Hi All,
Tried posting this before, but somehow it never went through. So now I'm rewriting it. I've been asked to build a security camera system for a 10,000 sq foot retail store. I thought Blue Iris would be good for this. The loss prevention team has proposed upwards of 30-35 cameras, interior and exterior. I'm inclined to make this all a wired, POE IP camera system running off of 2 separate gigabit switches. The priority cameras will be on a UPS backed up switch, the non-priority ones will go down if we get disrupted power. The system will be all 4k 8 MP cameras at 15 FPS minimum. Need 30 days of retention to help identify issues and get law enforcement involved. So in terms of the Blue Iris hardware database, its 32*8*4 = 3840 MP/sec. This worries me.
Originally, my plan was to build a two part system. To buy a i7 or i9 system, and a 10Gbps nic and chase wires to the IT room and have it plug into a 5 port 10 Gbps switch with a Synology 8 bay NAS populated by 10 TB SATA hard drives in RAID 1+0 for 40 TB of storage. However, recent posts on other forums have guided me to putting a self contained system in the IT room. Fortuitously, I came across a good deal on a Rosewill 4U 12 bay hotswap case for only $100 (newegg).
So here are my questions.
1 - CPU selection. Is it better to have a single, consumer grade CPU (i7 or i9) or get dual Xeon E series CPU? Is Blue Iris more responsive to CPU sockets, cores, threads or cache? How can I make sure I have enough horsepower to run upwards of 40 cameras in 4k.
2 - Anyone have experience attaching a lot of disks into a hotswappable array? I am thinking 1-2 disks for system and blue iris database (SSD). The remaining disks in the 10 bays will be 10 TB drives i'll shuck from black friday deals. Is it better to have 8 disks in a 40 TB RAID 10 array with 2 cold stand by disks. Or better to just put them all into the array and have 50 TB and then replace disks that go bad as they may. Given CPU usage is so key for Blue Iris, is it better to get a RAID controller and build the array off of it vs. a motherboard onboard array?
3 - Can anyone recommend a motherboard that offers *EITHER* i7/i9 with a lot of sata ports and a raid controller....or a Xeon board witha lot of sata ports and raid controller...or a board that is good for other features for Blue Iris
4 - About video cards. As I understand it, Blue Iris doesn't really utilize GPU...but it is better to have a distinct graphics card to offload some work from CPU when using onboard graphics??? I do intend to display the console with real time camera in the managers office in a 4k 50-60" tv. What video card (barebones) would you recommend to offer this capability with remote KVM so no RDP is needed.
5 - What OS would you recommend? Server 2019 Essentials/Standard or Windows 10 Pro?
Any additional advise on how to manage hot swap drives? This is new area for me to be honest.