Subscriber Discussion

Any Recommendations On Building Servers For Milestone VMS?

TH
Truman HW
Nov 10, 2017

Curious as to your thoughts on the potency of a computer with a good CPU, like an i7 7700k vs the SoC chips which are manufactured precisely for the job they do -- and thus (potentially) could outperform the generalist CPUs by Intel. (I'm specifically, however, talking about the i7-7700k bc it has the H.265 codec built in.) 

What about GPUs? Should I bother with the $ that it costs to buy a GPU like a 980 Ti or even 1080 Ti? 

Should I use a dedicated, hardware, RAID controller? (I do plan to subsequently transfer the archived data to either a QNAP or a Synology, and do you have a bias between each of these brands for use in context with a Milestone ? ) 

Thanks, to any / all. 

Avatar
Mike Dotson
Nov 10, 2017
Formerly of Seneca • IPVMU Certified

We, Seneca, have a lot of experience doing this, and even have a newly released product that performs terrific and is Xeon E3 based with Intel QuickSync capability.

So, to answer your questions, Yes the Intel HD GFX DOES indeed boost performance quite a bit for the higher MP cams and H265, such that the system I mentioned above will perform the recording server task almost as well as a Dual Xeon system.

You do NOT need a video card on the server, but if the intent is to do limited viewing on the server (NOT a recommended practice for any VMS), you will want a 'basic' one to manage more than one monitor... think K620 for two monitors.

A dedicated RAID controller is needed for bit rates >150Mbits because embedded RAID is simply slower, by appx 50%.    A dedicated card can also handle many more drives in a chassis and recover from drive fails quicker.

Your choice of Archive storage should be based on performance during the archiving process.   The faster it can take in the data, the sooner it will finish the task and allow the recorder to return to 100% performance.

 

<<terrific = 90x 4Kx15Mbit streams with motion detection and archiving running >>

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U
Undisclosed #1
Nov 10, 2017

The Nvidia Quadro K620 is previous gen now.  I would recommend for servers the Quadro P600 or P1000 as it supports H.265 where the K620 does not. For workstation builds if you use a GTX 9 series card you should use the GTX 960 Ti as it is (strangely) the only 9 series card that supports H.265. All 10 series cards support H.265. The GTX 1060 6gb edition performs very well on 3-4 monitor setups and the GTX 1050 Ti performs very well on 1-2 monitor setups. I have never seen or heard of the need for a GTX 1070 or 1080 as they are still physically limited to 3-4 monitors and there is only so many camera streams you can fit on a screen. 

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Avatar
Mike Dotson
Nov 10, 2017
Formerly of Seneca • IPVMU Certified

I agree, but Milestone simply does not need a 'big boy' video card because it does not use it to decode streams.   It uses the HD GFX within the CPU.

In the future I can imagine they will start using the more powerful capabilities of a video card, but that is not what they have today.

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U
Undisclosed #1
Nov 10, 2017

Milestone was showing server side GPU decoding on Nvidia cards at ISC and ASIS and was very close to production. In the Nvidia booth there was BCD Video server with 4 GPUs decoding thousands of streams for server side motion detection on Milestone as well. If you guys are not ready you should be soon.

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U
Undisclosed #2
Nov 10, 2017

The don't believe the 960 supports HEVC, you had to go up to the 970. I'd go with 10 series, like the 1060 for client and it supports HEVC up to 8k. Shouldn't cost anymore then when the 960 was the current gen.

 

Milestone still uses i3 and xeons that are 4-5 gens old on their Huskys according to the data sheets.

Avatar
Mike Dotson
Nov 10, 2017
Formerly of Seneca • IPVMU Certified

FWIW...Milestone Certified the system mentioned above.   Here is a link to the doc on their site:Seneca Cert Paper

SD
Sinisa Dumanic
Nov 10, 2017

Milestone (in some versions) can use Intel CPU with support for Quick Sync Video (https://ark.intel.com/Search/FeatureFilter?productType=processors&QuickSyncVideo=true) for hardware accelerated video motion detection https://www.milestonesys.com/globalassets/materials/documents/product_updates/productupdate_r1_2017_everythingyouneedtoknow.pdf. Also, Smart Client can use hardware accelerated video decoding. Particularly to view multiple H.264/H.265 video streams https://www.milestonesys.com/files/General/MilestoneGuides/MilestoneXProtectSmartClient_HardwareAccelerationGuide_en-US.pdf.

Personally, I don't like RAID controllers and I preffer to use disks without RAID. Then I use Milestone to configure different paths for recording and archiving for every camera.

 

 
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TH
Truman HW
Nov 11, 2017

Wow, that's a cool point/idea Sinisa, does that suggest you can associate a hard drive per camera (or group), hypothetically? 

U
Undisclosed #3
Nov 11, 2017
IPVMU Certified

...does that suggest you can associate a hard drive per camera (or group), hypothetically?

