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What are the real limitations for hardware

Posted: Thu Aug 14, 2014 7:05 pm
by bucsfan069
I have a pretty new PC Build, running 32 GB Ram with an i5 processor. I am unable to get more than 5 cameras at a time at full resolution. I have been reading the forums and I see that my resolution is rather large (704x480) and that is the limiting factor. When I reduce the resolution to half (352x240), I have no problem loading many more cameras. I understand the limitation is the interlacing and the processing power it takes to perform that function. Is there some formula I can use to calculate what I need for a processor to be able to have all 32 cameras operational at full resolution? It almost seems like I would need a beowulf cluster of 6 i5 machines just to monitor the 32 cameras. There seems to be something wrong with that calculation. I know of less powerful systems that run many cameras without issue. Anyone have an idea how this can be addressed?

Re: What are the real limitations for hardware

Posted: Sat Aug 16, 2014 12:36 pm
by bb99
I picked up a DCS-933l to play with off loading motion detection to the camera and nodect as the function to address exactly your issue. Never got around to trying it out so I'm stuck at 640*480 @ 10 fps with 6 monitors in modect on an older 2 core proc. with 2 gig mem (load reported @ about .45 average). It's been reported here that Axis cameras do a pretty good job with this.

Re: What are the real limitations for hardware

Posted: Wed Mar 11, 2015 2:06 pm
by bucsfan069
I guess I am still at a loss for understanding this performance limitation. I can't grasp what is requiring such a huge beast of a machine just to record video and run some event filtering. I tried an experiment with putting all cameras in monitor mode to eliminate the video processing piece but it did not allow any more cameras. Is anyone else having any problems with this? I am running ubuntu 12.04 with ZM 1.27

Re: What are the real limitations for hardware

Posted: Thu Mar 12, 2015 7:22 am
by Nerre
It's the image analysis that takes power.

For each camera, ZM will have to keep at least two images in memory (that's where shared memory is used) and compare those images pixel by pixel. With more complex analysis additional computations have to be done.


I can compare with my very old MythTV backend I ran 10 years ago (I think it was an old 450 MHz PII). It had not problems recording 4 DVB-T streams in parallell, but running commercial flagging on the video took 2 hours for a 1 hour show.

Re: What are the real limitations for hardware

Posted: Tue Jun 30, 2015 8:11 pm
by bucsfan069
OK so lets say that is the root cause of my issue. I have 32 camera inputs, I have some cameras on the system that are capable of 704x480. When I use that resolution I run into a hard limit of 5 cameras. What do I need to increase to be able to monitor all my cameras? Or what do I need to disable to be able to use this system...I am at a loss that this problem is not solvable in some way. Here are the specs of my server currently...Let me know if you need some other specs...


uname -a
Linux zoneminder-PowerEdge-2950 3.2.0-65-generic-pae #99-Ubuntu SMP Fri Jul 4 21:17:05 UTC 2014 i686 i686 i386 GNU/Linux

