20 8MP cams for 30 days

Scott Buckley said:
Any recommendations for processor on this?
I know ideally it would be an I7, but trying to find a machine with that and enough storage is proving near impossible
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You do not simply find a machine with 40+ TB of storage except extremely expensive servers, and those won't be using CPUs with Quick Sync Video support.

Since you are probably going to have to build this yourself, you should go with i7-8700K and 16-32 GB of memory. But that is the easy part.

The hard and expensive part is building a storage system capable of efficiently and reliably handling 43+ TB of storage (at least it isn't 150 TB as you originally calculated). Assuming a 6 Mbps bit rate, we're talking about a minimum of four 12 TB disks, or five 10 TB disks, or six 8 TB disks, or eight 6 TB disks. Remember you only get about 90% of the advertised capacity once formatted. You can cut those storage requirements in half with a 3 Mbps bit rate of course.

Then you have to choose a redundancy model. You can go with no redundancy and just pool the disks, or (perhaps better) just keep the disks as separate volumes and configure Blue Iris to record a different set of cameras to each disk. To name a few Windows-compatible software-raid options, there are SnapRAID, FlexRAID, and Storage Spaces. Or you could find a hardware RAID-6 option. Avoid RAID-5 for arrays with this much capacity (if you don't know why, you should learn why).

If you need more SATA ports than your chosen motherboard will provide, this is a good card allowing you to connect up to 8 additional SATA drives: http://a.co/4VAuEl9
You need these breakout cables to actually connect the drives: http://a.co/30Emfa7
 
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If it were me, I would build:
- I7-7700k or I7-8700k
- 24gb Ram
- 9266-8i Raid card
- 8 x 8tb purple or skyhawk drives (I prefer Skyhawk)
- Raid 6 configuration
- Set frame rate to 15 initially, then evaluate after 30 days to see if fps needs changing.
- setup a VPN router with DMZ utilizing LT2P, since it is built into most devices.

LT2P is not the best for VPN, but it is simple to deploy. OpenVPN is better, but requires 3rd party software in most cases. LT2P is great, when used in conjunction with a VPN router, since the security issues with LT2P cloud based VPN is eliminated.

I believe BP2008 is pretty accurate with the storage requirements.

My usage on 5mp@20fps is 1.6tb/day for 20 cams. So, assuming lower frame rates, 8mp cams, and parity losses, 8 x 8tb drives will yield roughly 45tb or so of formatted storage space.
 
Just a side note, but I would build a tower unit with 9 x 5.25 slots so you could install a DVD drive and 8 x hotswap disks. I absolutely love mine, and it was a heck of a lot cheaper than any 1u or 2u rack mount cases I could find. I think I paid about 150 including a 750w power supply, which is totally overkill, but the case came with it!
 
Can you monitor the RAID status from within Windows when using that 9266-8i card?

If installing an uncommon memory configuration like 24 GB, be sure you fill all the slots; e.g. don't use three 8GB sticks because it won't be able to operate at full speed. Which slots you use does matter for speed and sometimes for compatibility; it is documented in motherboard manuals which slots you should use if not using them all.

20x 8MP cameras at 15 FPS is 2400 MP/s which is a lot higher than an i7-8700K will handle. It might (MIGHT) handle 10 FPS acceptably. You've pretty much got to go all the way to the top of the line i9-7980XE to have a chance at 15 FPS. And this is with H.264 which uses less CPU than H.265. I believe the limit of Quick Sync Video to be around 1600 MP/s, but that is irrelevant to the i9-7980XE since it doesn't have integrated graphics. I don't know about the limits of H.265 acceleration yet.
 
Charles Odom said:
Just a side note, but I would build a tower unit with 9 x 5.25 slots so you could install a DVD drive and 8 x hotswap disks. I absolutely love mine, and it was a heck of a lot cheaper than any 1u or 2u rack mount cases I could find. I think I paid about 150 including a 750w power supply, which is totally overkill, but the case came with it!
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The question is, have you ever used the DVD drive??
 
I have 2 systems running 20+ cams on 7700k processors running over 450fps, although they are 5mp, so I didn't think the extra overhead would make that much difference. CPU usage is under 50% on both. These servers Don't run BI, don't run a GUI, and run raid cards, so maybe that is the difference.

