Where should your footage and files live? The honest trade-offs between on-premise NAS and cloud storage — and the hybrid most businesses end up with.
Two answers to the same question\n\nEvery surveillance deployment and every backup policy eventually asks: on-premise or cloud? The honest answer for most Nepali businesses is a hybrid, and this page explains why.\n\n### On-premise NAS\n\nA network-attached storage appliance keeps footage and files inside your building.\n\n- Pros: no recurring bandwidth costs, full control, fast local access, one-time hardware cost.\n- Cons: you own the risk \u2014 theft, fire, drive failure \u2014 and you manage the maintenance.\n\n### Cloud storage\n\nFootage streams to a remote data centre.\n\n- Pros: survives total site loss, zero local maintenance, scales without buying hardware.\n- Cons: monthly cost scales with retention, upload bandwidth matters, and long retention of many cameras gets expensive fast.\n\n### The hybrid that actually works\n\nFor most clients we install:\n\n1. A local NAS doing 24/7 recording and 30+ days retention \u2014 because local write speed is what keeps cameras recording reliably.\n2. Selective cloud archive \u2014 critical events and after-hours motion clips pushed to the cloud, so a site-wide loss never means losing the evidence that matters.\n\n## Sizing the storage\n\nA useful rule of thumb: one 4MP camera at 25fps, H.265, continuous recording uses roughly 400\u2013600 GB per month. A 4-camera shop needs about 2TB for a month; an 8-camera office, 4\u20135TB. We size every quote from your actual retention policy, not a guess.\n\n## The short version\n\nLocal NAS keeps you recording; cloud keeps you covered. Start local, archive selectively, and let the numbers \u2014 not the marketing \u2014 decide the balance.
