Server Build

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blueyz
Posts: 1
Joined: Fri Jul 02, 2021 12:59 am

Server Build

Post by blueyz »

I searched and did not see this specific setup, so I'll ask here. Coming from the Cloud P2Pwireless camer world, Kuna mostly, and want varied wired system.

What I have at my disposal(gotten rid of by local business) is an HP G7 DL380 with 7 1TB drives in a RAID5 with 2 spares. I have the fre VMwasr running n it, nd was going to do Win10 pro. It has 2- Xenon 6-core procs, 48GB of RAM, and can have up to 96 I think. It has no real video to speak of.. I was going to Install BI on the server and access with RDP from my desktop with a 2GB NVidea card on it. I have 3 volumes, one for 24/7 substream recording, and another for the 4k streams.

the initial setup is 4 Reolink cameras, 2-5mp and 2-4K. Later I will add 2 more 4K external and 2 inside, for a total of 8. I have a 16port PoE unmanaged switch (30Wmax per port).

My question is:
1)would the server work for BI 5.x as to processing the video and saving it?
2)If Yes any issues forseeable?
3) If nno, let me know.

Thank you in advance.
iPhix
Posts: 2
Joined: Sun Jul 04, 2021 6:05 am

Re: Server Build

Post by iPhix »

HI - this is my first post after just signing up to the forum.

I am a server tech of many years'experience and I have worked a lot with ex-govt lease servers. I know people bag out these servers but they are GREAT machines.

I know this generation of 2RU rack mount server - at least the equivalent from Dell. Very powerful machines, lots of RAM, hardware RAID. And they don't consume near as much power as you would think.

I have built a lot of optimised ex-Lease servers for Clients as RDP servers, so I know a lot about their performance.

I would change the RAID array to RAID 10. It's hardware BBU RAID, it will support 1GBps+

Are the drives 10K RPM SAS drives? Even better if so. You will get better performance writing multiple streams across 6 1TB drives. Yes you only get 3TB in RAID10...It's a used system and the drives may fail. Rebuilding is much lower risk of second drive failure during rebuild of an array.

Oh - in the HW RAID controller - ramp up the rebuild rate to 80% utilisation of controller for hot rebuild from that last 1TB drive which you allocate as a Hot Spare.

You won't have Intel QuickSync - this is only supported on 2020+ Xenon processors. But you have Hex Core X 2 CPUs with Hyperthreading, a big chunk of RAM, and Hardware RAID. Don't worry about it for the number of cameras you are talking about. Remember you are processing and viewing the SUB Stream most of the time - and that's max 1Mbps per camera.

The secret to BlueIris is direct to disc recording and setting up the substreams on the cameras for preview and motion detection. The main stream is for recording. Your 5P and 4K (8MP) high quality streams are dumped straight to your hardware cached RAID array - and if you turn off any overlays from BI onto the recordings ie use the time overlay from your camera - you will save more CPU time. Camera name, time and date etc - use the overlay from the camera for fastest recording.

I would 100% recommend Motion Detection to trigger recording and alerts/triggers. It seems silly to be recording 24/7 when there's good motion detection combining masks on your video image and integrations with Deepstack. I think you will get away with it - if it's too big a CPU hit I can probably help you find a nVidia card that will work in the DL380.

I wouldn't be viewing BI all the time through RDP - it's probably going to add 10%+ CPU usage. I would recommend UI3 (web based) or Android.

Manual for HP DL380 G7 - https://h20195.www2.hpe.com/v2/getpdf.a ... pdf?ver=47

Follow the optimisation guides, set your cameras to H264+/H265+ @ 15FPS, utilise your RAM.

ALSO - try BI with Logical Processors (Hyperthreading) on and off in BIOS. Your HP iLO will show you CPU temps and current draw on the power supplies to show you which one is more efficient with your CPUs.

Please report back on CPU usage.

I would be interested to see how well it would do advanced motion recording with Deepstack...
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