N00b - zoneminder in a "distributed" environment

spyder · Post by **spyder** » Wed Oct 17, 2007 8:24 pm

Greetings,

1.22.3
Suse 10.1 x86-64
Axis 206 network cameras

We have just put up an instance of zoneminder and it is running (pretty slick!). Currently we have multiple sites around the country and need to have cameras at each location. To conserver bandwidth we would like to have a server at each location for local storage/viewing but also have the the images pushed up to a central zoneminder server for overall real time monitoring/long term storage. Is this possible? I see where FTP can be utilized to automatically move things and files as input but what about the database info that goes along with each event? Or do we just have both servers query the cameras (seems simple but silly). Apologize in advance for the potentially stupid questions.

TIA

spyder

Blazer · Post by **Blazer** » Thu Oct 18, 2007 9:50 am

It sounds like you want to consolidate the events of several servers into one...I don't think you can do that. You could theoretically setup MySQL as master/slave to sync the database, and additionally have a cronjob kickoff every X minutes to rsync the ZM data dir, but there would still be problems with conflicting event ids and such.

Perhaps a simpler way would be to simply have a central display server that is nothing but a web browser that has a montage of the remote displays. There is a firefox plugin that lets you tile multiple browser windows within a single frame.

spyder · Post by **spyder** » Thu Oct 18, 2007 1:32 pm

hmm...was wondering that. Haven't dug into the database yet to see what makes up unique keys etc. Our issue is we have audit requirements so all the video needs to be archived but searchable along with the ability to look at the remote locations without killing the bandwidth of multiple sessions. Also need to have the stuff offsite in case something happens at the remote. Maybe it will be easier to just have local and central server pull the video independently.