No video display when run as service

[markcohn28]

The way you keep saying 'running a VMS' and 'never run a vms' is leading me to believe that you may not understand what virtualization technology actually is/does. My Ryzen Proxmox host is happily chugging away with several h.265 cameras in a Server 2016 instance, running a freenas instance in another VM, and several Ubuntu 16.04 VMs, all for less than 70 watts at the wall - including a router and switch! Perhaps back in the day, you had a bad experience with virtualization, but please do keep an open mind to new technologies. Times have moved on.

I agree. Have you ever used unRAID? I have a years of experience with VMware ESX/Workstation and Hyper-V. Is Proxmox totally free or do you have to a subscription for updates?

 

[ratbuddy]

Proxmox is totally free, there are a few nag prompts, but nothing that interferes with the functionality of the host. I think they have special subscriber-only repos, but I'm not sure they contain anything you can't get elsewhere.

edit: No, never tried unRAID. My host was originally intended to run Server 2016 Datacenter, with hyper-v guests. Ryzen drivers were nowhere to be found, and ESXi didn't work either. Proxmox was the first solution I found with good/full hardware support, so that's what won

 

[markcohn28]

Proxmox is totally free, there are a few nag prompts, but nothing that interferes with the functionality of the host. I think they have special subscriber-only repos, but I'm not sure they contain anything you can't get elsewhere.

edit: No, never tried unRAID. My host was originally intended to run Server 2016 Datacenter, with hyper-v guests. Ryzen drivers were nowhere to be found, and ESXi didn't work either. Proxmox was the first solution I found with good/full hardware support, so that's what won

 

[markcohn28]

I'm going to download Proxmox and run it as VM to test it out. How much RAM does your host have?

 

[ratbuddy]

It's got 64GB, with 24GB allocated to the freenas guest (passing through 6x3TB drives running in RAIDZ2, it's RAM-thirsty), 16GB for the Server 2016/Blue Iris host, and the remaining 24GB spread among various Ubuntu stuff. I think there's still around 12GB free, and I don't expect to need any more.

 

[markcohn28]

Nice setup....ZFS filesystem, very cool and very fast....

 

[bp2008]

The way you keep saying 'running a VMS' and 'never run a vms' is leading me to believe that you may not understand what virtualization technology actually is/does. My Ryzen Proxmox host is happily chugging away with several h.265 cameras in a Server 2016 instance, running a freenas instance in another VM, and several Ubuntu 16.04 VMs, all for less than 70 watts at the wall - including a router and switch! Perhaps back in the day, you had a bad experience with virtualization, but please do keep an open mind to new technologies. Times have moved on.

When Fenderman says "VMS" he often means "Video Management System", not "virtual machines". It is an unfortunate overlap of acronyms.... Combine that with typos and it can be quite ambiguous what is meant.

 

[ratbuddy]

Gotcha, thanks for clarifying. I'm now firmly convinced that BI runs just fine in a virtual machine, having done so for several months.

 

[markcohn28]

Gotcha, thanks for clarifying. I'm now firmly convinced that BI runs just fine in a virtual machine, having done so for several months.

That's correct. BI runs great in a VM.

 

[bp2008]

Her e's Blue Iris Support response:
"...
The QuickSync is used for H.264 decoding. If you have H.264 cameras, you will benefit. There's a limit though, this helps with about 12 720p cameras ... after that, it might slow things down. But you can select which cameras it's used for. With that 12 camera test, it drops the CPU by about 50%."

My own evidence refutes this claim by the developer. I am running 635 megapixels per second (as indicated by Blue Iris's status window) on an i7-3770K. It is a mix of cameras between 2 and 8 megapixels, with frame rates ranging from 3 to 15 FPS. 21 cameras in total, all streaming H.264 and all compatible with hardware acceleration. With hardware acceleration turned off, the CPU usage of BlueIris.exe, as reported by Task Manager's Details tab, bounces between 65 and 82%, averaging around 74%. With Hardware acceleration turned on, usage bounces between 25 and 31%, averaging around 28%. All measurements taken with Blue Iris running in service mode with the GUI closed. If I disable hardware acceleration on two of the higher load cameras (which together account for 110 MP/s of video data), the CPU usage average goes up to about 32%. So it is possible that the more video you push through the hardware accelerated decoder, the less it helps. Or it could be that CPU usage simply rises faster past 50% when you use a CPU with hyperthreading. These are highly complex systems and can be difficult to analyze if you don't have unlimited time for experimentation. I'd love to try this same experiment with a kill-a-watt meter attached to the machine to see how much energy is actually saved.

The only time I've ever seen hardware acceleration make CPU usage higher is with VideoPostProc (VPP) enabled.

