BI in a VM - good idea or ??

restorick2378

restorick2378

Getting the hang of it
Jan 16, 2023
41
38
Wisconsin
I picked up a cheap Optiplex 3050 with 7th gen i5 and 16GB ram. Will be adding a HD soon.

Bigger question tho - I also have a PowerEdge server with dual Xeon processors and 192GB ram, running various VMs. Any reason why I couldn't end up using that machine and leave the Optiplex as a backup?

Thanks!
Rick
 
restorick2378 said:
I picked up a cheap Optiplex 3050 with 7th gen i5 and 16GB ram. Will be adding a HD soon.

Bigger question tho - I also have a PowerEdge server with dual Xeon processors and 192GB ram, running various VMs. Any reason why I couldn't end up using that machine and leave the Optiplex as a backup?

Thanks!
Rick
Click to expand...
I vote for the Optiplex for your BI server.

Install a good SSD for Windows, BI and BI's "db" folder on it.
Do a clean install of Windows using the MS Media Creation Tool.
Put BI's clips on a surveillance-rated spinning HDD such as a WD Purple.
 
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TonyR said:
I vote for the Optiplex for your BI server.

Install a good SSD for Windows, BI and BI's "db" folder on it.
Do a clean install of Windows using the MS Media Creation Tool.
Put BI's clips on a surveillance-rated spinning HDD such as a WD Purple.
Click to expand...

Appreciate the feedback Tony. My Opti is a SFF, so only one 3.5" drive bay. Any reason why I couldn't use an external enclosure in prep for when my system grows or I decide I need to keep more clips?
Rick
 
restorick2378 said:
Appreciate the feedback Tony. My Opti is a SFF, so only one 3.5" drive bay. Any reason why I couldn't use an external enclosure in prep for when my system grows or I decide I need to keep more clips?
Rick
Click to expand...

As long as the motherboard has the SATA connection, you can put more drives in it. May not be in a HDD cage or whatever, but we don't move these computers so duct tape the drive or something LOL.

Many of us take out the optical drive and use its SATA to add another HDD.

Just don't try a USB drive external - although the theoretical speed numbers say it should be no problem, many of us have found those are instantaneous numbers and not sustained. My USB 3.0 couldn't keep up with two cameras after 25 minutes. YMMV.
 
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wittaj said:
As long as the motherboard has the SATA connection, you can put more drives in it. May not be in a HDD cage or whatever, but we don't move these computers so duct tape the drive or something LOL.

Many of us take out the optical drive and use its SATA to add another HDD.

Just don't try a USB drive external - although the theoretical speed numbers say it should be no problem, many of us have found those are instantaneous numbers and not sustained. My USB 3.0 couldn't keep up with two cameras after 25 minutes. YMMV.
Click to expand...

Thanks for the feedback! The optical drive in this unit is a thin profile and I can't get 2 installed - not without duct tape that is! ;-)

The enclosure would be an eSATA interface. Just planning for future expansion... From what I'm reading, this hobby is similar to building a woodworking or metalworking shop. You start with one size, and somehow, it finds a way to grow exponentially! lol
 
Yep LOL. I have a SFF as well and there was physical volume within the enclosure to add another drive, just not the actual planned location lol. Duct tape to the rescue LOL.

And yes, I got into BI thinking oh I only need a few cams, so bought a cheap 4th gen figuring that is all I needed. Way too many cameras later I was like WTF didn't I buy a more powerful unit. Thank goodness BI added substreams so it has allowed me to continue using it LOL.
 
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restorick2378 said:
Appreciate the feedback Tony. My Opti is a SFF, so only one 3.5" drive bay. Any reason why I couldn't use an external enclosure in prep for when my system grows or I decide I need to keep more clips?
Rick
Click to expand...
Does it have a M.2 , NVME or PCIe slot on the motherboard for a SSD?
If not consider putting the spinner where the only 3.5" bay is and stick a SATA 2.5" SSD somewhere with double-sided foam tape!
Or if it has a slimline optical drive replace it with one of these and put the 2.5" SSD there.

2-5_SSD-to-slimDVD-adapter.jpg
 
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TonyR said:
Does it have a M.2 , NVME or PCIe slot on the motherboard for a SSD?
If not consider putting the spinner where the only 3.5" bay is and stick a SATA 2.5" SSD somewhere with double-sided foam tape!
Or if it has a slimline optical drive replace it with one of these and put the 2.5" SSD there.

View attachment 156483
Click to expand...

