FreeNAS system build for camera recordings

[YvesT]

Hello everybody,

I am pretty new to FreeNAS, i have seen it in action but never really set everything up myself.
So i am not sure what direction to go spec wise.

I am hoping someone can point my in a direction for a FreeNAS server which servers only for getting camera recordings.
There are 32 Axis camera's which need direct to a storage server for camera images.
Before i just used a Windows PC but i didn't have more then 20 cameras so i could pull it of.
But now there are new cameras added and i need to find a new solution.

Is a Xeon CPU really necessary or could i have a decent server with a i7 or i9 CPU with 32GB ram ?

The camera's only record when movement. So it's not continues recording.

Thanks

 

[sretalla]

I guess we should start with more detail on the streams...

How many would you say is the maximum concurrent streams?

How big are the streams (Kbps? Mbps?)

Also, what does this mean:

need direct to a storage server for camera images

direct access? SMB? over Network? proprietary cable? Capture card?

 

[YvesT]

The maximum concurrent streams can vary, since they only record when there is movement on the camera.
So at times it might be 2 but busy times could mean all 32 are recording.
The streams are about 4Mbit each at the most.

Must have had a brain fart when i wrote that last part :)
The camera's use SMB protocol.

Currently the PC is a i9-9xxx series CPU(Socket 2066) with 32GB DDR4 and 2x 1TB SSD.
Which seems to handle the 20 camera's just fine, but due to the 20 user limitations i am not sure how well 32 camera's would handle.

 

[sretalla]

OK, so max concurrent is 32 then.

32 x 4Mbits makes 128Mbits or 16MBytes/second

Even a single spinning disk should handle that ~20MBytes/s being a slow spinning disk.

Throw an SSD mirror in and you're good.

CPU isn't going to be a problem either, so just whatever you have. 32GB ram is good.

Assumption is that you have 1Gbit NIC in the FreeNAS box (intel is best). each camera doesn't need that, but for 128Mbits at the server during peak load, gigabit is essential.

 

[YvesT]

Alright thanks for that.
Is CPU usage going to be high? Could i downgrade to a different PC with little slower CPU?
I had a overkill spec back then free to use.
But if i could use this one for something else and use for example a i7-9700(8c/8t)?
I am assuming it's going to mainly write to disc usage over CPU usage.

 

[tfran1990]

I am doing what you are trying to do, i have a tiny i3 6100. During strong wind or rain 5 of my cameras constantly recording my 6100 doesnt go past 2% cpu usage. My cameras record to FTP so theres no user limitations. With the 6100 you get ECC ram and when writing to ssd you wont need a lot.

 

[sretalla]

Even i7 will be more than needed. It will be almost all disk i/o.

 

[YvesT]

alright, thanks for the help.