 

[fenderman]

The way you keep saying 'running a VMS' and 'never run a vms' is leading me to believe that you may not understand what virtualization technology actually is/does. My Ryzen Proxmox host is happily chugging away with several h.265 cameras in a Server 2016 instance, running a freenas instance in another VM, and several Ubuntu 16.04 VMs, all for less than 70 watts at the wall - including a router and switch! Perhaps back in the day, you had a bad experience with virtualization, but please do keep an open mind to new technologies. Times have moved on.

To be clear VMS is video management software it is not the plural of VM. The fact that you dont understand that tells me that you dont have much experience in this field.
I completely understand what it is and I am versed in modern vm's...and once again, never run a vms on a VM...a vms must run in the cleanest possible environment. Your power usage numbers are meaningless as we dont know your load....

 

[yeahman]

Proxmox is totally free, there are a few nag prompts, but nothing that interferes with the functionality of the host. I think they have special subscriber-only repos, but I'm not sure they contain anything you can't get elsewhere.

edit: No, never tried unRAID. My host was originally intended to run Server 2016 Datacenter, with hyper-v guests. Ryzen drivers were nowhere to be found, and ESXi didn't work either. Proxmox was the first solution I found with good/full hardware support, so that's what won

I plan to move my blueiris to a windows VM with proxmox. How do you view your blueiris camera feeds? via VNC console of the proxmox web UI?

Have you tried GPU passthrough and connect the windows vm directly via the dedicated GPU?

 

[ratbuddy]

I can view the feeds over web on my local network, or by simply opening a VNC console through proxmox like you say. I haven't bothered with GPU passthrough for that VM, simply no need. Speaking now from almost a year of experience, Blue Iris runs just fine in a VM, and it runs just fine on an AMD processor. Anyone who tells you otherwise is incorrect.

 

[yeahman]

ok thx
Isn't it a bit laggy on the VNC console?
rdp seems to run fine..need to test how blueiris performs via rdp.

 

[ratbuddy]

There is very minor lag over VNC, but this isn't an application like gaming where response time is critical. A small bit of mouse lag, but that's it.

 

[bp2008]

I can view the feeds over web on my local network, or by simply opening a VNC console through proxmox like you say. I haven't bothered with GPU passthrough for that VM, simply no need. Speaking now from almost a year of experience, Blue Iris runs just fine in a VM, and it runs just fine on an AMD processor. Anyone who tells you otherwise is incorrect.

Energy savings from hardware acceleration can measure in the tens of watts. It isn't much, but it adds up over time. Especially if you live in a warm climate where additional heat from a server means more air conditioning. Blue Iris power consumption experiments

Unfortunately what I don't have is direct head-to-head power consumption data between AMD and Intel ... because I'm lazy ... so I totally understand why you might not bother with GPU passthrough.

 

[fenderman]

I can view the feeds over web on my local network, or by simply opening a VNC console through proxmox like you say. I haven't bothered with GPU passthrough for that VM, simply no need. Speaking now from almost a year of experience, Blue Iris runs just fine in a VM, and it runs just fine on an AMD processor. Anyone who tells you otherwise is incorrect.

No it does not...it runs fine until it doesnt...AMD is a powerhog compared to intel and it should NEVER be used for blue iris...an intel processor with hardware acceleration is optimal....bunch of folks paying their electric company a monthly fee by running these powerhog servers like fools. All vms should be run on bare metal.

 

[ratbuddy]

You have that backwards, fenderman. Unless you run those bare metal machines at 100% all the time, you're losing out vs. virtualization. My single VM host replaces ~5 bare metal servers. It's absolutely a power savings vs. running everything bare metal. It's not even close. Welcome to the 21st century!

 

[bp2008]

You have that backwards, fenderman. Unless you run those bare metal machines at 100% all the time, you're losing out vs. virtualization. My single VM host replaces ~5 bare metal servers. It's absolutely a power savings vs. running everything bare metal. It's not even close. Welcome to the 21st century!

Lets be honest here, running a hypervisor on your own hardware is more about sandboxing than it is about efficiently utilizing hardware. If you only had one server you could probably do everything you do without a hypervisor and therefore with lower RAM requirements.

 

[fenderman]

You have that backwards, fenderman. Unless you run those bare metal machines at 100% all the time, you're losing out vs. virtualization. My single VM host replaces ~5 bare metal servers. It's absolutely a power savings vs. running everything bare metal. It's not even close. Welcome to the 21st century!

100 percent wrong...your savings if an is insignificant if any as todays machines run super low power near idle...welcome to doing things the right way where uptime an stability is the number 1 goal....run a killwatt meter on your powerhog and see for yourself....AMD is a terrible idea, VM is a terrible idea...you got em both...what are the specs on your vm machines? what is the power consumption?