PCIe slot for sure. Skinny optical bay as well. Appreciate the feedback and suggestions!
Rick
 
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As long as you follow the optimization guide then either machine can work (VM or Optiplex). Find your CPUs on cpubenchmark.net and link them here for more tailored advice.

Generally speaking, a dedicated box running Windows on bare metal (not in a VM) will have some advantages:
  1. You can use the Blue Iris local console without the significant overhead of a remote desktop connection.
  2. Most Intel desktop CPUs (but not most Xeons) support Quick Sync Video.
Quick Sync Video can be used for hardware accelerated video decoding to boost decoding performance and reduce CPU usage and power consumption. This feature has gotten less stable in Blue Iris over the years. On some systems it malfunctions and makes performance worse, or causes instability, or leaks memory leading to an eventual crash. It can in rare cases cause video corruption to appear. Rarely it fails to initialize properly for a camera so the camera automatically turns off hardware acceleration for itself and you likely won't even notice. You have to manually turn it back on if you want it back.

Quick Sync is also much less necessary than it once was, because you can utilize Sub Streams to reduce the CPU cost of each camera. But it is still worth running if you have it available and it does not cause problems. I use it on my i7-8700K box and it helps specifically when I view a 4K@30FPS stream remotely through the web server. This machine normally can't transcode the 4K video at the full 30 FPS, but it reaches 25 FPS with Quick Sync decoding enabled, while it only reaches 20 FPS with Quick Sync decoding disabled.
 
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Rehashing here :) and a long-winded answer to say I too vote for the standalone Optiplex, but a big consideration is network
traffic and security. IP Cameras generate a substantial amount of network traffic and they often try to make connections to
external servers. The best practice on the forum is to isolate cameras from the Internet using dual NIC's in the Blue Iris machine
and use separate subnets. While your PowerEdge probably has four+ NIC's (and IPMI), you will have to use/configure two of them
for a BlueIris VM (which is completely doable, of course) otherwise you will have the camera traffic on the same subnet as your
current VM's. For what it's worth, I have used BlueIris on a VM (Unraid hosted) and was never really satisfied with the performance,
configuration, or impact on the server (my single CPU Xeon E3-1231 v3 VM host is likely much slower than your dual CPU VM host)
I am not a VM expert, but as bp2008 points out, there are advantages to using Quick Sync video hardware, and even if your
Xeons supported it (one of mine does and one does not), on my server motherboard anyway, hardware pass-thru has always
been a PITA. I don't want to come across as some know-it-all, but for me, the nature of an NVR application like Blue Iris was
just not a good fit as a VM with my hardware. And lastly, this might not be a consideration for you, but Unraid will spin down
unused physical drives to save wear and tear and electricity, but with cameras recording 24/7 the NAS type hard drives that your
RAID array is built with are not suitable, so you will need to integrate/isolate a surveillance rated hard disk into your VM host.
 
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bp2008 said:
As long as you follow the optimization guide then either machine can work (VM or Optiplex). Find your CPUs on cpubenchmark.net and link them here for more tailored advice.

Generally speaking, a dedicated box running Windows on bare metal (not in a VM) will have some advantages:
  1. You can use the Blue Iris local console without the significant overhead of a remote desktop connection.
  2. Most Intel desktop CPUs (but not most Xeons) support Quick Sync Video.
Quick Sync Video can be used for hardware accelerated video decoding to boost decoding performance and reduce CPU usage and power consumption. This feature has gotten less stable in Blue Iris over the years. On some systems it malfunctions and makes performance worse, or causes instability, or leaks memory leading to an eventual crash. It can in rare cases cause video corruption to appear. Rarely it fails to initialize properly for a camera so the camera automatically turns off hardware acceleration for itself and you likely won't even notice. You have to manually turn it back on if you want it back.

