Ready to build my first ZM

[nordicblue]

Hi guys. Hopefully I am posting this in a relevant location.

I about to pull the trigger in my first IP cam to connect with the latest build of ZM.

I am going to be monitoring the front of my house, specifically hoping to catch whoever it is that keeps trying to steal stuff from ours cars. The cars are about 18 feet from our front door, where the camera will be. Eventually, another one will go in the back of the house.

I chose to go with a Reolink RLC-411, for its great reviews and price that I can afford.

The ZM will be installed as a VM on an HP rack server with a single Xeon 5640 and 32gb of Ram. An additional CPU can be installed and is in future plans. This server also functions as my Plex server and domain controller.

I have 4 x 2Tb enterprises level drives, running in RAID 10, going ~4Tb usable space. About 1.5tb is currently used by video and document content. Separate 500 GB drives in Raid 1 are installed for OS needs. 7 additional drivers can be added for extra storage.

Questions:

Is the server powerful enough to support 2 of these cameras running on ZM?

How should I build the VM? More specifically, recommend Linux distro or what image to use? How many vCPU to allocate and how many GB of Ram to reserve?

Any ideas on how much storage needs to be allocated for 2 to 3 days of recording? The camera is a 4MP 1440p. Trying to see if I should just order 2 more 2TB drives and create a Raid 1 out of them for this purpose.

The camera is a good choice, right? Anything else in that sub $100 range that would do a better job?

Thanks for any of your tips and suggestions. I'm excited to get going and have a new tech project to work on next weekend:)

[bbunge]

First off, I am not a big fan of running Zoneminder on a VM or container for other than testing. With that said, for two cameras of moderate resolution and frame rate you could give Ubuntu 16.04-1 server a try. I run up to three cameras on a small dual core Dell Optiplex 780 with 4 GIG RAM. Has a 320 GIG laptop hard drive.
https://wiki.zoneminder.com/Ubuntu_Serv ... e_easy_way
I recommend using Mariadb with your VM.

[nordicblue]

I do have an option of using an older quad core AMD processor as my ZM server, if VM is really not recommended. It was my previous home server, before I got the Proliant, and should be equivalent to the 780 you have with a little more RAM.

Just curious, however, why not a VM? What are your fears in doing a production VM for ZM?

I'll go with your recomendation on the Ubuntu for sure. I am already comfortable using Ubuntu so it'll work out great for me.

No experience with mariaDB, but sounds like the way to go. Will read more on benefits to understand better.

How many days of recording are you getting from the 320 GB and at what kind of resolution and frame rate please?

Again, I much appreciate your time and input:)

[quoted="bbunge"]First off, I am not a big fan of running Zoneminder on a VM or container for other than testing. With that said, for two cameras of moderate resolution and frame rate you could give Ubuntu 16.04-1 server a try. I run up to three cameras on a small dual core Dell Optiplex 780 with 4 GIG RAM. Has a 320 GIG laptop hard drive.
https://wiki.zoneminder.com/Ubuntu_Serv ... e_easy_way
I recommend using Mariadb with your VM.[/quote]

[bbunge]

I do not "fear" using a VM for production. I just do not like to add layers to a system. Never have. And, I do most of my systems on second hand equipment that others have discarded. My production system is a Dell Optiplex 790 i5 quad core, 16 GIG RAM and a 1 TB WD blue drive (the drive I purchased new). That system has a mix of 17 cameras running at 320x240, 5 FPS. Four of those are on mocord the rest on modect. It monitors a busy warehouse and 30 days of recording use up 64% of the drive. There are 5 PC's in the office that have montage view running all day long and the old Dell is not stressed at all.
I have another old Dell Core 2 Duo. 8 GIG RAM and a 1 TB 2nd hand Seagate drive running four Foscam, two Amcrest and an Axis (all PoE cameras) @ 640x480 5 FPS. The purge is at 30 days and it uses about 30% of the drive. Oh, that system runs a Lubuntu desktop as well as Zoneminder as it was initially a stand alone system in the middle of a soccer field with no internet access.
The little OP 780 I mentioned is my test machine that I have imaged with four versions of Ubuntu plus Debian and sometimes Centos to work on install procedures. When I set it up to monitor the house when I'm away ( an IP camera and two USB cameras) the 320 GIG drive would last well over two months at 640x480 5 FPS.

bb

[nordicblue]

Thanks bb. Sounds to me that my 2 x 1 TB drives in RAID 1, which I already have lying around, will do me good for my needs. At most, I was planning on storing a week, but at a little higher resolution and/or fps. My plans, for my old server, was to turn it into a backup server. But , I'll just add on ZM to it as well, both on Ubuntu, and now no extra layer:)