ZoneMinder Forums

Hi everyone, I wanted to understand how I can make zoneminder (VM) work in line with the other VMs in terms of consumption.

That is, I realized that this VM has the capcity once started to consume about 70 watts of power !!

On what basis did you decide that is excessive?

Because it is the only one that commits the cpu of the node excessively. Also having a display monitor on the power outlet, I see that what is left zm, the consumption rises by about 60 watts variable.

Thank you for replying

Not sure I'm any the wiser regarding where CPU use starts to be excessive. But not to worry.

In general, I'd say lower frame rates should help lower CPU. I run mine below the 'normal' 25 fps and that's pretty common. I have analysis FPS set low on some of mine in the belief it lightens the load.

There's always the lower resolution substream for anaylsis approach, but I haven't tried that.

It's always worth tuning the DB and I'd mention a few of us switched to MariaDB from MySQL.

Maybe someone else will pitch in with further tips.

Making changes to reduce CPU load is step one, such as with the previous good suggestions.

The next step is hard. If you want a CPU intensive process to use less electricity you must buy a better CPU. I moved from a gen 2 i7 to a gen 5 Xeon. My UPS shows less percent usage. I do not know what the power change was.

And for viewing - don't use Montage.

I update the consumption of Zoneminder
348 watt i'am use zoneminder

I run mine on an HP Microserver Gen10 Plus. I don't know the total it uses ,but the machine only has a PSU of about 200 watts.

Yes hello, I use a virtualized system and I can see by turning off the VM the real consumption, which amounts to about > 80 watts. I measure it with a socket that I perform precisely these measurements, I also notice the consumption because in the node where the VM resides, the majority of cpu is engaged by zoneminder, in addition the fans of the micro increase in revolutions.

I once faced a similar challenge with high energy consumption in my home. It wasn't a VM, but several home appliances consumed more power than I expected. To tackle this, I explored intelligent metering solutions, which might also be helpful in your situation with the Zoneminder VM.

I discovered intelligent meters through a platform called https://thingsboard.io/smart-metering/. These advanced meters track electricity usage and send the data over the Internet. This setup was a game-changer for me. The IoT platform associated with these meters presented the energy data very user-friendly, like charts and maps. It made it much easier to understand where and how the energy was used in my home. This approach helped me identify which appliances were consuming the most power. Understanding the energy usage pattern was crucial in reducing overall consumption.

Hey there! It's a smart move to look into optimizing power consumption for your VMs. That 70-watt consumption you mentioned for the zoneminder VM is something worth addressing. Instead of a specific IoT platform, you might want to consider some general practices to manage energy more effectively.

- Resource Allocation: Check if your VMs have the right amount of resources allocated to them. Sometimes, adjusting CPU, RAM, or storage can impact power consumption.
- Idle States: Ensure that your VMs go into an idle state when not in use. This can significantly reduce power consumption.
- Monitoring Tools: Utilize monitoring tools that might already be available with your virtualization platform. These can provide insights into resource usage and help you identify power-hungry VMs.
-Consolidation: Consider consolidating workloads on a single VM where possible. This not only improves efficiency but can also reduce overall power usage.
-Efficient Software Configuration: Review the software configuration on your VMs. Sometimes, certain applications or services within a VM can contribute to high power consumption. Optimize them for efficiency.

While IoT platforms like Kaa - https://www.kaaiot.com/advantages/platform might offer specific solutions, sometimes, a combination of these general practices can make a significant impact on power efficiency without relying on additional tools. Hope this helps, and good luck with optimizing your VMs!

[quote=lookinthemirror post_id=133063 time=1704984263 user_id=32644]
Hey there! It's a smart move to look into optimizing power consumption for your VMs. That 70-watt consumption you mentioned for the zoneminder VM is something worth addressing. Instead of a specific IoT platform, you might want to consider some general practices to manage energy more effectively.

- Resource Allocation: Check if your VMs have the right amount of resources allocated to them. Sometimes, adjusting CPU, RAM, or storage can impact power consumption.
- Idle States: Ensure that your VMs go into an idle state when not in use. This can significantly reduce power consumption.
- Monitoring Tools: Utilize monitoring tools that might already be available with your virtualization platform. These can provide insights into resource usage and help you identify power-hungry VMs.
-Consolidation: Consider consolidating workloads on a single VM where possible. This not only improves efficiency but can also reduce overall power usage.
-Efficient Software Configuration: Review the software configuration on your VMs. Sometimes, certain applications or services within a VM can contribute to high power consumption. Optimize them for efficiency.

While IoT platforms like Kaa - [url]https://www.kaaiot.com/advantages/platform[/url] might offer specific solutions, sometimes, a combination of these general practices can make a significant impact on power efficiency without relying on additional tools. Hope this helps, and good luck with optimizing your VMs!
[/quote]
Thank you, I tried it all, I solved it by decreasing the percentage of CPU threads on proxmox. The problem is now circumscribed, but zoneminder consumes a lot of memory. I also carried out tests, with 8 16 32 Gb of memory. It consumes resources in an immeasurable way. I'm sorry for ZM, but I've stopped making it go for a long time. Too bad !

I run 12 monitors in 16GB of RAM, 6 are hi-res modec and 6 are low-res record. It consumes most of the 16GB of RAM. I do not mind the system consuming all of the RAM because part of the RAM is used for caching. I also believe unused RAM is a waste.
Is yours crashing due to out of memory or having some other ill effect?

Andyrh wrote: ↑Thu Jan 11, 2024 3:25 pm It consumes most of the 16GB of RAM. I do not mind the system consuming all of the RAM because part of the RAM is used for caching. I also believe unused RAM is a waste.

I think this is an important thing to get across to people, esp. those coming from a Windows background where (historically) the operating system leaked like a sieve, using up (and then losing track of) memory until it was all consumed -- leading to a crash.

Linux will consume all available real memory, but in a good way. Do not get too excited that something has gone wrong, as the moment you start doing anything memory intensive, that cache will be dropped and returned for use. It is just borrowing it, seeing as you weren't using it!

This is my system right now, short uptime due to patching. It will look about the same in 60 days when it gets patched again.
Depending on what tool you use it may show only 1GB free, but as you can see 7GB is cache. The cache will shrink and grow as needed.