HDD/SSD Config for ZM with Object ID?

[winstontj]

Two days ago I bought a new Dell Precision Workstation to run ZM on. It's a brand new machine with a xeon cpu, 64gb ddr4 and a nvidia k620 gpu card.

My goal for ZM is real-time object id and this machine is a blank slate. It currently has zero drives. What drives should I buy and what drive configuration should I install?

With real-time object ID I'm worried that the object ID engine will want to access the same information/data as ZM, at the same time. I'm worried about bandwidth and bottlenecks. Should I tell ubuntu to make a ramdrive and mount it at every boot? I have a 10GbE network, should I write data over the network to a fast storage space on a nas/san that can be accessed easily and quickly by a bunch of different servers at the same time? (something like an Optane space) I'm worried about ZM writing data at the same time that object ID is going to want to be looking at it.

The machine has one onboard M.2 slot and three available sata ports. It has room for one 3.5" drive or two 2.5" drives. There is also an open x4 pcie slot that could take a pcie adapter card with four/quad M.2 slots. But I've got a 10GbE network and if the machine needs 10GbE then that network card would go in the x4 slot.

Thanks for any suggestions!

[dougmccrary]

How many cameras do you plan on?

[parky]

Booting from an SSD is the new standard and a traditional drive for storage of events

It does depend on how many cameras you intend on running with your system. My Z400 runs 4 @ 1080p and only has a load of 3 out of 12. If you use a basic Ubuntu Server OS then you save cycles by not having to run the GUI when ZM can be managed from a client

and then what level of recording are you expecting and how long is your retention period expected to be ?

[winstontj]

Four cameras currently.
We have two more cameras that are sitting in boxes waiting to be installed and we will not end up with more than eight (8) cameras total.

We have a 10GbE network at the house and I'm building a new NAS/storage server. Should I keep everything in memory on the ZM machine and write over the network to a fast NAS box?

If the dogs are out in the back yard and I am cutting the front lawn, it is possible that we could have six cameras triggered all at the same time. That's why I am interested in Object ID: We don't need hours of video of our dogs or of me cutting the lawn. That example means that at the same time six-ish cameras are triggered and ZM is trying to write six feeds to disk, Object ID is going to want to be looking at the same data. That's where I start to worry about local disk I/O and whether I want/need ssd or other fast type of cache media (or not).

Thanks.

[winstontj]

Booting from an SSD is the new standard and a traditional drive for storage of events

It does depend on how many cameras you intend on running with your system. My Z400 runs 4 @ 1080p and only has a load of 3 out of 12. If you use a basic Ubuntu Server OS then you save cycles by not having to run the GUI when ZM can be managed from a client

and then what level of recording are you expecting and how long is your retention period expected to be ?

Thanks for the info. The machine I bought has one 3.5" bay so it can fit either 2x 2.5" drives (with an adapter) in the 3.5" single drive bay, or just run one single 3.5" drive. There is a M.2 slot and an internal USB port on the motherboard. After boot, Ubuntu runs mostly in memory so I'm planning on booting from a USB drive.

Yes, ubuntu server os, headless/no gui.

Retention: Forever.
Level of recording: They are 5mp cameras set at 2560x1440 and 12fps.

Retention and Recording:
Unfortunately we are in a situation where the 3-2-1 data (3 copies, 2 local, 1 offsite) can't be deleted anytime soon. I'm building a NAS so long-term space isn't an issue. I have a few 4 & 6-bay nas boxes that are basically full. The new NAS will consolidate all of the existing data and have orders of magnitude more space. The old NAS boxes will be used as the #2 in 3-2-1 (second local copy) and get big, SMR archive drives. I have all of the hardware and the NAS is (mostly) built. The first batch of drives are out for delivery. As soon as the dogs bark that the UPS guy is here, I'll have plenty of space and we have a 10GbE network.

But that still doesn't help me with how to setup the bare-metal, hardware ZM machine I want to start running.

Hope that info helped. Thanks.

[burger]

...
either 2x 2.5" drives (with an adapter) in the 3.5" single drive bay, or just run one single 3.5" drive. There is a M.2 slot and an internal USB port on the motherboard.
...
Retention: Forever.
Level of recording: They are 5mp cameras set at 2560x1440 and 12fps.
---

What I would do is buy one 10TB HDD, set up mocord on the low res substream, and then record w/passthrough on the 2560x1440 stream. So you'll have 8 monitors.

If you connect a USB HDD, you could get longer retention. Perhaps you could put two of the record cameras on that.

Make sure to disable all nonesssential cloud services w/Ubuntu or use Debian.

[parky]

Sounds like an interesting setup, far more advanced than my simple one. It would be good to get a view of you Object ID engine as I haven't seen much of that

When setting up my server I use https://wiki.zoneminder.com/Ubuntu_Serv ... der_1.36.x
after a straight Ubuntu install. I have used these notes for the last couple of years and it just works

My thoughts are to load ZM on your USB/SSD in the first instance to get familiar with ZM. Then get a storage disk and move the event folder to there. I would be tempted to run it all locally and see how performance goes as you load cameras on and take it from there

If you are going NAS anyway, I would envisage doing all the crunching on your Workstation with log shipping to your NAS. Unless someone else has some experience of this sort of setup for me it's take it in stages