many cameras accessing same hd

[toejam]

I've got about 15 security cameras setup to record to a Synology NAS. The cameras do their own onboard monitoring and recording to the NAS and I've got BI setup to monitor and record to the same NAS. I'm running into situations where I try to view the NAS contents via Windows Explorer and I get the green progress bar that goes on forever. I don't know if this is due to all the hard drive access via cameras and BI or due to the hundreds of thousands of photos that are stored on the NAS. This is getting quite encumbering since it takes quite some time just to get a file listing for each directory.

Any input would be appreciated.

 

[fenderman]

I've got about 15 security cameras setup to record to a Synology NAS. The cameras do their own onboard monitoring and recording to the NAS and I've got BI setup to monitor and record to the same NAS. I'm running into situations where I try to view the NAS contents via Windows Explorer and I get the green progress bar that goes on forever. I don't know if this is due to all the hard drive access via cameras and BI or due to the hundreds of thousands of photos that are stored on the NAS. This is getting quite encumbering since it takes quite some time just to get a file listing for each directory.

Any input would be appreciated.

The Nas is choking are the amount of data you are sending to it...

 

[toejam]

I looked at the synology nas and disabled packages that I did not need to run, including the included antivirus and it responds a whole lot faster now. I think the antivirus may have been bogging the system down trying to check the hundreds of thousands of video and photo files. The system runs better now.

 

[aaronwt]

I've got about 15 security cameras setup to record to a Synology NAS. The cameras do their own onboard monitoring and recording to the NAS and I've got BI setup to monitor and record to the same NAS. I'm running into situations where I try to view the NAS contents via Windows Explorer and I get the green progress bar that goes on forever. I don't know if this is due to all the hard drive access via cameras and BI or due to the hundreds of thousands of photos that are stored on the NAS. This is getting quite encumbering since it takes quite some time just to get a file listing for each directory.

Any input would be appreciated.

Use an SSD for your initial storage location and use the NAS to offload from the SSD when it gets full. In my BI setup with a corei5, I use a 1TB SSD for the OS with 720GB reserved for BI storage. Then that is offloaded to a 500GB SSD and when that gets full it is offloaded to a platter drive. Since I'm using an SSD I have no issues running my 12 Hikvision 1500P cameras and three HooToo 720P cameras. Without using an SSD I would have issues.

 

[Dseg42]

Use an SSD for your initial storage location and use the NAS to offload from the SSD when it gets full. In my BI setup with a corei5, I use a 1TB SSD for the OS with 720GB reserved for BI storage. Then that is offloaded to a 500GB SSD and when that gets full it is offloaded to a platter drive. Since I'm using an SSD I have no issues running my 12 Hikvision 1500P cameras and three HooToo 720P cameras. Without using an SSD I would have issues.

At what point is best to write to a SSD and offload to a mechanical drive? Is there a rule for how many cameras at X FPS and X MPs/resolution can write to a single drive?

 

[fenderman]

At what point is best to write to a SSD and offload to a mechanical drive? Is there a rule for how many cameras at X FPS and X MPs/resolution can write to a single drive?

There is never a point...
Write storage to a mechanical drive...use ssd for OS, blue iris and its database folder...the performance improvement is not from storing the video on the ssd, its from running the os, bi, and database on the ssd....get a 256 drive and enjoy...the only thing that matters is bitrate when writing to a drive...you dont have enough cameras (and write at a high enough bitrate) to make it matter...

 

[Dseg42]

Thanks - that is what I was thinking.
I figured all NVRs are all mechanical too...

 

[aaronwt]

There is never a point...
Write storage to a mechanical drive...use ssd for OS, blue iris and its database folder...the performance improvement is not from storing the video on the ssd, its from running the os, bi, and database on the ssd....get a 256 drive and enjoy...the only thing that matters is bitrate when writing to a drive...you dont have enough cameras (and write at a high enough bitrate) to make it matter...

I had issues when I used a platter drive for initial storage after I exceeded a certain number of cameras. BI folders and the OS was still located on a small SSD, but the main storage folder was on a platter drive. Everything worked fine but there would sometimes be a delay when accessing the content. So I threw in a 1TB SSD for the OS, BI folders and initial storage. By me switching the initial storage to the SSD, I no longer ran into any delays when accessing the content. And since I had extra SSDs lying around, I threw a second one in for secondary storage and just used the platter drive for tertiary storage.

 

[kevkmartin]

I just recently ran into (and solved) the same issue.

