Building Your Own NVR
- Thread starter acmaster
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I'm about ready to order an Intel NUC. I figure its got more power than the hardware NVRs, and will be upgradable down the line if I decide I want to use other software. No doubt it costs more, but can't see paying $400+ for a dedicated NVR pc.
networkcameracritic
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Depends on your budget. For commercial projects with under 16 cameras I use a Dell T20 server, but for the same money you can get more if you get a consumer grade PC, but not designed for 24/7 operation but many people do that anyway. I use every day drives as Google did a study that showed there's no real difference between consumer grade and commercial grade HDD.
networkcameracritic
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The T20 normally runs $499 for the Xeon version but comes on sale now and then for $100 off. It has 4 full sized drive bays (+ 2 small drive bays) and 2TB SATA drives should be well under $100 each. I would get a small SSD drive for the operating system and software, they are cheap now for 64GB or 128GB. You'll need an OS, Windows 7 Pro is what we use, you can probably get an OEM version for a reasonable price, maybe $130 or for a lower budget, get Windows Home Server 2011, runs under $50 and has remote desktop support. 8 camera license for Milestone Essential would be about $392 or get BlueIris for starters, costs only $39.99 at Wrightwood. Then figure a switch with 8 PoE ports. Make sure you get one with a gigabit uplink or all gigabit or it will be a problem, I use a ZyXel es2108PWR which is managed, 8 PoE + 1 Gigabit Uplink. Add a Battery Backup UPS, for under $100 and a nice monitor for about $150-200. So well under $2K not including cameras.
Thank you NCC! Have you had any experience with either the Trendnet TPE224WS 24 port POE Smartswitch or the DLink Web Smart Switch 24 10/100 POE Ports, 4 Gigabit ? They both seem to have mix reviews. I'd like to get more than 8POE ports just in case.
hmjgriffon
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Anyone know of a rack mount server that would be good for a BI setup of 16 ish cameras? Would be nice if it had raid controller etc so I can throw a bunch of drives in there and stripe them. 
hmjgriffon
Known around here
Can you send me a link to the one you're talking about? Are you doing raid on there or how do you handle having 2-3 storage drives with blue iris?
An Intel NUC would not make a good NVR for Blue Iris. They may be small and efficient but they are half the speed of their full size counterparts ... if you are lucky. They cost more, too.
Hardware NVRs only get away with their slow CPUs because they have specialized hardware for video processing that take away most of the load. The downside is relatively poor compatibility and rigid feature set.
You have to be careful with "server" hardware. It is almost never a cost-effective choice unless downtime literally costs money. I looked at the Dell T20 and the only advantage it has over a good build with consumer hardware is perhaps reliability (even servers can have hardware defects). You could build a slightly faster i5 system yourself with twice as much RAM for the same price,
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My usual advice is to pick an i7-4xxx with 4 to 8 GB of RAM and plenty of hard drive space, though you can save $100-$200 with an i5 or i3 CPU if the load will be light (all other parts remain the same regardless of i3, i5, or i7 CPU). You can save even more if you find a complete i7-3xxx system used or refurbished at a big discount, and that gets you nearly all the performance of a brand new i7-4xxx.
Hardware NVRs only get away with their slow CPUs because they have specialized hardware for video processing that take away most of the load. The downside is relatively poor compatibility and rigid feature set.
You have to be careful with "server" hardware. It is almost never a cost-effective choice unless downtime literally costs money. I looked at the Dell T20 and the only advantage it has over a good build with consumer hardware is perhaps reliability (even servers can have hardware defects). You could build a slightly faster i5 system yourself with twice as much RAM for the same price,
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My usual advice is to pick an i7-4xxx with 4 to 8 GB of RAM and plenty of hard drive space, though you can save $100-$200 with an i5 or i3 CPU if the load will be light (all other parts remain the same regardless of i3, i5, or i7 CPU). You can save even more if you find a complete i7-3xxx system used or refurbished at a big discount, and that gets you nearly all the performance of a brand new i7-4xxx.
I agree the NUC is probably a bad choice if you want to run Blue Iris. Also I don't belive the hardware NVRs have any special decoding logic over a standard PC. My understanding is they rely on the IP cams to perform all of the video compression and motion detection. I'm willing to take a chance on it, so I'll post my NUC results when I can for everyone to see.
And Yes, the upfront cost of a NUC is higher, however when you factor in the cost of running the device 24/7 I think that balances out in addition to getting a smaller/quieter unit. I might be a special case, but my electric cost is $0.40/KWh. Consuming 10W continuously for 1 year costs ~$35. If a desktop uses an extra 40W, that is $140/year and $700 running the device 5 years.
