How much drive space for root? (not including events)

[jk3wl]

Greetings!
I want to start with saying a big thank you to all the devs and forum members, who have unknowingly made my journey thus far a pleasant one! The wealth of information in the forum, the wiki, etc. has been fantastic.

Second I want to apologize in advance if my question has already been addressed. I have been looking through everything I could find, and searched everywhere. I may have either overlooked it, or did not search on the correct terms.
I am new to ZM, so please forgive me as I am still learning some of the lingo.

I have found a huge amount of info on drive space sizing for storing events (camera video footage and images), and numerous guides on sizing CPU, RAM, GPU, etc. Have also found a large amount of info on using a separate drive for the video storage, which I have already planned out.

My question pertains to sizing for the OS/ZM (root) drive. I have not found any info or guidance on how large to make the "system" drive.

Here is my setup/plan:
Proxmox Server.
Zoneminder, on Debian, in a VM (using the Turnkey iso).
8 HD cameras, running in mocord (record everything, mark motion events), keeping 30 days of history.
Separate disk array for camera video footage (I believe you call them events).
I know that the database and logs will stay with the ZM install, therefore they will live on the OS/ZM drive, inside the VM.

What I want to know is how big to make that OS/ZM "system" drive initially?

What I don't want to happen are:
A) I make the drive too small, then ZM stops working because the root partition is full. Then I have to fiddle around with expanding it, and again guessing as to how much to grow it.
B) I make the drive way too big, and end up only ever using 10% of the space allocated.

I am absolutely not expecting a finite exact number, as that would be impossible to predict.
I am simply trying to get in the correct neighborhood, and then I can factor in some extra room for OS updates/upgrades, ZM updates/upgrades, and possible future expansion of adding a camera or two. I also know that databases like to have some room to play, and get cranky when the drive is very full.

So, should I make that "system" drive 50GB?, 100GB?, 250GB?, 500GB?, more??
If you have made it this far, thank you for indulging my tired brain's attempt at asking for help.

Regards,
J

[dougmccrary]

It depends on how big your logs, etc. get, but 100GB should be plenty.
You might consider getting a 120GB SSD and just use it all. They''re cheap now.

[kitkat]

My 20 GB root partition has 6.8 GB used (34%) after two years and five months.

I don't think ZM puts much on there other than the databases (less than 500 MB here) and logs (5.2 MB).

[Andyrh]

Just for more reference, 200GB SSD for root:
Size Used Avail Use%
196G 17G 170G 9% /

5 cameras and 282k events.

[jk3wl]

Oh wow, thank you very much for the info. I am again amazed at the wonderful community here.

@dougmccrary
@kitkat
@Andyrh

Appreciate the details, I now have a better idea of where to start.
I think I am going to go with 200 GB for the raw drive.
After factoring in for formatting, subtracting boot partition and the swap partition, that will leave about 150ish for root.
That sounds like it should handle my current setup just fine, with plenty of room to grow.
Now I don't have to worry about needing 1TB or something crazy large like that.

Thank you again for the help.
Peace
-J

[lightguy48]

It depends on how big your logs, etc. get, but 100GB should be plenty.
You might consider getting a 120GB SSD and just use it all. They''re cheap now.

Doug, I was curious since you mentioned this are you doing this for your config? I just purchased a new server grade workstation to retire my 10 year old machine that is currently my ZM server. I have an SSD I wanted to put the OS/root on and then I have a 2 TB drive I wanted to use for my event recordings and do a mocord setup vs modetect.

So is it as simple as basically building the machine with the SSD, then add the HD and format ext2fs and then go in and define the HD as a new storage location under options\storage ?

Thank you.

[jk3wl]

< snip >
So is it as simple as basically building the machine with the SSD, then add the HD and format ext2fs and then go in and define the HD as a new storage location under options\storage ?

Hi lightguy48,

Putting my two cents out there, yes, it is pretty much that simple. Install your OS onto the SSD, install ZM. By default it will use the space on the SSD for event storage, and as you have already stated, you add your extra HDD(s) to the OS, set it up under Options/Storage, and configure it as the storage location for each of your monitors.
The install guide and the wiki have info on this:
https://zoneminder.readthedocs.io/en/la ... drive.html
https://wiki.zoneminder.com/Using_a_ded ... Hard_Drive

Peace

[lightguy48]

Thanks!