Quick Sync is also much less necessary than it once was, because you can utilize Sub Streams to reduce the CPU cost of each camera. But it is still worth running if you have it available and it does not cause problems. I use it on my i7-8700K box and it helps specifically when I view a 4K@30FPS stream remotely through the web server. This machine normally can't transcode the 4K video at the full 30 FPS, but it reaches 25 FPS with Quick Sync decoding enabled, while it only reaches 20 FPS with Quick Sync decoding disabled.
Click to expand...
Awesome feedback! Thank you!
 
dmcIPCAM said:
Rehashing here :) and a long-winded answer to say I too vote for the standalone Optiplex, but a big consideration is network
traffic and security. IP Cameras generate a substantial amount of network traffic and they often try to make connections to
external servers. The best practice on the forum is to isolate cameras from the Internet using dual NIC's in the Blue Iris machine
and use separate subnets. While your PowerEdge probably has four+ NIC's (and IPMI), you will have to use/configure two of them
for a BlueIris VM (which is completely doable, of course) otherwise you will have the camera traffic on the same subnet as your
current VM's. For what it's worth, I have used BlueIris on a VM (Unraid hosted) and was never really satisfied with the performance,
configuration, or impact on the server (my single CPU Xeon E3-1231 v3 VM host is likely much slower than your dual CPU VM host)
I am not a VM expert, but as bp2008 points out, there are advantages to using Quick Sync video hardware, and even if your
Xeons supported it (one of mine does and one does not), on my server motherboard anyway, hardware pass-thru has always
been a PITA. I don't want to come across as some know-it-all, but for me, the nature of an NVR application like Blue Iris was
just not a good fit as a VM with my hardware. And lastly, this might not be a consideration for you, but Unraid will spin down
unused physical drives to save wear and tear and electricity, but with cameras recording 24/7 the NAS type hard drives that your
RAID array is built with are not suitable, so you will need to integrate/isolate a surveillance rated hard disk into your VM host.
Click to expand...
Appreciate the feedback! Thank you!!!
 
My answer here is, it really depends....

How many cameras are you running? I originally ran Blue Iris on a XEON E3 in a VM in ESXi. It ran great until I hit maybe 5-6 cameras (maybe 12 megapixels).... I didn't have a lot of running room at that point, so I bought a XEON with Quicksync. Long story short, it was hard to get that to work in passthrough, so the E3 XEON is a stand alone server now. I have ESXi running a Linux instance now. Most of the stuff on there is in containers now, so I might just jettison that and go to bare metal for Linux.

Windows is a PITA to manage unless you have IPMI. ESXi makes that part easier.

If you are new to BI and don't use Windows, a VM is a great way to get started. Depending on your setup, you may never need to upgrade it.
 
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wpiman said:
My answer here is, it really depends....

How many cameras are you running? I originally ran Blue Iris on a XEON E3 in a VM in ESXi. It ran great until I hit maybe 5-6 cameras (maybe 12 megapixels).... I didn't have a lot of running room at that point, so I bought a XEON with Quicksync. Long story short, it was hard to get that to work in passthrough, so the E3 XEON is a stand alone server now. I have ESXi running a Linux instance now. Most of the stuff on there is in containers now, so I might just jettison that and go to bare metal for Linux.

Windows is a PITA to manage unless you have IPMI. ESXi makes that part easier.

If you are new to BI and don't use Windows, a VM is a great way to get started. Depending on your setup, you may never need to upgrade it.
Click to expand...
Thx for the feedback! I'm much stronger with Windows than Linux, and while I can allocate a bunch of resources to a VM, I'm pretty sure my Xeon is older and may not support Quicksync properly. The Optiplex is only 4 years old with a 7th generation i5. I'll start with that.
 
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The dell 3050 SFF has the m.2 NVME slot to add for your primary drive. leaving you a 3.5 bay up top to record to.
1678614550593.png
 
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I use Blue Iris in a VM in Hyper-V on a 4th gen i5. In theory, you can get a newer CPU generation and you can use GPU-P to share the GPU between the host and the VM. I've already tested this on another system I have with an i7 8th gen, it worked fine.

I prefer to virtualise everything as it adds much more flexibility and these days with hyper-v it is very close to barebone performance.

Windows 11 has GPU-P functionality, you don't even need windows server.

I've been using BI in Hyper-v for 2 months now
 
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mephisto_uk said:
I use Blue Iris in a VM in Hyper-V on a 4th gen i5. In theory, you can get a newer CPU generation and you can use GPU-P to share the GPU between the host and the VM. I've already tested this on another system I have with an i7 8th gen, it worked fine.

I prefer to virtualise everything as it adds much more flexibility and these days with hyper-v it is very close to barebone performance.

Windows 11 has GPU-P functionality, you don't even need windows server.

I've been using BI in Hyper-v for 2 months now
Click to expand...
Thank you for your feedback! I wasn't aware that Win 11 had this ability. I'll have to check if my i5 box could be upgraded. The server I have is dual Xeon, but the machine is about 7 years old. Not sure I could do Win 11 on it.

Thanks again - now you've given me something else to play with!
 
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