Blue Iris on Server

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n3wb
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Does anyone know if Blue Iris can be loaded on a server? I currently have it loaded on my home computer, so I need to leave the program running when I am away. I would like to be able to shutdown my computer when I travel and only use the server.
 

fenderman

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Microsoft Windows XP SP3 or newer, or a server OS
 

Mr-Gizmo

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Yes, Blue Iris will work with both Windows Server 2008 / 2012. In order for Blue Iris to work on a Windows Server, you will need to install the "Desktop Experience" feature. You can find it at Server Manager, then Features. This will install Windows Media Player and will enable Windows Media encoding.

You will also need to download and install Microsoft Visual C++ 2010 Redistributable Package (x86), a requirement for Blue Iris. Because Blue Iris is a 32-bit application, make sure you download/install the 32-bit version of Microsoft Visual C++ 2010 Redistributable regardless of whether you are running a Windows 64-bit OS.

Since Windows Server 2008/2012 give the highest priority to background processes and services, you should configure Blue Iris to run as a service. In order to configure Blue Iris as a service, you will need to launch Blue Iris, go into Blue Iris Options and then the Startup tab. From the startup tab, select "Run as a Win32 service".
 
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n3wb
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Thanks, Mr-Gizmo. I have a QNAP server that runs on Linus. Do you know if Blue Iris will work on that system?
 

fenderman

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Unfortunately it will not, windows only.
 

nayr

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A NVR's highest priority should be stability & reliability; BI is great and all but Windows is not....

Dedicated Hardware for the NVR is really a must, the best way to get long term stability out of windows is to not surf the web, dont install anything but minimal software need for operation and security updates.. This is impossible if your dual purposing the hardware for desktop use.

Dont skimp out on hardware, you want to look for something low power usage because it will be loaded 24/7/365 and at least business class reliability, dont cheap out or you will regret it later.
 

bp2008

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I would not say Windows is bad, unstable, or unreliable. It just happens to be the most popular desktop/laptop computer OS in the world, which makes it the primary victim of nearly 3 decades of malware and millions of computer illiterate users.

So it is absolutely true when nayr says "the best way to get long term stability out of windows is to not surf the web, dont install anything but minimal software need for operation and security updates". This is especially true if you are one of the many, many people who regularly has their browser hijacked because they can't tell the difference between a malicious internet advertisement and a genuine system notification. But it also applies (to a much lesser extent) even if you really know what you are doing.
 

nayr

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Windows may be the post popular desktop/laptop software in the world, though I would argue laptop dont have that much headway anymore.. At my 80k employee shop, vast majority of laptops are now Apple, but thats fairly recent development over last 6 years or so.

It is not however the post popular Server OS in the world, for many reasons.. Licensing Costs, Stability and Uptime are the main reasons Windows Server looks poor next to a unix server.. Ive got a linux box here that has a 633 day uptime, and its fully up to date on all security patches... any fully up to date windows server will have a max uptime of a month or so with the required reboots.. If you know what your doing in Linux you can even patch the kernel without rebooting.

Windows does work fine as a server os, Ive got Clients with them doing very critical stuff from military communications (US Military LOVES Windows) to wall-street auditing, however there systems are rather more complicated than they should be so they can provide the desired levels of availability and reliability. Not to mention they all are on extremely hardened networks to defend the servers from any harm.

Windows Servers are most often chosen because of Software requirements force no other alternative, BlueIris is worth running a dedicated Windows Server for.. most of the other NVR solutions on the market are junk in comparison if you want to mix-match camera manufacturers.

And then there is the age old saying, nobody ever got fired for choosing microsoft...
largely because you can always shift the blame for all your problems on them :)
 
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bp2008

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Apple certainly does know how to build a good laptop. It was the retina display in the macbook pro that finally won me over, though in all honesty I wasted my money on that thing as I've probably used it less than 100 hours since it was new.

If you know what your doing in Linux you can even patch the kernel without rebooting.
Holy crap. That must be a delicate procedure. A lot of Windows servers go far too long between update installs due to deep-seated fears that updates will break the production environment, and the updates require reboots all the time.
 

nayr

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yeah windows updates are rolled out slowly with alot of testing if your wise.. I had a fun issue a month back where a customer pushed a few crypto hardening registry settings out to all the servers to disable old security ciphers... well this broke communication with our product, so they tried to revert the changes by changing the keys from YES to NO or vice versa, still didnt work... 15h later with Microsoft engineers scratching there heads one suggested instead of toggling the keys in the registry, lets delete the keys all together since without them they wont be enabled regardless of configuration... well that worked to nobody's surprise, and everyone's frustration.

Only in microsoft world does 1 = TRUE, 0 = TRUE and NULL = FALSE
 

smoothie

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Just thought I would update this thread since I was unable to get BI running on Server 2012 R2. BI would crash as soon as I tried to start it after installing it.

The issue was the above stating the need to install " Microsoft Visual C++ 2010 Redistributable Package (x86)" is either wrong or outdated.

You need to install "Visual C++ Redistributable Packages for Visual Studio 2013" instead from:

Download Visual C++ Redistributable Packages for Visual Studio 2013 from Official Microsoft Download Center

After installing the correct 2013 software linked above BI works fine on my 2012 R2 server.

Hope this helps someone else avoid the time trying to get this working with incorrect information.
 

pete_c

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Here planning on running testing BI on Windows server 2016 / 2019.

I am current using Windows 2016 RDP to access my Leviton OmniPro 2 management program, HAI touchscreen designer, Homeseer touchscreen designer and well other apps that were never written to run in Linux rather just Windows. I have been able to get a few of these apps to run on PlayOnLinux.

I still use Windows server here running in Oracle VBs for just SAPI speech. I have a collection of SAPI voice fonts (guessing I am a voice font hoarder).

Running W2003 here for some older automation software.

Building a new Windows 2016 server only for the purpose of testing BI here.

i am more of a Linux person here and currently run Zoneminder (since the analog CCTV days).
 
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