Possible office building customer for coming up. Recommendations for Dahua cameras?

[Flintstone61]

I am leaning towards 2 x 14TB HD's. And let the customer know it would be between 20-30 days of recording. If they want 30day or more, will need a 3rd HD.
How difficult is it to store Blue Iris continous recordings on 2 or even 3 or .... even 4 HD's?

as a newb,,,I saw that BI had AUX1 AUX2 Aux3 listed as landing spots for alternative recording folders.
So i created a folder scenario Blue iris/Aux1 -Aux2 Aux3 -Aux4 Aux 5 Aux 6 on the 5TB WD white label drive.
Then i left about 1/2 the Cams recording to "New" on the 8 TB Purp drive.
Soooo....having 14 cams at the time. 1/2 the cams were written to an Aux() folder. like Cam1 to Aux 1, Cam2 to Aux2....
then to "new" on the other cams....
I kept futzing with it....until I was getting a balance that gave about 4-5 weeks per cam.

 

[Flintstone61]

I think under the Blue Iris folder you can name additional folders to something like Cam14 and it will show up in the Recording tab as a selectable folder ...I believe...checking my info hang on a sec....hmmm
I made a folder called cam9 but it is not visible.....hmmm Somewhere I thought somebody had done that....hmmm

 

[Flintstone61]

Some other guru will have more input....

 

[Flintstone61]

Sebastiantombs systems seems more organized......Maybe go with that.....

 

[mikeynags]

stuff I would never of thought of. Thanks for this little nugget of info.

Not sure what the real budget is that you are looking to stay under for this project but have you thought of a small NAS to archive the footage to? I have a Synology with 5 drives that I move video to after a few days and it stays on the NAS for up to a year. When you search or click on a video in Blue Iris, it plays super quick, you can't even tell the video was "archived" to the NAS.

 

[Holbs]

Not sure what the real budget is that you are looking to stay under for this project but have you thought of a small NAS to archive the footage to? I have a Synology with 5 drives that I move video to after a few days and it stays on the NAS for up to a year. When you search or click on a video in Blue Iris, it plays super quick, you can't even tell the video was "archived" to the NAS.

that is also a possibility.
I tried a Synology NAS at home and Blue Iris for a little time. The alerts snapshots took 10-20 seconds to populate when I needed 1 second fast reaction time during my tire slashing security event. However, the customer will not be live viewing at all so maybe recorded video on a NAS is a valid option. Well, they SAY they will not live view but it could be possible once they see how neat Blue Iris and UI3 is along with possible PTZ use, they may change their mind and play with UI3.

 

[JustAnotherCameraGuy]

For enterprise/commercial installations simple, reliable, and redundant are what you want (this really applies to home installs as well). You don't want call backs because the customer had a drive fail and can't figure out how to get their data. You should really be looking at an enterprise grade server with built in hot swappable drive bays. Not only does this automatically provide you with multiple NIC’s, you also get IPMI and or iDRAC (if Dell) for management. Then run the appropriate level of RAID for the customers situation (balance risk with budget and importance of data). In the event of a failure you pop in a new drive and move on. If it were me, I would also split the install up between two switches, it's bad practice to put everything on a single switch especially if that switch does not have redundant power supplies, etc. If your switches don't have redundant PSU's I would ensure they get plugged into different power circuits from each other. Just my 2cents as a network engineer.

 

[Holbs]

For enterprise/commercial installations simple, reliable, and redundant are what you want (this really applies to home installs as well). You don't want call backs because the customer had a drive fail and can't figure out how to get their data. You should really be looking at an enterprise grade server with built in hot swappable drive bays. Not only does this automatically provide you with multiple NIC’s, you also get IPMI and or iDRAC (if Dell) for management. Then run the appropriate level of RAID for the customers situation (balance risk with budget and importance of data). In the event of a failure you pop in a new drive and move on. If it were me, I would also split the install up between two switches, it's bad practice to put everything on a single switch especially if that switch does not have redundant power supplies, etc. If your switches don't have redundant PSU's I would ensure they get plugged into different power circuits from each other. Just my 2cents as a network engineer.

while what you say is true for enterprise commerical environments, this location is not such. I mean, they've been running Hikvision analog cameras & NVR for years and only upgrading because the need for the 2 additional driveway cameras that concentrate only on vehicle & plates.

 

[JustAnotherCameraGuy]

while what you say is true for enterprise commerical environments, this location is not such. I mean, they've been running Hikvision analog cameras & NVR for years and only upgrading because the need for the 2 additional driveway cameras that concentrate only on vehicle & plates.

Always leave room for additional growth regardless of the current need.

 

[Holbs]

Always leave room for additional growth regardless of the current need.

However, I will look into server grade as well. I remember some small business Dell mid-tower had a nice price server grade tower. T something. Certainly no $3000+ hardware is neeeded.

