BlueIris on vmware ESXi

[Jedd Williams]

I have Blue Iris running on my Windows Server 2012 on top of VMWare ESXi

It's locking up about once a day - I think I have a processor utilization issue.

It runs at about 82% processor on 9 Cameras.

I have 16GB Ram Allocated to the VM, and I have 8 Processors.




Any suggestions on how to set this for optimal performance?

My physical server has the following hardware:





Thanks for any and all help!

 

[fenderman]

What are he camera resolutions? are you recording direct to disk (you must enable this option)..how much of the cpu did you allocate to the vm?

 

[Jedd Williams]

I'm running 1920 x 1080 on my cameras.



I'm clealry not a VMWare expert - so could use any pointers here - but this is what my resource settings are:





How do I change the recording direct to disk? Not sure where to find that setting.

 

[fenderman]

camera properties>record>file format
Only works in licensed version not demo.
a vm is not a good idea for BI...use a 300 dollar i5-6500 system..

 

[Jedd Williams]

Thanks - I changed it to direct to disk for all my cameras. Looks like I'm averaging about 59% utilization now on processors.

 

[fenderman]

As long as you allocate enough processing power, memory & store VMs on an SSD, there's no need to purchase a separate box just for BI.

Yes there is...A VMS should run on its own system.. Always... Also since you cannot use hardware acceleration on a VM it uses much more processing power...It's a terrible idea... Particularly for those foolish enough to run VM on old powerhog servers...

 

[zero-degrees]

As long as you allocate enough processing power, memory & store VMs on an SSD, there's no need to purchase a separate box just for BI.

Says the guy who's running Reolink cameras... and who's signature talks about PC hardware/components on an IP camera site like it's a Custom Gamer PC forum.... You've got some amazing HD space for sure Seriously WTF do you need 34TB for...... Do you have the entire Pirate Bay backed up?

Sorry, it's been a long day and trolling feels like a great way to end the night.

 

[robilium]

I think it is just the operator of the VM that is a problem. I mean how do you get named Jedd... is that like someone tried to type Jeff but mistyped it?

 

[robilium]

You are correct Zero Actually I know Jedd personally and happen to be here looking for insight on my Dahua Camera and decided to give him some shit and see if he was paying attention

 

[zero-degrees]

You are correct Zero Actually I know Jedd personally and happen to be here looking for insight on my Dahua Camera and decided to give him some shit and see if he was paying attention

In that case sir - I say well played!

 

[robilium]

Even better Zero - he was my boss for 6 years

 

[bob.m]

I have 2 licensed copies of BI and one runs on a intel NUC i5 w/ 8G ram and the other is running on an i7 macmini running ESXi as a windows 8 vm with 2 cores and 4G of ram. I'm running 6 cameras on the NUC and 4 on the VM and both are using < 50% of the CPU, this is mostly because I am doing direct to disk and am not doing any image processing (adding a timestamp for example). These are all mega-cams and I'm very happy with both setups. Note that the rest of the ESXi box is lighly used at this time. At some point I may move the off the mac mini but for now it's been stable and runs quite well.

However I'm more impressed with the little intel NUC, it's a very impressive piece of hardware.

 

[camjam]

Got mine running on a Windows 10 guest with 8 cpu's and 16Gb ram allocated. 8 cameras using about 10/11% cpu. Host has dual xeon E2670 v2, 32 cores 128Gb RAM. It also happily chugs along running a mail server, 2 database servers a muli site wordpress appliance and a further web site. Looks ok to me, and much better than my zoneminder experience!

 

[Jedd Williams]

That Robert Lapp guy is a real funny guy! My ESXi performance issue continues but I think I just need to upgrade processors on my server.

 

[bp2008]

As long as you have direct to disk enabled on all cameras, there are two other things you could do to reduce the CPU usage.

1) Reduce the frame rates that all the cameras are streaming. This must be done in each camera's web interface. Set them to 15 FPS or less. In Blue Iris, set the frame rate for these cameras around 17 FPS, give or take, just as long as it is higher than 15 FPS. You need it set higher in Blue Iris so that Blue Iris will not drop frames when it is recording (really dumb that you have to do this, I know).

2) In Blue Iris Options on the "Cameras" tab, check the box for "Limit live preview rate" and enter a low number. The lower the better. I run my remote systems at 1 FPS here, and since yours is a virtual machine it is probably 100% remote access.

Then just for the sake of good ESXi performance, reduce the number of vCPUs on that Blue Iris VM so your other VMs with fewer vCPUs can run their work at the same time.

 

[hmjgriffon]

I'm with @fenderman there are many things that run well in a virtual machine, security cameras is not one of them. Why waste CPU because you have no hardware acceleration? Giving it tons of ram is also a waste as this task is CPU intensive, not RAM intensive. Introducing raid into the mix is also a waste, why do you think the WD purple is only 5400rpm? I run an i7 6700 with 8 gig of ram that is barely using any ram and it would spank the ass of any of those honking servers, I estimate I could run about 25 2mp cams and be at 80%, but do what you want lol.

 

[bp2008]

I run an i7 6700 with 8 gig of ram that is barely using any ram and it would spank the ass of any of those honking servers, I estimate I could run about 25 2mp cams and be at 80%, but do what you want lol.

I hope you mean 20-30% (CPU).

Worst case (if you insist on 30 FPS for example and live viewing on a large monitor) then maybe 80%.

 

[hmjgriffon]

I hope you mean 20-30% (CPU).

Worst case (if you insist on 30 FPS for example and live viewing on a large monitor) then maybe 80%.

eh? I should have mentioned that would be at 15fps. could go 10fps, and this is a guestimate on current usage, who knows, maybe it doesn't scale out like that and I'd get even more cameras lol. This is also with bitrate maxed out, constant bit rate, etc. etc.

 

[Jaxon]

Try playing with the CPU affinity - VMware vSphere 4 - ESX and vCenter Server

 

[Johanpm]

Because BlueIris runs on windows, it is VERY important to make sure that in your VM, you have selected 1 CPU socket and 8 cores per socket.
Standard ESXi make the VM with 8 sockets and 1 core per socket.
My CPU utilisation went from 100% to 25% after that (4 core, 1 socket in stead of 4 sockets with 1 core).
Hope this helps.