lspci
00:00.0 Host bridge: Intel Corporation 5000X Chipset Memory Controller Hub (rev 12)
00:02.0 PCI bridge: Intel Corporation 5000 Series Chipset PCI Express x4 Port 2 (rev 12)
00:03.0 PCI bridge: Intel Corporation 5000 Series Chipset PCI Express x4 Port 3 (rev 12)
00:04.0 PCI bridge: Intel Corporation 5000 Series Chipset PCI Express x8 Port 4-5 (rev 12)
00:05.0 PCI bridge: Intel Corporation 5000 Series Chipset PCI Express x4 Port 5 (rev 12)
00:06.0 PCI bridge: Intel Corporation 5000 Series Chipset PCI Express x8 Port 6-7 (rev 12)
00:07.0 PCI bridge: Intel Corporation 5000 Series Chipset PCI Express x4 Port 7 (rev 12)
00:10.0 Host bridge: Intel Corporation 5000 Series Chipset FSB Registers (rev 12)
00:10.1 Host bridge: Intel Corporation 5000 Series Chipset FSB Registers (rev 12)
00:10.2 Host bridge: Intel Corporation 5000 Series Chipset FSB Registers (rev 12)
00:11.0 Host bridge: Intel Corporation 5000 Series Chipset Reserved Registers (rev 12)
00:13.0 Host bridge: Intel Corporation 5000 Series Chipset Reserved Registers (rev 12)
00:15.0 Host bridge: Intel Corporation 5000 Series Chipset FBD Registers (rev 12)
00:16.0 Host bridge: Intel Corporation 5000 Series Chipset FBD Registers (rev 12)
00:1c.0 PCI bridge: Intel Corporation 631xESB/632xESB/3100 Chipset PCI Express Root Port 1 (rev 09)
00:1d.0 USB controller: Intel Corporation 631xESB/632xESB/3100 Chipset UHCI USB Controller #1 (rev 09)
00:1d.1 USB controller: Intel Corporation 631xESB/632xESB/3100 Chipset UHCI USB Controller #2 (rev 09)
00:1d.2 USB controller: Intel Corporation 631xESB/632xESB/3100 Chipset UHCI USB Controller #3 (rev 09)
00:1d.3 USB controller: Intel Corporation 631xESB/632xESB/3100 Chipset UHCI USB Controller #4 (rev 09)
00:1d.7 USB controller: Intel Corporation 631xESB/632xESB/3100 Chipset EHCI USB2 Controller (rev 09)
00:1e.0 PCI bridge: Intel Corporation 82801 PCI Bridge (rev d9)
00:1f.0 ISA bridge: Intel Corporation 631xESB/632xESB/3100 Chipset LPC Interface Controller (rev 09)
01:00.0 RAID bus controller: LSI Logic / Symbios Logic MegaRAID SAS 1078 (rev 04)
02:00.0 PCI bridge: Broadcom EPB PCI-Express to PCI-X Bridge (rev c3)
03:00.0 Ethernet controller: Broadcom Corporation NetXtreme II BCM5708 Gigabit Ethernet (rev 12)
04:00.0 PCI bridge: Intel Corporation 6311ESB/6321ESB PCI Express Upstream Port (rev 01)
04:00.3 PCI bridge: Intel Corporation 6311ESB/6321ESB PCI Express to PCI-X Bridge (rev 01)
05:00.0 PCI bridge: Intel Corporation 6311ESB/6321ESB PCI Express Downstream Port E1 (rev 01)
05:01.0 PCI bridge: Intel Corporation 6311ESB/6321ESB PCI Express Downstream Port E2 (rev 01)
06:00.0 PCI bridge: Broadcom EPB PCI-Express to PCI-X Bridge (rev c3)
07:00.0 Ethernet controller: Broadcom Corporation NetXtreme II BCM5708 Gigabit Ethernet (rev 12)
0a:00.0 PCI bridge: Tundra Semiconductor Corp. Device 8113 (rev 01)
0b:05.0 Multimedia video controller: Bluecherry BC-H16480A 16 port H.264 video and audio encoder / decoder
0d:00.0 PCI bridge: Tundra Semiconductor Corp. Device 8113 (rev 01)
0e:05.0 Multimedia video controller: Bluecherry BC-H16480A 16 port H.264 video and audio encoder / decoder
10:0d.0 VGA compatible controller: Advanced Micro Devices, Inc. [AMD/ATI] ES1000 (rev 02)

df -h
df: `/var/lib/lightdm/.gvfs': Permission denied
Filesystem Size Used Avail Use% Mounted on
/dev/sda1 1.8T 845G 880G 49% /
udev 7.9G 4.0K 7.9G 1% /dev
tmpfs 1.6G 920K 1.6G 1% /run
none 5.0M 0 5.0M 0% /run/lock
none 7.9G 306M 7.6G 4% /run/shm

free -m
total used free shared buffers cached
Mem: 16164 4281 11882 0 472 3050
-/+ buffers/cache: 758 15405
Swap: 16376 0 16376

Re: What are the real limitations for hardware

Posted: Fri Nov 06, 2015 6:56 pm
by aaronl
Looks to be an older thread, but if you've over come the limit, what was your solution?
And if not, what version of ZM are you running? 1.28.107 had a DB index issue that caused poor performance.
Also, is options->Config->CPU_EXTENSIONS checked? It should be for any non-celeron type cpu.

I'm running 5 IP cameras (all 1920x1080 at 10fps using RSTP) on a Gigabyte Brix i5(GB-BXi5-4570R), with 16gigs ram. And the system load is around 1.6, and total cpu is only ~30% and 13gig free ram (most of that is being used by Linux for file system cache though).
With my set up, there is a linear relationship with each camera I add and the system/cpu load.

Aaron

Re: What are the real limitations for hardware

Posted: Tue Dec 01, 2015 6:09 am
by gnocera
Hello sorry the late reply.
Hope this information will be useful for you and the forum.

If you have more that 8 cameras each one handling more than VGA resolution(640x480), we never recommend to install zoneminder on intel i3, i5 nor i7 processor.

I.E. If you need 32 HD cam(1280x720) @10fps and you also need to record at this resolution, please find a server hardware. You will need at least 8 physical cores (preferred 10), and I am sure you will need to install at least 32GB of fast RAM (1600 MHz).
And please do not forget to buy a medium to good graphic card, it will help the live view.

Video security tasks are not an easy one for desktop processors like i3, i5 , i7.
Tracking movement and at the same time save different video streaming coming from a lot of cameras on a hard drive, and even show you live video on a big monitor at high resolution, those are very stressful tasks.

Regards,

Giuseppe N.