Related: Does Anyone Do Recording With Each Camera Assigned To Its Own Drive(S)?

SD
Sinisa Dumanic
Nov 11, 2017

Yes you can associate storage location per camera. Of course I never use one camera per disk :-) Also you can "tell" the Milestone to use two or more disks for archiving and Milestone will dynamically use all space for archive. But this depend what Milestone version you use.

All this I suggest because I found a problem with RAID disks. When one disk in RAID (especial RAID5) become defective then I realize significant degradation in speed. That degradation can be so big that system cannot record new images.Maybe I used wrong configurations, but that's my experience.

 

If you have money and you need really secure system my recommendation is to use redundant recording servers rather than redundant disks. In that case, redundant disks are good for second tier of archiving.

TH
Truman HW
Nov 11, 2017

Mirrored disks should still be compelling solutions, no? 

TH
Truman HW
Nov 12, 2017

Also, with RAID 6 I don't think you'd have a degraded array... but I may be wrong on that as I have been fortunate enough to not have my RAID 6 arrays become degraded prior to drive replacement. 

Also noteworthy is that standard drives are typically 10^13 URE - whereas good enterprise drives are 10^15 URE and SSDs are 10^17. Given how cheaply a savvy SSD buyer can buy incredibly fast and reliable SSD drives, even of the M.2 format.

(Which made using my NVR SOOOO much more pleasant - when I switched to spinning drives everything was a pinwheel operation.)

I doubt that Milestone will be any faster in allowing playback of video without the advantages that an SSD provides.

On that note: I finally have, or have ordered the parts that will let me build my first server... and once that's completed, I'll make a second unit for home so that I can watch anything that goes on at my store as needed. 

U
Undisclosed #3
Nov 12, 2017
IPVMU Certified

I have been fortunate enough to not have my RAID 6 arrays become degraded prior to drive replacement.

Your array doesn’t go into degraded mode when a drive fails?

TH
Truman HW
Nov 12, 2017

I'm not sure but I don't think so; I think that's the point of 6. It requires 2 drives to fail to be in a degraded mode. But I'm going to research it now that we've discussed it here... and if anyone knows? (echo, echo, echo. :-) feel free to tell us). 

U
Undisclosed #3
Nov 12, 2017
IPVMU Certified

I'm not sure but I don't think so; I think that's the point of 6.

The point of 6 is to be able to withstand the loss of two drives instead of only one.

Still, even when one fails, recreating the missing information from the distributed parity volumes is computationally intensive.  Until the failed drive is rebuilt, the system will be in degraded mode.

TH
Truman HW
Nov 12, 2017

Excellent info - perhaps I'll stick to two pair of mirrored sets for archival, and big M.2 NVMe Drives for recent recordings.

TH
Truman HW
Nov 10, 2017

So, there's a consensus of getting a Xeon series CPU over an i7-7700k or 8700k... yes? (Just confirming)

Avatar
Mike Dotson
Nov 10, 2017
Formerly of Seneca • IPVMU Certified

Not really.  You WANT... Intel HD GFX on a Server and a Viewstation.

The 7700K will be 'faster' but will not last as long in a 24/7/365 environment like a Xeon will be.

 

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TH
Truman HW
Nov 11, 2017

 

Okay, so a xeon will last longer in such a context -- 24/7/365. Don't care. I'd rather buy two CPUs over time than have a CPU that costs 4x for less processing power. Anyway, the "k" series are designed to take a punishing - and I'm planning on liquid cooling them. In my years of working with workstations, CPUs are about the most rare thing to die from use. And if this edifies me by just charring procs, I promise to think of this thread. :) 

That said, if there are any xeon-only features/abilities which behoove the m.o. ?then I'm of course going to do it.

I'd also assume that to get a xeon with an integrated GPU that's newest along with the newest GPU, codec, quick sync, would be more than just 2x the price of a 7700k. No?    

MM
Michael Miller
Nov 11, 2017

Okay, so a xeon will last longer in such a context -- 24/7/365. Don't care. I'd rather buy two CPUs over time than have a CPU that costs 4x for less processing power.

When it comes to security systems downtime is usually a big deal. 

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U
Undisclosed #3
Nov 13, 2017
IPVMU Certified

When it comes to security systems downtime is usually a big deal.

Yes, but with a system that fast, when a cpu finally does die he’ll be so far ahead in processing it’ll cover the down time and then some...

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Avatar
Mike Dotson
Nov 13, 2017
Formerly of Seneca • IPVMU Certified

re CPU price/performance delta....  the Passmark benchmark web page is a good place to get this info.

The cost delta between the I7 and E3 Xeon is appx $50.

In this discussion the camera count is mentioned to be 12.

For such a low count, the I series will not be taxed by the recording function very much even if they are 4K cams, so use that.