I HAVE used the DVD drive, but some people may not. I just prefer to offload recordings to it rather than a USB. With a USB, you want the device back, like if you give evidence to law enforcement, whereas with a DVD, they can throw it in the trash if they want.

The single, dual, triple, etc channel configurations for ram has been benchmarked to death over the past decade with little success...roughly 10% to be exact. A single 8gb stick actually outperforms 2 x 4gb sticks in latency, but anyone who wants to know can use their googlefu. So, if cost is no object, then pair the sticks up, but you certainly don't need to throw money away just to try to fill all the slots in a MB.

As far as a raid card, you can monitor every aspect of the raid array in all of the LSI raid cards I have used. It can even send push notifications, though I have never used this feature.
 
Charles Odom said:
I have 2 systems running 20+ cams on 7700k processors running over 450fps, although they are 5mp, so I didn't think the extra overhead would make that much difference. CPU usage is under 50% on both. These servers Don't run BI, don't run a GUI, and run raid cards, so maybe that is the difference.
Click to expand...

Any VMS (video management system) that doesn't decode the incoming video streams and offloads video analytics to the cameras themselves should have a tremendous CPU-usage advantage over Blue Iris. Like Ubiquiti's proprietary Unifi Video platform for example. They sell an NVR appliance which is really just an Atom D2550 computer running a customized linux build, and they claim this is good for up to 50 cameras. Use the same hardware for Blue Iris and you will be lucky to run one camera. That is how much more efficient a VMS can be if designed for low CPU usage.

Charles Odom said:
The single, dual, triple, etc channel configurations for ram has been benchmarked to death over the past decade with little success...roughly 10% to be exact. A single 8gb stick actually outperforms 2 x 4gb sticks in latency, but anyone who wants to know can use their googlefu. So, if cost is no object, then pair the sticks up, but you certainly don't need to throw money away just to try to fill all the slots in a MB.
Click to expand...

You're right. Video transcoding benchmarks show little or no improvement from multi-channel memory configurations, and that is mostly what Blue Iris does, so I guess it won't make much difference.
 
So...for a cost effective solution, the OP could use an embedded solution from a company like Ubiquiti, Pelco, Axis, Dahua, Hikvision, etc and save a ton of money!

Example, a Pelco 2U server capable of at least 64 cameras with 8 hotswap slots is less that 2k+cost of drives and does raid 6.
 
Well I would hope that a custom Blue Iris machine would cost closer to $1000 than $2000 (before HDDs) and then if for any reason Blue Iris did not work out, there are many alternative VMS products that could run on the same machine.

I do believe that for 4K video, it could be worth seeking out a more efficient VMS or NVR though. Nobody really likes 5 FPS video.
 
Scott Buckley said:
I have a client that wants 20 cameras, 8MP Amcrest ProHD, with 30 days of 24/7 recording. I'm thinking of using Blue Iris for the software, but it'll be around 150TB of storage ( I believe they use h.264). Any thoughts on the NVR build? I haven't used BI before, should I build a 1U server for the NVR and a NAS for the storage?
There will also be another one in the back with 10 cameras on it.
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Just sourced a server for 105TB. RaidZ3 with 3 Pools. Only 65k. 28 8tb hds
 
bp2008 said:
65K? That is only about 6 times too high for a server with that storage capacity and configuration...
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Nope. Some of that's the service warranty which is same day dispatch... Think that was around 14k... But the rest of it was all high availability, dedupe, dual 40gbe,62.5% storage efficiency.

Mind you this goes beyond raid 6...

Yeah and I know you can get a Dell cheaper. I looked and got quotes and have spent about 13 hours in telecoms with them and a half dozen of they'engineers for their r700 systems.

There's always tradeoffs. Data integrity in this case drove cost
 
That's what happens when you have more money than knowledge... Amcrest cameras and a 65k raid box....wow...
 
fenderman said:
That's what happens when you have more money than knowledge... Amcrest cameras and a 65k raid box....wow...
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Sorry... I didn't say anything about amcrest cameras. I was just commenting that I'd just built a data server for Treaty work and a price. A bit tongue in cheek as I doubted anyone world be interested in that level of redundancy and performance except for governments and businesses that relied on historical data.
If you think this is bad you should see the 250k Dell server to invest and perform metrics on ISR data... And I was going cheap there.
 
I will never understand businesses that can afford to just flush money away like that. The hard drives should be the most expensive part of a storage server and 28x 8 TB is only $7000.
 
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