Your recorders are the single point of failure. Watch them like it.
When a camera dies you lose one view. When a recorder fails you lose a whole site's evidence - often without a single alarm. IOSentra monitors NVRs and DVRs from the inside: channels, events, storage and the recordings themselves.
Why recorder monitoring is different
An NVR is a server, a storage array and a security system in one box, usually installed in a hot cabinet and forgotten. It fails in layers: a channel drops but the box stays up, a disk degrades but recording continues elsewhere, the recording flag stays on while nothing is written. Watching the recorder's power LED - or pinging its address - covers none of that.
IOSentra's drivers speak each recorder's native protocol. They enumerate every channel, subscribe to the device's own event stream, read storage state, and search the archive for fresh recording segments per camera. The recorder is treated as what it is: the most critical device in your security estate.
What NVR monitoring covers
Channel discovery and mapping
Every channel and its connected camera discovered automatically, so faults attribute to the right device - not just 'the NVR'.
Device event streams
Disk errors, video loss, tamper and connection events from the recorder converted into actionable, deduplicated faults.
Per-channel recording verification
The archive is searched for fresh segments per camera - the only reliable proof the recorder is doing its one job.
Storage state
Disk health and capacity pressure, surfaced before overwrite cycles silently eat your retention window.
Clock accuracy
Recorder time compared against reference, because a drifted recorder poisons every timestamp on every channel.
Availability
Liveness at your cadence, with incidents that distinguish a recorder outage from a network path failure.
Works with the recorders you already run
Purpose-built drivers cover Hikvision, Dahua, Uniview and Hanwha Vision (Wisenet) recorders, ExacqVision and Wavestore servers, plus ONVIF Profile G capable devices. VMS estates are monitored through Milestone XProtect, Bosch BVMS, Avigilon Unity, Nx Witness, Digifort and Axxon One. Mixed fleets appear in one health picture with one incident flow.
Recorders on isolated networks are monitored by the IOSentra site agent from inside the LAN - no inbound access, no cameras exposed to the internet.
NVR monitoring FAQ
Can IOSentra tell which camera on an NVR stopped recording?
Yes. Channels are discovered and mapped to cameras, and recording verification runs per channel - so the incident names the exact camera, not just the recorder.
Does it monitor DVRs and older systems?
Recorder families with driver support are monitored natively, and ONVIF-conformant devices are covered through the open standard. If you run something unusual, the driver runtime is built for adding vendor families.
How do I monitor an NVR that has no internet access?
Install the site agent on the same network. It runs all checks locally and reports health results out over an authenticated channel - the recorder is never exposed.
What NVR problems create incidents?
Confirmed failures like a channel with no fresh recordings, disk errors, video loss events, clock drift beyond threshold and loss of recorder connectivity - each deduplicated and routed under your SLA.
Ready to take control?
Every camera records. Every device communicates. Every issue is tracked. Every ticket is resolved.
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