Zoneminder server hardware

vector · Post by **vector** » Sat Sep 16, 2006 10:42 am

Hi, I hope someone can help me. I have successfully tested Zoneminder 1.22.2 on a SuSE Professional 10.0 with 2 Axis IP cam on a PC Pentuim4, 512MB RAM, 250GB IDE HD; now I have to develope a system with 20 Axis cam that must be configured in "Record" mode 24hours a day.
What kind of hardware (processor an RAM) is raccommanded for this purpose? Is it acceptable to use IDE HD in raid 5 software, or SCSI is raccommanded?

Thanks in advance for your help
Vector

Flash_ · Post by **Flash_** » Sun Sep 17, 2006 6:10 am

Software wise, ZM will do all this and more.

Depends on the size of the images, the fps and whether you want colour or B&W.

20 is possible in record, since record uses far less cpu than motion detection. You'll still need a fairly powerful PC, with a processor at the current top end, or just behind.

Ram you will need more of. 2gb is a good starting point, but leave some for future expansion. NEVER underspec memory, it's the cheapest way to achieve performance.

Disks - use single drives, pata, scsi or sata - whatever floats your particular boat, and with any RAID setup that you wish. If the data is critical, some redundancy is imperative. I recommend a seperate drive to that hosting your O/S. All that ZM requires is a reasonably fast drive that Linux can write to - up to you how you provide that.

You MUST work out how many days' recordings you wish to keep and size the volume accordingly. Even at the current largest ide size - ~500gb, is not going to keep more than a few days recordings of 20 cams, so likely you'll need to use some kind of striping or remote array.

vector · Post by **vector** » Sun Sep 17, 2006 8:31 am

Hi, thanks a lot fot your help. I Think that 20 cam x 1 fps (640x480) x 7 day of record will use about 600 GB of disk storage. I will realize it with a software linux RAID 5 with 4 500GB HD.

I think that the real problem of a server like this one is the load for CPU, RAM and bus to hard drives.

I think that the system will be implemented with 20 ipcam in "Record" mode, but I have to design the system to use MoRecord for all the 20 ipcam.
So my trouble are:
a) is it possible to realize that system with a single server, or I have to use 2 servers with additional hardware costs?
b) Are IDE or SATA HD able to read/write that volume of data at an acceptable speed?

Thanks for your help
Vector

jameswilson · Post by **jameswilson** » Sun Sep 17, 2006 11:01 am

I understand that you need motion detection, but we cannot say for sure that your rig will handle it. I would say yes at 320x240 but 640x480 needs 4 x the power.
Also raid 5 is very slow at writing. I would avoid raid 5 as the write performance is terrible, prob only 6meg per second on your rig. And takes a bit out of the host with the calcs

vector · Post by **vector** » Tue Sep 19, 2006 10:51 pm

Hi, I have tested a SATA raid 5 software performance; I send a file (1 GB) from a PC A to a server S using netcat.
If both machines have a gigabit ethernet interface the transfer speed is about 15 MByte per second;
If both machines have a 100Mbit ethernet interface the transfer speed is about 8 Mbyte per second;

Now, I think that the main problem could be the CPU usage (20 ip cam in MoRecord mode!). In your opinion is it possible the following configuration?
- ip cam configured with motion detection inside the camera
- zoneminder record only when the ipcam internal motion detection works
- zoneminder does not use its motion detection feature

Using the ip cam internal motion detection feature could help the zoneminder-server CPU usage ... maybe

Thanks
Vector