All record all the time?

[GordonShumway]

I am trying to become a former B.I. user and toss another Winders computer out of my house so the logical step is to get into Zoneminder. I bought a ridiculously oversized enterprise class server with 192GB of RAM, 2 CPUs with 12 cores each + hyperthreading, and 27TB of internal RAID 5 storage. There is no internal GPU/card.

I really don't *need* event detection as most events I have experienced are related to my dogs or shadows. My car has cameras and an alarm. My home has an alarm and is "protected" in several other ways;) Plus I work from home and again ... I have two big dogs. I am considering setting up my cameras (16, assorted brands, max 4k res.) with function=RECORD for every one of them. So I am not going to rely on ZM to be an advanced warning system.

FWIW I am running Ubuntu Server 22.02 and KVM. The zoneminder VM currently has 5TB of storage (expandable), 32GB of mem, and 24 cores. I needed some room for my other VMs

Is this a colossal waste? Should I consider MODECT? Does either RECORD or MODECT make it easier to look at historical video? Other than space consumption are there any benefits of one over the other?

Thanks ... and let the criticism begin ...

[Andyrh]

I do modect and it works well, 6 cameras and an lowly 6 core Xeon.
Record will generate you 384 hours of video per day. Record with motion detection might be what you want. Records all the time and marks the action.
Finding an event without some hints will take a lot of time. The motion detection should get you to the interesting stuff without the risk of missing anything.
Also, in general 1 thread per camera is plenty. Maybe throw in a few spares for DB work and other stuff.

[dougmccrary]

I concur with Andyrh.
I do the same with 6 cores and 20 cameras. Not at the higher speeds you contemplate, but you have lots more cores.