The Client viewing will use more of the CPU, so test your rig to see what its limits are.

If you will be doing the archiving function, overlap the viewing with the archive process.

Keep an eye on the Milestone log files to see if you are dropping incoming cam feed data (overflow in the log file).

NL
Nicholas Lyle
Nov 12, 2017

How many cameras?

TH
Truman HW
Nov 13, 2017

If I even allow a little over kill, the maximum would be say, 12, which would include the parking lot, areas immediately preceding entrances, etc. 

If however, there weren't other reasons to want Pro+, if I acclimate to the system nicely, and notice a real difference (without a shocking number of additional hardware I need to either replace or augment for some of the things that [are] working with a Dahua NVR - (and I do intend to replace my Dahua with the Milestone VMS, and use this computer's hardware to record and playback the most recent week's data with M.2 drives of the Evo 960 fashion, and then archive them in some way which I'm still evaluating and will list below) - I could force myself to get by on 8. 

 

Aside from getting a general view of the parking lot and walk in's who don't have customer oriented questions to cross reference agains a burglary, god forbid! (this atheist says). 

1. Stranger/Danger people.
2. Catch any theft (real time or afterwards.
3. Deter shrinkage.
4. Find stuff that I or my employee's misplace!
5. Watch data recovery.
6. Make sure employees work a reasonable percent of their day.
7. Audit client conversations in real time to catch them manipulating my employees! (I intend to put a speaker in there so that the voice of god can interject the BS status of their claim.)

8. But possibly my absolute, FAVORITE reason; the reality show method of fighting any yelp-tards.

If someone gives earnest criticism, even if they believe it but it's untrue, and they aren't just malicious asshats - I either thank them or say nothing. However, when their review is pure fiction, my intent is to provide those who search this person's name on the internet the means to see their behavior - hear the discussion, the agreement, what we did vs. what they said. 

The notion of businesses having a means of providing some accountability for claims... without getting charged with long-windedness (as I write a thesis) ... the fact is, reality just takes a while to write! This is why legal stuff is long. 

Anyway, IF this works, I will eventually create a system for people to see the converse of yelp, a video record of the client's behavior and their interpretation of the event vs. the real event -- so the court of public opinions is predicated off reality. 

Yes, I have signage, my attorney has checked it out, its LARGE, and the rules are simple; don't lie as you engage in malice, and you'll never be featured. :)

U
Undisclosed #3
Nov 13, 2017
IPVMU Certified

Yes, I have signage, my attorney has checked it out, its LARGE...

Let’s see it then...

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TH
Truman HW
Nov 13, 2017

Ha, fair enough. You may get a kick out of them. They seem dispassionate, but really, it's meant to make people aware that their probably aren't "takesies backsies." I'm a small, independently financed business that started with nothing; when I sell something, I replace it. And I can't get squeezed by people using my inventory as a free rental, etc. However, when merit, logic or justice compels me to give someone a refund I'll make an exception. :) 


We still have some edits to do to the text, perhaps some cautionary yellow near the camera -- but it's very close. 

 

T&C + Surveillance

BS
Brad Silvernail
Nov 13, 2017

I'm trying to understand a compatibility issue related to the use/benefits of GPU's in server machines that assist with hardware decode of video streams.

If you are using Intell XEON class machines, likely with Windows Server 2012 or 2016, where are you finding drivers for plug-in video cards.   Have you tested or are you using Windows 10 64-bit drivers in that environment?

Thanks.

Avatar
Mike Dotson
Nov 13, 2017
Formerly of Seneca • IPVMU Certified

There are two basic flavors of GPU... card based and CPU based.   Intel calls their embedded GPU capability Quick Sync of HD GFX.    This  type of usage requires a motherboard chipset that supports its use, especially if a discrete video card will also be used.

One of the comments above has a link to see which Intel CPUs have QuickSync.

The Xeon E5 family..none

The Xeon E3 family...limited to ones that end in a '5' like E3-1245.

Most I series...the 'X' ones tend NOT to have it.

Intel drivers come from Intel

Discrete video card drivers come from the card manufacturer.

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UM
Undisclosed Manufacturer #4
Jan 08, 2018

FYI - Milestones new 2018 Smart Client now uses the NVidia GPU's as well as Quick Sync.

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Avatar
Dave Arnould
Jan 08, 2018

Where did you get Smart Client 2018? R3 11.3a is only available. 

UM
Undisclosed Manufacturer #4
Jan 08, 2018

It comes out Feb 20th. ;-)  

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Avatar
Dave Arnould
Jan 08, 2018

Do the Gold Edition have the QuickSync?

Avatar
Mike Dotson
Jan 10, 2018
Formerly of Seneca • IPVMU Certified

No.  They have other things like integrated RAID controller (VMD) and some even have/will have integrated 'Altera FPGA Functions'...but no GFX.

 

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