New setup questions

[SmithGroupTechnologies]

Hey all,

First time poster here, longtime reader, so if I'm posting in the wrong place, I apologize!

We're mainly an IT shop who deploys surveillance and IP Cams as an additional service to our more mainstream options. We've deployed almost exclusively Hikvision before, but I am getting to the end of my rope with Hikvision support. I'm looking to branch out and use a different VMS and I came across Blue Iris. I had a feature question and also a deployment question.

I have a small business client, 5 camera system with a server currently running iVMS 4200. Moving away from that I am looking at standing up a Blue Iris system to take over the functionality.

First Question: Can I deploy Blue Iris in a virtualized setting? Has anyone deployed it in a VM? Are there any conflicts or concerns? I ran into an OpenGL issue with Axxon Next in virtual environment. This server we stood up for them is pretty robust. 64GB RAM, Dual Hex-Core Xeon processors, etc.

Second Question: Can Blue Iris send email alerts from intrusion/motion detection in a drawn/defined area and attach a picture of the alert in the email? In iVMS 4200 there exists a functionality to have the system email a picture of a single frame of the alert when it is triggered.

Thank you all for your help in advance!

 

[fenderman]

@SmithGroupTechnologies Welcome to the forum..there a several threads where running BI in a VM are discussed. My personal opinion is that any VMS should be run on an independent box. 5 cameras assuming 3mp or less can be run on a 300 dollar i5 haswell from hp elitedesk or dell business optiplex 7020/9020(outlet). Remember to select direct to disc recording or your cpu consumption will go through the roof.
And yes, blue iris can send alert images. You can download the demo and test it. Blue iris currently only supports motion detection but does not have line cross or intrusion detection - but its supposed to be coming. Blue iris will support camera side motion/intrusion/line cross ONLY on hikvision cameras that have a physical alarm out. Blue iris is much more customizable than ivms...

 

[Ford]

I run multiple vm's with blue iris. It is well behaved. You can easily run 4 - 6 vm's on your server. The 5 camera system would be a very very light footprint on your server.

Remember, if you go crazy with the vm's you may run into network saturation issues. (But it sounds like you have a handle on the IT side)