How to setup lots of storage?

[garyv]

Hi all.
This is my first post. I have downloaded and tried the Live CD of zoneminder and am very impressed. I have a windows dvr now with 10 axis 206 ip cameras. I’m adding 12 more axis ip camera and did not want to pay the licensing fees with my current dvr software and I found zoneminder to the rescue.

Anyways a question about storage. I need lots of it. I can build a NAS (network attached storage) server with around 3.5 TB over a gig network. Can I tell zoneminder where to store the recorded videos i.e. nas server at 192.168.x.x ip address? Or just to save the network possible store the recorded video on the local zm server and then say once a night archive the files to the nas server? I don’t know that much about linux or how zm deals with storage. It would be nice to be able to archive/store off the zm server but still have zm be able to read those videos from the web interface. Sorry for the long question, is this possible or do I just need to have a lot of storage on the zm server?

Thank you
Gary V.

[denis]

which type of nas?
simply you can mount your storage with NFS
and you have your nas space available as local.

[Lee Sharp]

A simple option is set up the Linux system with LVM, and add a lot of disks. No redundancy, but lots of cheap storage. If you need secure storage, there are some nice RAID cards for SATA that are blindingly fast. But the word" cheap" is no where near them.

[garyv]

I was going to build a FreeNas server for my storage needs as I also am going to store windows backup and phone server backups.

Thank you for any advise or info on setups you all have.
Gary V.

[denis]

I was going to build a FreeNas server for my storage needs as I also am going to store windows backup and phone server backups.

so it's very simple.
you can export with nfs one directory on nas, such /zoneminder
and mount it in your ZM server.
than you say zm to save all in this directory.

for windows probably you have another export such
/windows with SAMBA and you can use it on your windows machine.

[garyv]

Sounds easy, but how do you tell zm where to save files? Just wondering where those setting are stored in zm, are the a config file or in the web gui? And on a side note, does anyone know what happens if the storage drive goes off line and zm is running?

Thanks
Gary V.

[denis]

Sounds easy, but how do you tell zm where to save files? Just wondering where those setting are stored in zm, are the a config file or in the web gui? And on a side note, does anyone know what happens if the storage drive goes off line and zm is running?

if i remember well there is an option on web gui.
don't worry for that.

if nas fail you can have some problem with you zm server because it try
to save file but nfs mount isn't working.

it's the same thing if you save in local and your disk fail

[Lee Sharp]

I am active in the m0n0wall project, that FreeNAS forked from. Cool stuff.

Sounds easy, but how do you tell zm where to save files? Just wondering where those setting are stored in zm, are the a config file or in the web gui? And on a side note, does anyone know what happens if the storage drive goes off line and zm is running?

You can set it in the GUI, or mount it in the default location. (Varies by distribution) You will need to watch your "Purge When Full" script to keep from busting the NAS. Also, your mysql database will still be local unless you move it. And depending on how you set it up, a missing NAS will go from just not saving events to a spectacular crash.

[garyv]

Thanks to all of you. I think I'll set it up to just store the video and leave the DB on the local.

Thanks again
Gary V.