What hardware you running ZoneMinder on?

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swulf
Posts: 15
Joined: Tue Jun 30, 2015 4:07 am

What hardware you running ZoneMinder on?

Post by swulf »

I'm new to ZoneMinder and am looking to choose some robust hardware on which to run it under Ubuntu server. The machine will be in a warehouse environment and ideally I hope to find something fanless.

What do you use and/or recommend?

Thanks,

swulf

Update: I am now testing on an ASRock Q1900-ITX mini-ITX board running Ubuntu Server 14.04.3 LTS, which seems to be really good.
Last edited by swulf on Fri Aug 14, 2015 2:45 pm, edited 1 time in total.
PacoLM
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Joined: Wed Dec 02, 2009 9:55 pm
Location: Spain

Re: What hardware you running ZoneMinder on?

Post by PacoLM »

Hi,

It depends on your needs. If you do not plan to have too many cameras at high capture rates, I will choose a miniITX computer. They are powerful enough, there are fanless and their prices are quite good.
I have been using a miniITX system for years, also tested other solutions, like Cubox, Rpi, Beaglebone Black, Odroid U3, but this small beasts have no muscle for the ZM. Again, depends on your needs, if you are happy with two cameras, low capture rate, a OdroidU3 could be a good choice, for instance.

Hope it helps,

PacoLM

After more than 15 years, no longer using ZM as surveillance system.
Now in the dark side, using a commercial system...
Linwood
Posts: 75
Joined: Thu Jun 25, 2015 6:40 pm

Re: What hardware you running ZoneMinder on?

Post by Linwood »

I've put a ton of equipment in warehouses, and frankly the answer is don't. :)

There's almost always a network closet somewhere which is not only in better conditions, but the warehouse maintenance guy is less likely to come "help" you by "fixing" things. Last warehouse I did we even moved all the switches and wifi stuff into cabinets 35' up and we still had locks for the doors.

There's a ton of ruggedized stuff out there, but at least think about (since ZM runs nicely headless) just sticking this on a VM on a server in the closet somewhere. Easier to scale that way also if you add more cameras.
river100
Posts: 145
Joined: Sun Oct 07, 2007 5:52 pm
Location: Louisiana

Re: What hardware you running ZoneMinder on?

Post by river100 »

The hardware you run it on really depends on the type and QTY of cameras you plan to use. Frame rate also matters.
I usually go for over kill on the CPU since I refuse to use CCTV cams. With the price of IP cams it's crazy not to use them.

I've had good luck buying used servers with single or dual quad core CPUs. Most of them have 16gb of ram, SSD for OS and
1 - 3 or 4 TB western digital HDs. I've built PCs for zoneminder and some have lasted for 7 years. But using a server gives you
the ability to get spare parts much easier and cheaper.

Just did 2 systems using used Dell R310 servers with 1 E3-1260L CPU(45 watts). One of them has 20 cams on it but they are 352X240 RES.
That one is coasting along and will get about 2 months of storage using a dedicated 3TB HD. It's OS is an SSD. It has 4 Grand Stream
4 channel encoders @ 352X240 connected to the 16 CCTV cams. The rest are IP cams set at 352X240. This was a retro-fit in a factory.

The other will have 10 IP cams @ 1280X720. same specs. I paid about $560.00 for the server and the HDs per system. Encoders were about 80.00 each.
The IP cams are Dahua 4300s VER2 and cost about 105.00.
Using encoders was actually cheaper than a good capture card, 320.00 for 16 channels and IF you get burned by lightning, might be only one
encoder.

The Dell R310 servers are so quiet you can't hear them. Only loud at boot.

I built a new server using a Supermicro MOBO and software RAID-10 that has 5.8GB of storage, cost me almost 2K.
It's fast, quiet, and expensive.
It does have killer performance but...
Who knows which one will last longer LOL.
river100
Posts: 145
Joined: Sun Oct 07, 2007 5:52 pm
Location: Louisiana

Re: What hardware you running ZoneMinder on?

Post by river100 »

BTW the other dell R310 system with 10 IP cams(Dahua 4300S), 2 - Ubiquiti nano stations, wire and POE switches
cost a total of about $2300.00 for parts. Too bad it's for a friend.
river100
Posts: 145
Joined: Sun Oct 07, 2007 5:52 pm
Location: Louisiana

Re: What hardware you running ZoneMinder on?