I was having issues with playback of recorded clips / alerts, both at the console, and via the BI IOS app.

My system has 23 cameras, running 8192 bit rate for each.

Thinking the HD may be a bottleneck, I added s second 8TB drive and put the “NEW” folder for 1/2 of the cameras (even IPs) on one drive and the other half (odd IPs) on the second drive.

The OS, BI executable and database remains on the C drive (an SSD).

 

[Tolting Colt Acres]

I'm running into situations where I try to view the NAS contents via Windows Explorer and I get the green progress bar that goes on forever.

Welcome to Windows. I get this crap on my laptop when I try to access a directory I haven't visited in a while. PITFA. Sometimes it takes 5 minutes to come back to life, and by then, I've dropped to a DOS prompt and done whatever I wanted to originally from the command-line.

Google "green bar of death".

 

[fenderman]

Welcome to Windows. I get this crap on my laptop when I try to access a directory I haven't visited in a while. PITFA. Sometimes it takes 5 minutes to come back to life, and by then, I've dropped to a DOS prompt and done whatever I wanted to originally from the command-line.

Google "green bar of death".

http://lifehacker.com/fix-an-unresponsive-windows-explorer-window-with-the-gr-1490366886

 

[toejam]

After my tweaks to the synology nas packages, the system has been running a whole lot smoother. I've developed a bad habbit of using bi on my general purpose computer and finding myself loading tons of programs on this pc. Am considering getting a standalone pc purely for the bi load, that way I don't have to worry about other apps stealing cpu cycles and bogging down the bi app. Have gotten some of these core i7 sff dell optiplex machines with the 500 gb ssd - these things are about as big as a tablet. I'm curious if anybody else has any experience using these and
how well they perform?

 

[looney2ns]

After my tweaks to the synology nas packages, the system has been running a whole lot smoother. I've developed a bad habbit of using bi on my general purpose computer and finding myself loading tons of programs on this pc. Am considering getting a standalone pc purely for the bi load, that way I don't have to worry about other apps stealing cpu cycles and bogging down the bi app. Have gotten some of these core i7 sff dell optiplex machines with the 500 gb ssd - these things are about as big as a tablet. I'm curious if anybody else has any experience using these and
how well they perform?

Bi should be dedicated to it's own machine. As many threads here have stated, the SFF Optiplex's are good to go. MANY of us here are using them.

Choosing Hardware for Blue Iris | IP Cam Talk

Optimizing Blue Iris's CPU Usage | IP Cam Talk

 

[toejam]

I'm not finding good deals on those optiplex's, especially the core i7 7040 versions. Bought one last year w/ a 500 gb ssd for $700. I'm seeing systems w/ 1 tb hard drives for $1000.

 

[looney2ns]

I'm not finding good deals on those optiplex's, especially the core i7 7040 versions. Bought one last year w/ a 500 gb ssd for $700. I'm seeing systems w/ 1 tb hard drives for $1000.

Dell Optiplex 7040 MT i7-6700 Quad 8GB RAM- 500GB HD- Win10 Pro | eBay

Dell OptiPlex 5040 Desktop Intel 6th Gen i7-6700 128GB SSD 8GB RAM Windows 7 Pro | eBay

 

[Dodutils]

About your "green forever" problem, it will happen if you have too many videos in same folder (sub folders are not a matter) because it tries to read some informations like time lenght of the video and also create/get a thumbnail.

So 2 solutions first you split your videos into multiple sub-dolers (one per day for example and you can automatize this quite easy, you have tools for that) or, if you do not care about all this and only want to open folder in List/Details view mode as any standard files you have a simple trick to do it, open folder's properties dialog, go into customize tab and set the optimize option to first option that shoudl be something like "general elements" (translate into your own Window's language) and then your folder will open instantly (but sometime Explorer may reset this change and re-adapt to the folder's content so you'll have to go in there again) :

 

[toejam]

Dell Optiplex 7040 MT i7-6700 Quad 8GB RAM- 500GB HD- Win10 Pro | eBay

Dell OptiPlex 5040 Desktop Intel 6th Gen i7-6700 128GB SSD 8GB RAM Windows 7 Pro | eBay

Yeah, lots of x TB hd's, very few 500 gb ssd's.

 

[looney2ns]

Yeah, lots of x TB hd's, very few 500 gb ssd's.

You don't need a 500gb ssd, 128gb is plenty. Then you add a purple drive for the video's.