Large ZM Install

Post here to indicate any hardware you have used and which is known to work with ZoneMinder. Not for questions.
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the_crowbar
Posts: 22
Joined: Fri May 11, 2007 7:13 pm

Large ZM Install

Post by the_crowbar »

Just wanted to post a quick note. I am currently installing a larger ZM install at work. The system currently has 15 analog cameras with plans to expand that to 24-32. The system I am running is a Dell PowerEdge 2950 with dual quad-core Xeon CPUs (1.6GHz) and 4GB of RAM. I am using a PV-155 from BlueCherry (some cards don't work with Dell servers. Ask Curt before you buy).

Currently all cameras are setup with the single default zone and are mocord at 640x480. System load averages about 3.5. When all cameras were set at modetect, system load was hovering a little under 3.

I found very little info about 16 camera installs while I was doing research for this setup. Hopefully this helps someone else.
stickman
Posts: 4
Joined: Sun Jul 01, 2007 10:19 am

Post by stickman »

Well, it certainly helps me.

I need to work in a setup for 36 analog cameras.

I was hoping a single Quadcore CPU could cope with the load. Cameras requirements are mocord 320x240 5fps in 32 cameras and 640x480 5fps for the 4 remaining cameras. There would be a client 16+16 in dualview (I don't know if this has any effect on the load).

Recording would be on a raid5 3TB on the same machine.

Based on your experience, do you think this would work?


Thanks.
nakedfarmanimals
Posts: 20
Joined: Fri Jun 15, 2007 9:46 pm

Redundancy, fault tolerance, redundancy, etc...

Post by nakedfarmanimals »

You may want to look at separating parts of the system so that the entire 36 camera setup is not subject to the failure of a single NIC, etc.

Looking at the way ZM leverages the standard LAMP platform (Linux OS, Apache webserver, mySql database, Perl/PHP scripting languages), there does not appear to be anything that prevents:
* - The capture subsystem from being on a different box than the database / datastore
* - The database / datastore from being on a different box from than the webserver
* - Having multiple boxen share storage duties, potentially separate from the database instance

Separating functions like this may rquire more hardware, but you can tailor the hardware to the function. That is, you can have a processor-slow, great I/O server for storage and the light database work, have a high-processor speed machine with lots o'memory for capture, or even a hardware-RAID network-attached storage device.

Yes, this would require understanding how the different pieces parts talk to one another, but is definitely doable.

Hope that this helps.
ampp
Posts: 9
Joined: Tue Dec 05, 2006 6:16 am

Post by ampp »

I am planning a project with dual dual opteron 2.2ghz and 4-8gb of ram. Going to have up to 4 1.5gb arrays (500gb x4 raid 5). I have probably not looked into it as much as i should.

I think with enough tuning and running as much as i can in memory cpu should be ok. This setup is going to have lots of IO so 4 arrays should split that up.

As far as what to do in an event of failure. I will have a replacement power supply / hard drive on hand. If its anything else its overnight time. Have a mobo with 2 nics.

To decide over a second server vs a distributed is interesting. Depends if your camera processing far outweighs storage amount. To have 2+ servers saving to a large data archive (16x 1TB? ;) ).
nakedfarmanimals
Posts: 20
Joined: Fri Jun 15, 2007 9:46 pm

Re: Large ZM Install

Post by nakedfarmanimals »

the_crowbar wrote:... I am currently installing a larger ZM install at work. ...
So, where do you work that you get to play with ZM for money?

Instant message / personal message me through the forum.

Thanks.
nextime
Posts: 23
Joined: Thu Nov 29, 2007 9:20 pm

Post by nextime »

18 cams setup, 16 CCTV analog cams and 2 ip "mpeg4 only" remote cams.

modetect at 320x240 24bit rgb for all cams, 2/3 zones for each cam.

the machine is a dual core athlon 64bit at 2 Ghz, 2 gigs of ram, 3 x 512 gigs HD sata2 ( 2 in raid 1, 1 for backups ).

PV-155 for analog cams.

System load is < 1 (~0.80) , ram is enough ( i have a 25% free ).

just my 2 cents.
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