Thoughts on my setup?

[Paranoid_Loyd]

Hey everyone, I've put together a system and have been tinkering with it prior to expanding and wanted to get your thoughts (and prayers) and advice.
I've picked up a Dell PowerEdge R720 with ESXi 6.7 running a couple VM's (BI & DNS/DHCP). I added 8 x 4TB WD Gold disks to give me a RAID 5 capacity of just over 25TB.
I created a BI server and applied 8 CPU's, 16GB RAM, and an initial data drive of 10TB, expandable to 23TB if I need it. So far, I'm only up to 2.5TB and that has me thinking I overkilled it a bit.
I'm wondering if I should've just gone with a 16-channel NVR with 2x6TB drives and called it a day.
It would've been a bit cheaper and not make as much noise, I think. It generates a bit of heat and I have it in a closet. Because of the enclosed space, I had to install a vent system for it and it seems to be working fairly well.
I am totally open to dumping it in favor of an NVR, I just won't have the storage capacity. Maybe 2 weeks vs 4 weeks. What are your thoughts?

I purchased 3 different cameras to test (IPC-T2431T-AS – 2.8mm, IP8M-T2499EW-28MM, IPC-T2231T-ZS), so I'm not generating a lot of bandwidth yet. Ultimately, I plan on running a total of 11, possibly 12. This should generate about 670GB/day at 30 FPS.
I had planned on using 5 8MP cameras because the areas are mostly well lit at night. Looking at BW and reality, am planning on going with mostly 4MP cameras because they should give me good quality and they cost less as well as generate lower storage totals. Plus, the model I was testing (IPC-T2431T-AS – 2.8mm) has audio and I found it helpful.

So my final planned setup, IF I can find the $84 4MP cameras in black is as follows:
1 x 2MP <-- Really good night vision
9 x 4MP - Hopefully 5 in black.
1x 8MP - front door, already installed.
I really don't want to paint cameras. That never holds up over time. If your experience varies, please let me know how you did it. I'm in Florida and it gets hot and humid as balls (industry term).

I was having issues with not getting 24/7 recording and have yet to see how to change that using BI controls. I did modify the cameras themselves by going to the record schedule and selecting General, then all days and periods. I do seem to be getting much bigger files now, but I thought BI would have that kind of control. Anyone care to point me in the right direction?

The 4MP cameras I chose (IPC-T2431T-AS – 2.8mm) are $84/ea. I was looking for that model in black so the camera will blend into the background better. Unfortunately, I haven't found them and the only ones I found so far (IPCT-2X4G-DM – Black ) cost $135. That's $250 extra, and I'd like to avoid that extra cost. Anyone know if the $84 model comes in black? I haven't seen it.
Am I being silly to hold out for a less expensive black turret model?
I really wanted to purchase through this site because I know it helps them out.

Thanks for looking, I appreciate your input.

 

[pozzello]

• for 24hr recording in BI, you set that up in BI, not in the cam UI's. you can still have BI log 'alerts' on motion, or have it log them from the cam's ONVIF notifications if you prefer, letting the cams do that work. either way.
• while BI can be run in VM's (i know people do it,) it's not really optimized for it. It's best run bare-metal on a decent processor with hardware decoding available (eg i7-4790 still makes a usable BI PC, but many newer units perform even better and use less power. I'm running a mix of 20+ 2-8mp cams on an i7-4790 and its usually around 50% CPU (most @10FPS). The VM could give you grief when it comes to optimizing for CPU, but I guess you'll find out...
• 25TB is a lot of disk, but i'm not sure one can have too much disk. it'll give you plenty of months of storage, and given a larger chunk of disk to work with, BI will be overwritting the same sections of disk less often, so they'll last longer...

my 2c worth. cheers!

 

[SouthernYankee]

What is your CPU.
Your server does not support quicksync. Also your VM does not support Quicksync. Quicksync is a MAJOR performace enhancement for BI.

Do not use RAID for video storage, All it does is double the amount of writes. That is all a video system does write. Also have you every tried to recover a raid. Test it pull out a drive reformat it then recover it. If i walk up to your serve and shot it 6 times with a 357 will the data survive ? If not you do not have a reliable system.