 

[Holbs]

Always leave room for additional growth regardless of the current need.

Dell PowerEdge T40 Mini-tower server System Intel Xeon E 8gb DDR4 550HK
I know next to nothing about what is great to have in a server build. I did my own server home build but it was based off a regular desktop. It works 100% but does not have redundant power supplies or hotswappable HD's.
Whatever I go with, it has to run Blue Iris on it.

 

[Holbs]

it's bad practice to put everything on a single switch especially if that switch does not have redundant power supplies, etc.

this is another great point. I could see one set of cameras based off POE switch A, another set off POE switch B. I like that.

 

[EMPIRETECANDY]

Did order from Andy's Amazon site a single E3541F-AS-M 2.8mm to try out for myself. Already have the base for it.
Good thing too. Only 1 in stock. Best get 20 more, @EMPIRETECANDY !
If this contract goes through, I'll of course contact Andy directly and order through him to get that super-duper-special-possible-ornotpossible-discount.

Have 18 2.8mm at HK warehouse, and another 18pcs on the way to Amazon, 27th can be at Long Beach, i think early Jan (Around 10th)can do shipping out.

 

[Holbs]

Have 18 2.8mm at HK warehouse, and another 18pcs on the way to Amazon, 27th can be at Long Beach, i think early Jan (Around 10th)can do shipping out.

again...no rush or worries as of yet. customer said 3-6 months out for any installations. with the amount of snow that Lake Tahoe is getting this winter, might be July before I can get on a boom lift for outdoor installs!

 

[sebastiantombs]

The AUX directories can also be renamed easily, just right click and type away.

 

[spuls]

Dell PowerEdge T40 Mini-tower server System Intel Xeon E 8gb DDR4 550HK
I know next to nothing about what is great to have in a server build. I did my own server home build but it was based off a regular desktop. It works 100% but does not have redundant power supplies or hotswappable HD's.
Whatever I go with, it has to run Blue Iris on it.

if you want more easy disk access => HPE ML30 Gen10 Plus (4x LFF Hotswap bays).


In principle, we always recommend servers with appropriate maintenance contracts - then a hardware defect is significantly less stress. Without this, I would even prefer whitelabel boxes because you can install "any" parts much more easily.

Otherwise i would clarify with the customer if he really needs +30 days in high resolution/quality. Blueiris can also use the substream for recordings and switch to high resolution when there is motion or other triggers.

 

[Flintstone61]

The AUX directories can also be renamed easily, just right click and type away.

How is this done....I can't seem to rename them in the context of the Clips and archiving menu? Are you saying to right click/rename them in a Windows folder view?

 

[Holbs]

if you want more easy disk access => HPE ML30 Gen10 Plus (4x LFF Hotswap bays).


In principle, we always recommend servers with appropriate maintenance contracts - then a hardware defect is significantly less stress. Without this, I would even prefer whitelabel boxes because you can install "any" parts much more easily.

Otherwise i would clarify with the customer if he really needs +30 days in high resolution/quality. Blueiris can also use the substream for recordings and switch to high resolution when there is motion or other triggers.

what confuses me about server vs desktop setups... the processor. I've never used a Xeon processor. For Blue Iris purposes, it is highly recommended to use Intel 6th gen and up (i5-9600k for example) for the use of the QuickSync. I did use a Intel 4th gen chip without it and....do not recall any difference with & without QuickSync. Maybe cause I was still a nOOb. I looked at the Xeon processor and do not see any listing for QuickSync either.

From Wiki:
Server CPUs (Intel Xeon, AMD EPYC, etc) and Multiple Sockets


Generally speaking, if you can appreciate (and afford) an enterprise-grade server platform, your needs will be better met by enterprise-grade video management software instead of Blue Iris.

That said, here is some guidance. If your needs would be met by an i5 or i7 CPU, but you want ECC memory or some other feature only found on server platforms, consider a similarly priced and specced Xeon E (or older: E3) series model that has Quick Sync Video so you can take advantage of efficient hardware accelerated video decoding. Otherwise, look at general CPU benchmarks and use those to decide what the best CPU is for your money.

Beware of old used servers claiming lots of cores and memory at low prices. These will be loud and inefficient by today's standards, and in many cases outperformed by a cheaper workstation that is years newer. Also note that Blue Iris is not optimized for multiple-socket servers. If you are considering running such a heavy load that Blue Iris would be unable to handle it with a single CPU, then you should be using different software.

 

[wittaj]

Remember that quicksync was needed before substreams to keep CPU% down. Now it isn't needed.

You had it on your 4th generation, it just couldn't process H265, but could process H264.

 

[Holbs]

Remember that quicksync was needed before substreams to keep CPU% down. Now it isn't needed.

You had it on your 4th generation, it just couldn't process H265, but could process H264.

ah. thought quicksync was related to video playback mostly