Is Zone Minder appropriate for a 30+ camera installation?

[WalkerYYJ]

Hi all, just starting to fool around with zone minder a bit, I have it running on a dedicated 1U dual CPU Opteron (4core) machine (total 8 logical cores). And serving ~x8 640x480 cheepo Trendnet IP cams. The complex I work at is considering installing ~30-40 1280 x 800 IP cams for security. Should the decision be a go I will be dealing with procurement installation and ultimately support.
Would a single install of zone minder on the above mentioned machine be sufficient for such an installation or will this be pushing hardware and software limits? I will be running all the cams on a dedicated physical subnet so it wont affect other network activities.


I would like to have 2 or 3 substations around the complex on dedicated machines JUST logged into zone minder with large screens so if someone sees something fishy they can investigate.
I am also planning on having archives stored on the zoneminders array AND have a copy go onto our SAN at the same time (located on the other side of the complex (IE offsite {I can run dedicated fiber to the SAN from zoneminder if needed})

Any and all thoughts/ideas would be GREATLY appreciated!

-walkeryyj

[kingofkya]

I don't think it would be a problem as long as you keep in reasonable 10fps or less. With minimal or no motion detection. Also if useing motion detect make sure to set the skip_frame parameters in camera setup.
EX: skipframe 5 would check for motion twice a second running at 10fps rather than 10 times a second.


Also look into compiling libturbo in with zm helps with jpeg processing.

[Yamanipanuchi]

I have a Zoneminder server running 33 cameras at 10 fps.

Dell Optiplex 990
Intel i7 Quad-Core
4 Gb ram
3 Tb HD

The load rarely gets over 1.00 and all the captures are smooth.

There's talk of adding more camera's. I personally want to know what the limit WILL be.

This is in a Hospital environment also, 24/7 traffic.