Blue Iris Hardware Setup - Advice Please

[Mentor]

Good Morning Everyone,

We've been using Blue Iris, iSpy and CMS3 software to find the best performing camera software and functions, Blue Iris wins by far, we've kept the hardware the same so had a comprehension to base our figures on. We noticed that during our demo testing of B.I. the fps on all camera's were limited to 6-9 fps but upon registering for the full license, all the camera's fps immediately jumped to the correct fps as set in both the cameras and Blue Iris

I've been reading through various forums within here - ipcamtalk, getting tips and have found out a lot but no set answer on CPU loads


Brief back-ground on our setup

We're currently using an AMD Quad Core, Quad CPU (8380's) setup on a server M/B (Tyan S4989WG2NR), 32GB DDR2-667, 1 x 250GB SATA Barracuda 7200rpm with Blue Iris Version - 4, 1 of the on-board network ports is for the Camera's on a static IP and the other on-board network port is for external Internet connection. The reason we're using this server setup is that we had this server in a room not doing anything so wanted to make use of old(er) equipment

We have 17 IP Camera's all running at 25 fps on a dedicated LAN via PoE Switches (Netgear), the camera's have everything turned off so no self record, or scheduled maintenance reboots etc.. Blue Iris is controlling everything, we have motion detect turned on with Direct to Disk for the recordings (H.264) and storage through Blue Iris

We are running with 94% CPU, 14% Mem, 6% Network Usage for the Caemra's while 0.6% for the Internet

Question is - would changing the 250GB OS drive to an 230GB SSD and then having 2 x 6TB RAID drives for the storage make a major difference in the CPU load

I know reducing the fps will lower the CPU load but have been asked to try and keep the fps as high as possible so looking into other ways but need to check before I take this server off-line for maintenance work

Any advice or areas to improve things please - ps, sorry for the long winded essay above but wanted to give as much details as possible but without boring anyone

Many Thanks

BR
Paul

 

[ThePeacockRanch]

Wow...17 cameras are asking a lot of that processor. Check to see if your CPU's load is all or mostly from Blue Iris first. Stop any unnecessary services. If it pegs out the CPU after a motion event, a faster HD might be of slight benefit, but I would say the problem is really not with storage.

 

[Mentor]

Thanks for your reply, have checked the CPU load and it's mostly Blue Iris, I remote in using Team Viewer, have also tried RDC in-case T.V. was taking the load over the threshold but not really, I have reduced the fps down to 20 and have got the CPU load down to 87% with motion detected on 5 cameras

Also not sure if I've worded correctly above, but our server has 4 x 8380's installed

Thanks

 

[ThePeacockRanch]

Ah...Yes, I missed that fact. I wonder if your load is being spread across all the processors somewhat evenly? That does seem like a high load with 4 processors.
Have you checked each camera for the H.264 data stream and the bitrate? Reducing the bitrate to 4096 or lower can affect the CPU load.

 

[fenderman]

Thanks for your reply, have checked the CPU load and it's mostly Blue Iris, I remote in using Team Viewer, have also tried RDC in-case T.V. was taking the load over the threshold but not really, I have reduced the fps down to 20 and have got the CPU load down to 87% with motion detected on 5 cameras

Also not sure if I've worded correctly above, but our server has 4 x 8380's installed

Thanks

When you remote it with teamviewer cpu goes through the roof, you cannot rely on the task manager do determine how much is due to teamviewer.
A 300 dollar intel haswell based pc with integrated graphics that can take advantage of hardware acceleration will do much better, not to mention likely pay for itself in power savings.

 

[ThePeacockRanch]

Is BI multi-CPU capable? I tried searching to no avail. I assume this server is using a multi-CPU version OS? That may well be the actual load of that many good quality cameras.
As fenderman indicates, that is a giant power hog with 4 processors. I do understand trying to extend the life of perfectly good hardware, though. I still have some dual CPU P-II servers. But I don't power them on much any more. You can recoup the cost of a new(er) lower power-consuming server quickly.
If Windows server, I would look at the running services and processes and disable the ones not necessary or being used.