Post by river100 »

load for 20 cams coming in as H264 352X240 streams @ 10fps MODECT on a Dell R310 with E3-1260L CPU
bbunge
Posts: 2930
Joined: Mon Mar 26, 2012 11:40 am
Location: Pennsylvania

Re: What hardware you running ZoneMinder on?

Post by bbunge »

My current production server is a Dell Optiplex 980, i5 Core processor 2.8 GHZ with 8 GIG DDR3 RAM, two 750 GIG Seagate drives in a striped LVM running Ubuntu 14.04-2 64 BIT server, Zoneminder 1.28.1, a mix of 16 IP cameras most at 320x240 resolution 5 FPS. One very old Axis camera is banging away at 1 FPS! I have all the cameras set to mocord when the warehouse is in use and all but the three outside cameras modect at night. This system is an upgrade from an Optiplex 780 with 16 GIG RAM and has been running for just over two weeks. I should be able to store a months worth of events with this configuration. I am running just fine with half of the RAM of the prior server. I've discovered that Ubuntu server will use half of available RAM as RAM/Swap Disk. Zoneminder does not use all of this space even when I put PATH_MAP and PATH_SWAP over to /run/shm (/dev/shm in Ubuntu 15.04). I have set /run/shm down to a 2 GIG size and currently only 8% of the space is being used. Am planning to run this down to 1 GIG just to see what happens and free up more memory for MySQL processes.
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asker
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Re: What hardware you running ZoneMinder on?

Post by asker »

My production server for 5 HD (1280x960/32) cameras is this :D :D
(with the exception that I bumped up memory to 4GB)

I've done a good job configuring zones etc. My average load when not recording hovers between 0.2 - 0.4
When recording, depending on how many cameras are recording, hovers around 0.8 - 1.6
I no longer work on zmNinja, zmeventnotification, pyzm or mlapi. I may respond on occasion based on my available time/interest.

Please read before posting:
How to set up logging properly
How to troubleshoot and report - ES
How to troubleshoot and report - zmNinja
ES docs
zmNinja docs
PacoLM
Posts: 971
Joined: Wed Dec 02, 2009 9:55 pm
Location: Spain

Re: What hardware you running ZoneMinder on?

Post by PacoLM »

asker wrote:My production server for 5 HD (1280x960/32) cameras is this :D :D
(with the exception that I bumped up memory to 4GB)

I've done a good job configuring zones etc. My average load when not recording hovers between 0.2 - 0.4
When recording, depending on how many cameras are recording, hovers around 0.8 - 1.6
Hi asker,

Could you post more details about monitor modes, capture details (resolution/FPS) and zone configuration? I have a similar setup (all cameras are modect) and the loads are around 1.6-1.8 when idle, 2.4-2.8 when alarms are detected.

Regards,

PacoLM

After more than 15 years, no longer using ZM as surveillance system.
Now in the dark side, using a commercial system...
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asker
Posts: 1553
Joined: Sun Mar 01, 2015 12:12 pm

Re: What hardware you running ZoneMinder on?

Post by asker »

Hi PacoLM,
1) All my monitors are in modect
2) I use cron to switch monitor modes depending on time of day

3) To further reduce unwanted recordings, I use helper scripts (triggered by cron) that check for my iPhone location - and if I am in the house, switches off recording in the first floor . This itself saves a lot of load.

4) In terms of Zones, I am only interested in detecting people - I've split my zones based on distance and then use % blob detections to detect for people.

5) With respect to zone configurations, I've tried to keep the shapes as as simple as possible (4-7 points to form a polygon), with no overlapping of zones

6) My FPS is set to 3 for all cameras (in camera settings) with ZM FPS set to 10 (to avoid ZM maxing out CPU when any camera goes offline)

7) I've made sure my zones exclude any 'constantly changing' images (like say a TV screen) - and in exclusions like those, I've made sure I don't make the polygons overtly complex - for example, no need to just cut out a perfect rectangle around the TV

8 ) I've been conscious while defining multiple zones, for example, if I want to catch intruders, they will likely walk into my house and not fly. So its more important I capture the bottom half of a room - once an alarm triggers, it will be on for a while, so other areas will automatically record. Stuff like that

9) Knnnigget suggested in some thread that keeping the capture at 1280x920 or 720 @ 32 for Foscam HD cameras offers better performance - I never benchmarked, but he must be right - I've set it at that setting

PacoLM wrote:
asker wrote:My production server for 5 HD (1280x960/32) cameras is this :D :D
(with the exception that I bumped up memory to 4GB)

I've done a good job configuring zones etc. My average load when not recording hovers between 0.2 - 0.4
When recording, depending on how many cameras are recording, hovers around 0.8 - 1.6
Hi asker,

Could you post more details about monitor modes, capture details (resolution/FPS) and zone configuration? I have a similar setup (all cameras are modect) and the loads are around 1.6-1.8 when idle, 2.4-2.8 when alarms are detected.

