Making a CIFS share and IP cameras available to selected few workstations

[routerio]

First of all, thank you all for making FreeNAS software AND community possible. :)

I have the following network configuration:

In detail:

• Currently, I have 1 WAN connection through a DD-WRT-based device, I plan to switch to PFSense - with two WANs - in the future
• Workstations access other network resources through a dummy (non-managed) switch
• One of the resources is a FreeNAS (v9.1.2) machine
• This machine has two NICs, of which only NIC1 is currently used for CIFS/Samba shares
• All these shares are on a two HDDs ZFS mirror
• All workstations have access to the shares on NIC1
• This all works great so far. Yet, I plan to add a set of IP cameras:
  • They should all be connected to another dummy switch
  • This switch will then (with a long cable) be connected to NIC2
  • The idea behind NIC2 is that NIC1 doesn't get clogged up with IP camera traffic
  • IP cameras should save their data on a single HDD (ZFS) shared through CIFS/Samba
  • Using the software provided by the IP camera vendor, only particular workstations (in my diagram, the red ones) should be able to access both the CIFS/Samba share with past camera data and the live stream from IP cameras

How to make all this work? Should I preferably use:

• VLAN: If so, how (I don't get it... if it is and how it is a solution to my requirements)?
• Link aggregation: Should I toss some requirements (better security and performance through NIC2) and simplify everything by putting IP cameras on the same network as everything else (192.168.1.0/24)? In this case I'd simply connect Switch2 to Switch1, IP cameras would be on the same network (and it would be easy to connect to the live stream). But, there could be a performance hit, especially when more IP cameras get added as the'd all go through a single 100Mbit/s port on Switch1.
• Something I didn't thought of: If you have other ideas, please share them.

I hope this explanation and my diagram will help you understand the direction where I'm heading. I am very grateful for each question and suggestion you might have to help me.

routerio

 

[Yatti420]

I would probably look at something like http://www.zoneminder.com/ running on the NAS alone with all cameras connected.. Use it's webGUI for access and control.. Shouldn't have a need for VLAN or link aggregation etc..

 

[routerio]

Yatti420, thank you for your input. It's a good idea but I'm afraid that ZoneMinder would open another can of worms: Google search reveals that, getting ZM working directly on FreeNAS isn't a cakewalk (couldn't find someone has done it). I see that there is be a possibility to run it in a VM or a Linux jail but that would put strain on the FreeNAS server (I've already tried running other stuff in a Ubuntu jail).

Thanks again :).