Test your server how much power is it drawing under load. How much is that costing you. Us a kill a watt to measure your power.

The number of Megapixels is a very poor way to measure a camera. Look a sensor size. All thing be equal a 4MP camera will out perform a 8MP camera with the same sensor size.

Read,study,plan before spending money ..... plan plan plan
Doing it right the first time will save you money.
Test do not guess

 

[samplenhold]

I have two of the T2431T-AS in 2.8mm and they are inside my garage. They are fine for there, but they would not cut it at night outside.

I have a T2231T-ZS-S2 on my front porch, which has loads of light, and it is a great cam. But realize it is on a 1/2.8" sensor, so it is not the best cam for night if you do not have a lot of light.

You say you want a black cam and the only ones I know of in Dahua are the HDW5231R-ZE, which is several years old and probably can't find one in black, and the T5442T-ZE which Andy stocks for USA only in black. But do you really want a black cam in FL? If it gets any sunlight at all it will roast.

If you want really good night vision, then the 5442 series is the go to cam right now in Dahua's prosumer line. It is a 4MP on a 1/1.8" sensor.

I was having issues with not getting 24/7 recording and have yet to see how to change that using BI controls. I did modify the cameras themselves by going to the record schedule and selecting General, then all days and periods. I do seem to be getting much bigger files now, but I thought BI would have that kind of control. Anyone care to point me in the right direction?

Not sure what you mean here. Do you mean that you are trying to use BI to control the cam's recording to the SD card? That will not work. The SD card recording is controlled by the cam's web GUI only.

If you mean 24/7 recording to BI, then that is controlled in BI. See the example below. Realize that you must set this up for each Profile in use.

 

[Paranoid_Loyd]

You say you want a black cam and the only ones I know of in Dahua are the HDW5231R-ZE, which is several years old and probably can't find one in black, and the T5442T-ZE which Andy stocks for USA only in black. But do you really want a black cam in FL? If it gets any sunlight at all it will roast.

If you want really good night vision, then the 5442 series is the go to cam right now in Dahua's prosumer line. It is a 4MP on a 1/1.8" sensor.


Not sure what you mean here. Do you mean that you are trying to use BI to control the cam's recording to the SD card? That will not work. The SD card recording is controlled by the cam's web GUI only.

If you mean 24/7 recording to BI, then that is controlled in BI. See the example below. Realize that you must set this up for each Profile in use.

This looks like what I needed to see. I don't know why I didn't think of checking out the individual camera settings in BI, but I didn't. I had a couple cameras incorrectly configured. Thanks for your help!
I'm not terribly concerned about sun exposure because the cameras will only see direct sunlight just after sunrise and just before sunset.
For the most part, my environment is well-lit at night. Although, I'd like to have a capability of seeing ~30 feet max should the lights go out. From what I can see with my 2&4MP cameras in my test environment, they should do the trick.
I am intrigued by the 5442 series, but the price is quite a bit higher than I'd like. I know, you get what you pay for.

 

[Paranoid_Loyd]

What is your CPU.
Your server does not support quicksync. Also your VM does not support Quicksync. Quicksync is a MAJOR performace enhancement for BI.

Do not use RAID for video storage, All it does is double the amount of writes. That is all a video system does write. Also have you every tried to recover a raid. Test it pull out a drive reformat it then recover it. If i walk up to your serve and shot it 6 times with a 357 will the data survive ? If not you do not have a reliable system.

Test your server how much power is it drawing under load. How much is that costing you. Us a kill a watt to measure your power.

The number of Megapixels is a very poor way to measure a camera. Look a sensor size. All thing be equal a 4MP camera will out perform a 8MP camera with the same sensor size.