Regards,

PacoLM
I no longer work on zmNinja, zmeventnotification, pyzm or mlapi. I may respond on occasion based on my available time/interest.

Please read before posting:
How to set up logging properly
How to troubleshoot and report - ES
How to troubleshoot and report - zmNinja
ES docs
zmNinja docs
PacoLM
Posts: 971
Joined: Wed Dec 02, 2009 9:55 pm
Location: Spain

Re: What hardware you running ZoneMinder on?

Post by PacoLM »

Thanks, I will give a review on my zone settings!

After more than 15 years, no longer using ZM as surveillance system.
Now in the dark side, using a commercial system...
User avatar
knight-of-ni
Posts: 2404
Joined: Thu Oct 18, 2007 1:55 pm
Location: Shiloh, IL

Re: What hardware you running ZoneMinder on?

Post by knight-of-ni »

1U chassis
2 quad-core Opteron 8360 SE
16GB RAM
Adaptec 5405 hardware RAID
four 1TB HGST Enterprise SATA II drives

The hardware is intentionally overkill to keep the fan noise at a minimum and thus guarantee wife approval.

My production ZoneMinder is configured with eight cameras. All are at ~5fps, and most are VGA resolution. One camera is 720p. I've carved out 450GB of storage for events. If I am not running anything else like a backup, the system load average goes as low as 0.25 but can jump up to 0.4.

This machine is soon to be replaced by this:
http://www.ebay.com/itm/231514167620?_t ... EBIDX%3AIT

Going to go ZFS and use all the 1TB drives I have lying around.
I usually prefer to buy from the underdog, AMD, but I just couldn't find what I was looking for. Not a lot of selection out there for AMD Opteron platforms.
Visit my blog for ZoneMinder related projects using the Raspberry Pi, Orange Pi, Odroid, and the ESP8266
All of these can be found at https://zoneminder.blogspot.com/
Southcross
Posts: 43
Joined: Tue Feb 10, 2015 9:17 pm

Re: What hardware you running ZoneMinder on?

Post by Southcross »

I went "low power" for mine, whole system under load pulls 40 watts... AMD AM1 5350 APU, 4-cores 2ghz, 4GB RAM. 64GB SSD system drive, 320GB WD AV SataII hard drive (predecessor to the Purple drive, I will upgrade to 1TB soon). 400w 80plus power supply, way overkill... Stuffed into a 4U rackmount

I have two cameras, both SD... one at 15fps pointed at my parking spot, and one at 10fps monitoring frontdoor/entryway. The parking spot one has a ton of activity and motion (leaves swaying in wind, change in lighting, etc) so I have to exclude a good 1/3 of the top of the image. Also use a tiny preclusive zone at the edge of the pavement to detect lighting changes, but far enough away from screen entry points to keep it from preventing actual alarms. The entryway camera gets maybe 4-6 events a day, me coming and going mostly (every once in a while lighting changes get past a preclusive zone I created at the top of the wall)

My load ranges from .25 at night, to about .5 during the day... peaking at about .8 during an alarm. If I delete a large event, and an alarm triggers I have seen usage as high as 1.8 LOL

System load scales with number of processors/cores... a single core/processor system is at 100% usage at 1.00... a dual core at 2.00, quad at 4.00, so on and so forth... when the system load passes your number of cores, processes are backing up (I think they suggest that 5x the number of cores equates to a machine hard-locking)
doozers
Posts: 1
Joined: Tue Jul 28, 2015 10:56 pm

Re: What hardware you running ZoneMinder on?

Post by doozers »

I went even furher in respect to low powering. My system is armhf Mele M5 (link: linux-sunxi(dot)org/Mele_M5, cost ~75 USD) 1 GHz M20 double core CPU, 1GB RAM, 160 GB SATA hdd. It comes with Android onboard however this is posible to run Debian or Ubuntu.

I have two cams (IP and USB one) running at 640x480 3 fps modect resulted in average load of 0.9. So there is a room for additional one or two.

What I personally like is very low power consumption close to 4-5W. It is also possible to issue commands towards ZM using included remote. On another hand this is low end and rarely used platform that makes lots of things difficult (like jpeg turbo that is still mystery to me). However I'm quite happy about how it works.
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