And Yes, the upfront cost of a NUC is higher, however when you factor in the cost of running the device 24/7 I think that balances out in addition to getting a smaller/quieter unit. I might be a special case, but my electric cost is $0.40/KWh. Consuming 10W continuously for 1 year costs ~$35. If a desktop uses an extra 40W, that is $140/year and $700 running the device 5 years.
networkcameracritic
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The T20 can be found here - http://www.dell.com/us/business/p/poweredge-t20/pd
Yes, you can probably build your own and save money, but these days, not sure it's worth it for me, but to some maybe. If you put a Dell Inspiron which is their consumer line and put it side by side with a Dell T20, you will know what I'm talking about. The fans are beefier, uses Intel XEON processor instead of i-series and is designed for 24x7 operation. The case has 4 trays for quick pop in addition of hard drives separate from the CD plus two spots for 2 1/2" drives and I would use one for the O.S., maybe a small SSD. A consumer PC not only will likely have 2 drive bays, it will be a PITA to put it in and many times it doesn't even come with the cable for it, where the T20 has cables for each drive. I've been out to Roundrock, TX to speak to Dell engineers about the different lines and they broke it down for me so I'm convinced.
So if comparing Dell to Dell, yes, the T20 uses better components, better & larger fans, and is easier to maintain than it's consumer line. Clearly comparing it to computer built from parts and you having enough knowledge about the parts, there's chance you can build it better or worse.
If you want to save some dough, consider buying a rack server used on eBay. There's servers that cost a few thousand but they sell for a few hundred used on eBay. Some of these have drive bays for 8 drives and will have like 10 fans inside them.
As for BI, if it requires everything to be as one disk volume then use Windows to make a volume out of multiple drives, not a big deal, it's called "spanned volume" in Windows. You can also buy Raid boards to do it in hardware instead.
hmjgriffon
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get a kilowatt and find out for sure, I'm gonna look into what kind of desktop I can get but I wonder if I can get a raid controller for it. I don't see any other way to run blue iris with 2, 3, even 4, 4TB drives, plus striping with parity has it's advantages.
hmjgriffon
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Yeah I haven't used software raid much but from what I understand the performance is not near the same as hardware controllers.
I have a kilowatt. Will post my results soon.
Yikes. My energy rates in Wyoming:
Service Charge: $16.00 per month
Energy Charge per KWH: $0.05193
But on the other hand I pay $195/mo for 30 Mbps / 10 Mbps internet, and I'm better off than most around here. Tradeoffs, tradeoffs!
Service Charge: $16.00 per month
Energy Charge per KWH: $0.05193
But on the other hand I pay $195/mo for 30 Mbps / 10 Mbps internet, and I'm better off than most around here. Tradeoffs, tradeoffs!
I'm about to pull the trigger on the T20. I looked at Supermicro and ASUS as an alternative since they give a little more power and drive flexibility as well as support for Hyperthreading which is only supported on 1230+ chips (T20= 1225). That being said the T20 is so nice and compact on size and power the others could be overkill. Does the T20 supporting 8-10 HD cameras have enough room to also support being a backup server for my home system (light use) and perhaps a media server?
T20 Xeon X3 Config will be:
2 x 2.5 hdd 1TB Raid 1
4 x 3.5 hdd 3TB Raid 5 (looking at WD SE Datacenter drives) more reliability
8GB RAM
I may add a raid controller
I also looked at the barebones from Supermicro SuperWorkstation 5038A-iL and ASUS TS300-E8-PS4. Both had nice features but average reviews. They both come standard with 2+x Gpbs ports; SM comes with 8bays of SATA3, ASUS 2x2.5 and 4x 3.5 hot swap front access. They are 40lbs 500 watt system. You can put any x3 to beef it up a little with HT. The reviews range on them. It seems people have had some Linux and Bios issues on both. The SM barebones starts at $429 on newegg. I believe it actually has a raid controller.
T20 Xeon X3 Config will be:
2 x 2.5 hdd 1TB Raid 1
4 x 3.5 hdd 3TB Raid 5 (looking at WD SE Datacenter drives) more reliability
8GB RAM
I may add a raid controller
I also looked at the barebones from Supermicro SuperWorkstation 5038A-iL and ASUS TS300-E8-PS4. Both had nice features but average reviews. They both come standard with 2+x Gpbs ports; SM comes with 8bays of SATA3, ASUS 2x2.5 and 4x 3.5 hot swap front access. They are 40lbs 500 watt system. You can put any x3 to beef it up a little with HT. The reviews range on them. It seems people have had some Linux and Bios issues on both. The SM barebones starts at $429 on newegg. I believe it actually has a raid controller.
Also don't be fooled by intel onboard raid. I've used that for my last two Raid 5 builds with 4 drives each and both of them are serously slow -- 10 to 20 Mbps transfer rates that should be 10 times that.
Look at cpubenchmark.net - high end CPU chart, and don't buy a CPU that doesn't score over 9000.
8 to 10 cameras at 2 or 3 MP should be fine, though you will probably not be able to run them all at 30 fps without direct to disk. You can either lower the frame rate, turn on direct to disk, or both, to try and keep the constant CPU usage below about 60% if possible.
WD makes a "Purple" drive now specifically tuned for surveillance video. But to be honest any reliable drives like the ones you have chosen should be fine.
8GB RAM is plenty
A good raid controller is a good idea, especially for a RAID 5 as I've had a heck of a time trying and failing to get good performance out of onboard raid.
hmjgriffon
Known around here
Have you done any builds using windows software raid? I was playing with it last night but didn't really try any performance testing and it was inside of a virtual machine.
I have not tried Win7's software raid, but I did try Storage Spaces once in Win8. It was worse than horrible. Had to use an expensive recovery tool to get my data back after the crash.