 

[wcrowder]

Is BI multi-CPU capable? I tried searching to no avail. I assume this server is using a multi-CPU version OS? That may well be the actual load of that many good quality cameras.
As fenderman indicates, that is a giant power hog with 4 processors. I do understand trying to extend the life of perfectly good hardware, though. I still have some dual CPU P-II servers. But I don't power them on much any more. You can recoup the cost of a new(er) lower power-consuming server quickly.
If Windows server, I would look at the running services and processes and disable the ones not necessary or being used.

Yes, Blue Iris is MP capable.

There is an upside to having a couple older multiprocessor machines. They can be used to heat a small room in the winter... Really... I can vouch for that... LMAO.... Wife made me get them out of the house. They sound like jet engines...

 

[Mentor]

Thanks for the replies and advice guys

Been looking into the memory usage as well as something didn't add up, B.I. is caching memory (which is to be expected) how-ever this isn't leaving a lot for the OS to play with so disk space is being used as well, a slow hard-drive isn't going to help with this. We are using Server 2008 R2 Standard and have found that the memory limit on this OS 32GB, so going to replace the OS with Server 2008 HPC R2 which will handle 128GB but this time re-configure using SSD's and storage as downtime is needed so may as well sort out. We have these parts spare

At first this unit was a PoC machine while we tested with VM's as well but have found the VM's is taking an even hard hit with the camera's (again to be expected)

The CPU load is spread evenly across all 16 cores, I also found that writing to the same disk as the OS is also cause heavy fragmentation so this isn't helping either

The good thing is this unit is in a server room so noise isn't to much of an issue and have reduce it's power consumption down to less the 500W without sacrificing system performance

Thanks

BR
Paul

 

[ThePeacockRanch]

@wcrowder: Thanks for that confirmation. I thought I had read about that here a long time ago.
OP...I think you are on the right track and will have to do some trail and error testing. Put your OS on the SSD and record your data to your RAID drives. I would also try to eliminate whatever is consuming RAM. Not a valid comparison but, I have one server with 14 cams, a less-powerful single i5-2310 processor, 8GB RAM and always have free memory unless something has gone awry. CPU loads are 40-60% daytime with a total incoming data stream from BI of 4200 kB/s or less.
I would be interested in your total incoming data stream size too.
Are you running BI as a service or using it to view cams too? Only the 1 onboard video? Latest Tyan drivers? Keep us informed. I think you will be able to make it work.

Edit: Yeah I did the math on electricity too and determined about 12-18 months to be in the clear and saving cash. But, maybe someone else pays for power and time?

 

[fenderman]

The good thing is this unit is in a server room so noise isn't to much of an issue and have reduce it's power consumption down to less the 500W without sacrificing system performance

Thanks

BR
Paul

500w is an insane number. You are paying 500-1500 (depending on your rates) a year to power that thing. You can buy a new efficient server or licenses for exacq that will run on low power gear for that kind of money.

 

[Mentor]

It's a business so it would appear the rates are different as been advised that it would cost less than £400 a year to run this unit, 293W idle to 378W under full load

This server is a recycled unit from an upgrade a few years back, only items that have been purchased are the camera's and license's are part of the action pack

We are using the Web-server as well as monitoring, there are several account groups running giving each user access to a set camera range depending on the location of the display monitor

 

[Mentor]

Update on the situation -

This AMD unit is really struggling as I've been asked to up the resolution, kept the fps at 20 but moved the mp's of the camera's to max (3MB) as requested by the boss, unfortunately this has made the server struggle -ie- 100% CPU load

Having the camera's set to 1.5MB didn't cause any issues but changing to 3MB has

We have an Asus RS700E7/RS8 with dual E2690v2 CPU's and 128GB Memory that I put into this unit, but before I go ahead with this, do you guys, that have far more experience with this, be able to advise if this is going to work better, as the camera's are using the H.264, it should but need to check first

Thanks

 

[kboxvegas]

Two E5-2690 V2's should be at least 30% faster than four 8380's. You still wont be able to take advantage of HA like you would with a newer i7 or E3 but it would still be a significant improvement to the AMD's. Depending on what you are recording, you should look at lowering the fps. If you are primarily monitoring people, there really is no need to go above 15fps IME.