Blue Iris in a VM? Yup no problem!

reflection said:
You can backup ESXi VMs for free using OVFTOOL.

You can get a VMUG subscription for home use for $200/year if you want to use some of the enterprise features, but you don't need to.

For Blueiris, the standalone free ESXi works fine for most people.

For me, ESXi has been rock solid for the last 8 years at home. I had one server running for 4 years on ESXi 5.1. I only stopped using it because I was giving that server to my brother and moved my VMs to ESXi 6.7 on a new server. Now I'm on ESXi 7.0.
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Yeah, I guess I'm speaking more from a business perspective and VMUG doesn't apply to that. There is no doubt that ESXi is a wonderful product. I just don't think it fits for most business/private use since you can do everything with other type 1 hypervisors for free that Vmware wants to charge you for.

I ran Essentials for years at $500/yr. For a small business like me it's a waste of money. No support and no HA/Vmotion/Replication. Still have to purchase a Nakivo license for backups. The costs go on and on. Switched to xcp-ng for business (still no support since I'm not on a contract but I didn't get support with Essentials eithers so that is no downside) and Proxmox for home use and never looked back.
 
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biggen said:
Yeah, I guess I'm speaking more from a business perspective and VMUG doesn't apply to that. There is no doubt that ESXi is a wonderful product. I just don't think it fits for most business/private use since you can do everything with other type 1 hypervisors for free that Vmware wants to charge you for.
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Zoneminder is also free but there is a reason people pay for Blueiris.

It's not a perfect analogy but the point is that VMware (or Microsoft or other type 1's for that matter) offers a certain value and companies are willing to pay for that. That values comes in different forms (ease of use, support, compliance, documentation, availability people you can hire that know it, reliability, partner ecosystem, 3rd party integration, etc).
 
reflection said:
For me, ESXi has been rock solid for the last 8 years at home. I had one server running for 4 years on ESXi 5.1. I only stopped using it because I was giving that server to my brother and moved my VMs to ESXi 6.7 on a new server. Now I'm on ESXi 7.0.
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How do you like ESXi 7 over 6.7?
 
Staff Curtis said:
How do you like ESXi 7 over 6.7?
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I like having the converged VDS. Makes my NSX-T installation easier :cool: .

Most home users won't be able to tell a difference and are probably using the standard vSwitch. So no need to upgrade to 7.0.
 
So I know this is a bit of an old thread and not many people virtualize, but I have to ask... I've been testing moving BI from a dedicated server to an ESXi VM. I've allocated 8GB of Ram, and 2 cores, and have passed through a P1000 Quadro video card along with more than 4g of SAS storage in a raid 0 array. The performance on 16 cameras on the stand-alone system has maybe 4% CPU use all day, it basically rocks.

On average the virtualized version runs at 50-60% CPU and really doesn't go down even when upping the core count to where I felt it was too much at 8. The machine is an HP DL360 G8 with Dual E5-2680's and 128g of ram, it's not a sloucher but I would have thought the thing could sizzle and not have any issues. Bare metal windows which is a complete waste for this hardware to be dedicated to only BI makes the machine FLY! So does anyone have any suggestions that are seeing a better performance? All available tweaks like dual streams etc are all implemented but just really shocked at the inability of this solution to work well in a VM environment considering everything else I already run virtualized.

Thanks in advance,
ML
 
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lombana said:
So I know this is a bit of an old thread and not many people virtualize, but I have to ask... I've been testing moving BI from a dedicated server to an ESXi VM. I've allocated 8GB of Ram, and 2 cores, and have passed through a P1000 Quadro video card along with more than 4g of SAS storage in a raid 0 array. The performance on 16 cameras on the stand-alone system has maybe 4% CPU use all day, it basically rocks.

On average the virtualized version runs at 50-60% CPU and really doesn't go down even when upping the core count to where I felt it was too much at 8. The machine is an HP DL360 G8 with Dual E5-2680's and 128g of ram, it's not a sloucher but I would have thought the thing could sizzle and not have any issues. Bare metal windows which is a complete waste for this hardware to be dedicated to only BI makes the machine FLY! So does anyone have any suggestions that are seeing a better performance? All available tweaks like dual streams etc are all implemented but just really shocked at the inability of this solution to work well in a VM environment considering everything else I already run virtualized.

Thanks in advance,
ML
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Well that is a pretty old CPU so you are working against old technology there. I have 13 cams (mix of 2MP and 4MP) in my business all running in a BI VM under a xcp-ng host with an i9-9900. I have only 4 cores assigned to that VM and it averages about 30% usage across all 4 cores. I don't use any GPU acceleration. I find it totally unnecessary with substreams.

You say you have already done substreams. What about lowering the fps to ~15? Are you also writing direct-to-disk in BI?
 
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Have you tried to bump up your cores from 2 to 4 or more? Have you tried PCIe pass-through for P1000?
 
Are you running an Eval copy or a paid version?
 
biggen said:
Well that is a pretty old CPU so you are working against old technology there. I have 13 cams (mix of 2MP and 4MP) in my business all running in a BI VM under a xcp-ng host with an i9-9900. I have only 4 cores assigned to that VM and it averages about 30% usage across all 4 cores. I don't use any GPU acceleration. I find it totally unnecessary with substreams.

You say you have already done substreams. What about lowering the fps to ~15? Are you also writing direct-to-disk in BI?
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GPU acceleration is a WASTE it's NOT efficient at all.
CPU hardware acceleration (ie: Quicksync) is more efficient, but it has limitations (particularly the # of threads\queues). If you run a large number of cameras, or 720p or less resolution sub-streams with direct to disk recording and direct to wire viewing, you don't need it.
BUT and sorry it's a big BUT, Intel CPUs with on-board graphics have a CORE DEDICATED to QuickSync and on newer CPU's like yours it's an absolute POWERHOUSE. So you essentially paid for a CORE and won't be using it. (Like most of the population). It's like they designed and manufactured this powerhouse core for a specific use case. BlueIris is a perfect match and then we come along and say, nah not required...:)
Old hardware would say QuickSync is essential, but sure you don't need it, but to me feels like such a waste.

On the flip side, CPU encoding is also a little more accurate and will be more reliable.

If only BlueIris could run in a Docker container like CodeProjectAI, would be all set. I don't have issues with my docker containers accessing quicksync or GPU features in general.

One of my builds has an Intel 10th Gen i7 (quite and old affordable CPU), running 8 x 4k cameras and using Intel QuickSync and CodeProjectAI (Docker GPU). I run a few other VMs and docker containers, but BI is running on the host and just sips resources.
I tried CPU only, still had plenty of headroom, just felt like I was wasting the QuickSync core. (all in my head)
1662361059481.png
PS: It's actually a windy day here, so motion detection is being kept quite busy.
 
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Have you tried increasing RAM from 8 to 12Gb?

With my dedicated BI PC I used to run 8 but found at times that the PC was sluggish, upped it to 12Gb and the sluggishness disappeared. I do now have 16Gb installed but I found 12Gb more than adequate and only upped it to 16 as I has spare RAM in a drawer so thought I might as well use it.
 
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