Blue Iris in a VM

[Paranoid_Loyd]

Hi everyone,
I'm close to pulling the trigger on purchasing and deploying my system. I picked up a Dell R720 for a trade and after looking at its current config, am rethinking deployment.
This system has 8x6TB drives, giving me 42-ish TB of storage (in RAID 5) if needed. However, it also has a fully licensed VMWare setup with Win10 Pro and Server 2019 instances running.
I was thinking of running the BI software in the Win 10 workstation instance and configuring a local D: drive for roughly 26TB. This would give me around 30 days storage for 12-14 4MP cameras at 30fps.
This leaves me plenty of room to run other instances in the VM.
I thought I saw someone successfully running their BI software in a VM. Is this possible?

My intended setup. Thoughts appreciated:
2 Cisco POE management switches
Cisco ASA 5505 at the front-end <-- Maybe run PFSense instead...
Cat-6 pre-terminated runs (100' ea.)
13 POE cameras - Still deciding on model. Most of the area covered has some level of lighting and my max distance is around 50-75'. I am considering these models:
NSC-NITECOLOR-DM2 - Expensive and no IR lighting but seem promising
NSC-2X4G-DM - Less expensive but smaller lens.
Any recommendations that are NOT more expensive than the NiteColor above?

 

[eeeeesh]

Latest post on the subject - has some good info

Blue Iris in VMWare ESXi 6.7 with passthrough of Intel integrated graphics

Hey Just wanted to say that this is entirely possible and works fine in a Windows 10 1809 VM. Ive used my Intel NUC 7i5BNK which has the Core i5-7260U CPU with Intel Iris Plus 640 graphics. It currently has 8GB DDR4 memory and a 128GB Intel 600p NVMe SSD. ESXi 6.7 Update 1 runs from a Sandisk...

www.ipcamtalk.com

 

[aristobrat]

13 POE cameras - Still deciding on model. Most of the area covered has some level of lighting and my max distance is around 50-75'. I am considering these models:
NSC-NITECOLOR-DM2 - Expensive and no IR lighting but seem promising
NSC-2X4G-DM - Less expensive but smaller lens.
Any recommendations that are NOT more expensive than the NiteColor above?

The NiteColor looks like a rebadged Hikvision ColorVu model, which uses the really great (for low-light) 4MP 1/1.8" image sensor. The other camera you're looking at uses a much older and smaller (1/3") sensor that doesn't do particularly well in low-light situations, so I'd personally not consider that one.

The forum here has a vendor with a stellar reputation (Andy, @EMPIRETECANDY) who sells mostly OEM Dahua but also carries a few OEM Hikvision models. His OEM version of the Hik ColorVu (aka Nelly NiteView) is $160. Dahua makes a similar model (5442TM-AS-LED) that Andy sells OEM for $150.

For whatever reason, Hikvision's only "affordable" model that uses the 4MP 1/1.8" image sensor is the ColorVu whereas Dahua has a bunch of models that use that sensor.

The 5442TM-AS model has traditional IR and is becoming one of the most popular models used here because of the sensor and the fact it uses IR, not LED:
Review-OEM 4mp AI Cam IPC-T5442TM-AS Starlight+

You mentioned a max distance of 50-75 feet. You should be able to detect and observe motion that far out, but if you get a camera with that has a fixed lens in the range of 2.8mm-6.0mm, recognizing people you know at that distance will likely be hard and ID'ing someone you don't know will be next to impossible. If you need to recognize/ID someone that far out, you probably should be looking at varifocal camera models that have lenses that can zoom in higher (i.e. up to 13.5mm). You can use a tool like IPVM Camera Calculator V3 to virtually "see" how well a camera will do looking at a virtual person around a Google Maps image of your house.

Below are some varifocals to check out. If you read around, you'll see a lot of info about the "5231" varifocal ... that's been the reigning champ in terms of low-light performance for awhile now. It looks like the new 3241 and 2231 S2 models outperform it, so def. check those out.

Review - OEM IPC-B5442E-ZE 4MP AI Varifocal Bullet Camera With Starlight+
https://ipcamtalk.com/threads/review-oem-ipc-t3241-zas-2mp-ai-lite-series-varifocal.45562/
https://ipcamtalk.com/threads/review-dahua-ipc-hdw2231t-zs-s2-2mp-varifocal-starlight-camera.43194/