had a break in, time for an upgrade

[knighty]

hi

can someone give this a quick look over before I go buying new cameras...

right now I'm running 11 x analog cameras, recording 24/7, 704x576 (480tv lines) at 25fps

computer is core2duo@3.3gig, 4gig ram, 18Tb storage over 5 drives
(was considered fast when it was new)


had a break in last week, police caught the guy but it made me realise it's time for an upgrade

can't find a DVR card anywhere that will run higher quality than I already have (704X576), so I figure IP cameras are the way to go


I'd like to change to 16 ip cameras, recording at 1280x1024 25fps, recording 24/7

I like recording 24/7 at decent frame rate, I've twice caught staff stealing. production environment so if I ran motion detect it would be on/off all the time, better/safer to record 24/7

I realise I'll need up upgrade the computer, that's no problem

looking around, I could get a used server or build one from used parts
dual 8 core Xeon 16 thread 2.4gig CPUs should be easy, 32gig ram (more no problem if needed)

not sure if the hard drives could keep up, can I set zone minder to write to multiple drives at the same time and/or set different cameras to different drives ? - would save me going with raid

will the system be able to keep up with recording 24/7 on all cameras ?

1 camera will be streamed to another computer 24/7, the rest will only be viewed as/when needed

current system runs at 1gig per camera per hour, guessing quality increase will bump that up a fair bit? - storage is cheap now, more ?hard drives is no problem


decent cameras are expensive, my arse is twitching a bit worrying the system won't preform well

if the system will cope fine with 1280x1024 I might bump a couple of cameras up higher quality (to get number plates etc.)

[knight-of-ni]

The good news is modern IP cameras have dropped significantly in price and even the cheapest ip cameras these days perform significantly better than high quality analog cameras. It is hard to give specific recommendations without knowing your requirements for everything you want to see.

I've taken a liking to Urban Security Group on Amazon. They have some nice high megapixel, PoE bullet cameras for ~$80 a pop.
I heard a few guys talk about $40 Hosafe cameras. Screenshots from these cameras look very good, and of course that name is just an endless amount of jokes. We've also got a few guys in our IRC channel who swear by Escam cameras.

Typical security systems only need 5-10 fps. I only run 5 fps, and that is plenty to see passing cars. Going higher needlessly increases your system load, which can cause other problems.

Sounds like you are on the right track with potential server hardware.
You will get the best bang for your buck with off-lease 2U servers. The more cpu cores you can get the better.
Just a few hundred dollars can get you at least 8 cores. Your system won't even break a sweat if you can manage 1 cpu core per camera.
These things are so cheap compared to what they cost when new, I would not even bother to build one from spare parts.

Get a chassis with at least 6 drive slots. With 6 slots, you can use two for RAID 1 boot volume, and the other 4 for RAID 10 or ZFS. Get a chassis with even more slots and that can make more interesting combinations.