Read,study,plan before spending money ..... plan plan plan
Doing it right the first time will save you money.
Test do not guess

My host is running 4 CPUs x Intel(R) Xeon(R) CPU E5-2637 0 @ 3.00GHz (16 cores). I found the best results by applying 8 CPU's to the BI platform.
I am thinking of just using a physical host and a RAID 0 setup. Much faster. The only limit is physical space and disk size. This is why I was considering doing away with the entire setup and getting an NVR.
So yes, I've recovered RAID arrays, that's part of my job as a forensic examiner. However, anyone shooting a server full of holes is likely to destroy a number of disks. It won't matter what's on any drive at that point. RAID array or not.
Thank you for the advice, I'm using everything I can to make my setup better

 

[pozzello]

i guess the point about 'shooting the raid' is that there are other options used to provide redundancy and backup. notably

• use cameras that have an SD card onboard and can record their own video
• have BI duplicate the recordings to some other device (local NAS or if bandwidth allows, cloud storage)
• some people even run BI AND a standalone NVR, most cams can support two or more full-rez streams pulled...
• if one had many cameras and multiple BI servers, one could replicate & stripe the cams across the servers such you always have video from all the cams, even if one server goes down entirely.

 

[SouthernYankee]

That is why you have redundant storage. My real time backup for my cameras is inside my fire proof gun safe. I use clone cameras. I just completed a test of running a small BI server in the gun safe, but it got to warm.

Have you recovered a raid when the system is still writing video. As a test, I did and shut the recovery down on a 5 drive raid 5 after a few days, as it would not complete.

 

[samplenhold]

I look at it from a different perspective. In my case, why would I back up my video files at all? My current set up of three 10TB HDDs holds about 3 weeks of video. If I have not needed it in three weeks to make me copy it from the 'NEW' folder, I doubt I will need it after three weeks. If I have a catastrophic failure of the BI PC, like fire, theft, or vandalism, the SD cards should cover anything up to that catastrophe in time. I see no reason to back it up to my NAS, to the cloud, or RAID it. But that is for me and other's have different requirements and opinions.

 

[SouthernYankee]

Someone posted something like this before when discussing fails. One backup is actually zero. Two backups is only one.
I have the bi server, the sd cards in the camera, and the clone backup.

 

[Paranoid_Loyd]

That is why you have redundant storage. My real time backup for my cameras is inside my fire proof gun safe. I use clone cameras. I just completed a test of running a small BI server in the gun safe, but it got to warm.

Have you recovered a raid when the system is still writing video. As a test, I did and shut the recovery down on a 5 drive raid 5 after a few days, as it would not complete.

No, I would never attempt to recover a raid forensically or otherwise, while it's still running. That's a non-starter for more reasons than the one you ran into and a strong candidate for corruption.

I never even considered running multiple storage. Holy cow, are you folks rich or something?
I do not have an environment where I can justify redundant storage. It's been difficult enough to convince my wife to put cameras up at all.

 

[samplenhold]

I added 8 x 4TB WD Gold disks to give me a RAID 5 capacity of just over 25TB.

I never even considered running multiple storage. Holy cow, are you folks rich or something?
I do not have an environment where I can justify redundant storage. It's been difficult enough to convince my wife to put cameras up at all.

OK, so the two quotes above do not make sense to me. Eight 4TB disks in a RAID 5 is not multiple/redundant storage?

Eight WD Gold should run about $1200 while my three 10TB Purples ran me $780.

 

[looney2ns]

Nice room heater and power hog you have there.
Choosing Hardware for Blue Iris | IP Cam Talk

 

[Paranoid_Loyd]

OK, so the two quotes above do not make sense to me. Eight 4TB disks in a RAID 5 is not multiple/redundant storage?

Eight WD Gold should run about $1200 while my three 10TB Purples ran me $780.

Southern Yankee said he's running multiple storage (redundancy). I have a redundant drive array, but it's only one storage device. This is different. While I can recover from a failed drive, SY can recover from a failed system.
8 gold did run me about $1200. I wanted the piece of mind that I've previously had with gold. Since I have no experience with purple, I went with what I know.
If I were doing it over again, I'd buy a DVR and call it a day. Given that I already had the server, I just upgraded and built out BI, DNS, DHCP & Splunk.
Sure, it's overkill but I can see when a gnat farts on the wire