSM updates make us feel very confident of the company's continuous commitment towards excellence too.

Officially, Synology Surveillance Station will now be our NVR solution for CCTV across multiple sites. While our hotel properties are poised to utilize available resources until the next budget cycle, we are happy that Synology has handled the workload when the other brand has failed. We plan to completely migrate our existing CCTV systems in our hotels and universities to Synology.