Subscriber Discussion

Looking For Light Weight Open VMS

UM
Undisclosed Manufacturer #1
Apr 30, 2013

Looking for suggestions for a VMS that's not too intensive in resources (it won't be doing anything like analytics or transcoding) and that's open to being put on your own hardware, and is an open platform with SDK's and API's if needed. I have one in mind but looking for other suggestions that integrators have had good experiance with. Thanks in advance.

JH
John Honovich
Apr 30, 2013
IPVM

Generally, the VMSes I have seen that are the least resource intensive are non Windows / .NET based system (even though they do work on Windows).

To that end, Exacq is a clear choice. It's one of the main reasons we prefer to test with them rather than Milestone or Genetec. Network Optix is also similarly light weight.

I've seen a correlation between small executable size and low resource use (e.g., Exacq's complete installation bundle is 64MBs where many VMSes are 10x or greater).

BH
Bohan Huang
May 01, 2013

Yeah I have always wondered how Milestone and Genetec manage to produce 1GB+ executables. At first I though maybe there are a lot of images or tutorial videos in there but Milestone at least looks pretty bland graphically. Anyone can comment on this 10X, even 20X difference in executable size between VMSes?

At least for Milestone - the system itself is not very resource heavy (speaking of Essential and Express). RAM and COU usage are both very acceptable - just donly know whats in the setup file ... not even .NET Framework included that still has to be downloaded separately.

SP
Sean Patton
May 01, 2013

I can comment only on Genetec Security Center's installer, but there are 200MB of Documentation and Microsoft Driver Hotfixes alone as part of their installer. There are also 484MB of Microsoft .NET/IS/SQL/Visual C++ Prerequisits built into the installer. They also include a 385MB Standalone Archive Player that is downloadable seperately. Then there is the included SQL Express Installation files that are another 638MB.

The actual software is about 490MB.

It can be a hassle to have such a large file to bring around or download, but its also nice that everything is packaged into one .msi/.exe

Also that being said, a few GB of HDD space on a server is typically not that big of a deal, and while we are both Exacq and Genetec dealers; I can't comment on a resource efficiency comparison between the 2. Maybe John or Ethan has some input in this; but beyond that, Genetec is certainly as efficient on paper as any other VMS, and is arguably as open or more open from a camera hardware specification than any VMS with over 1400 supported camera/encoder models. The only "openess" spot that Exacq clearly beats Genetec is that it has Linux support on the server side. In our markets we rarely see -nix architecture anyway so I've never seen that as a real differentiator. Genetec only has Linux support for their WebClient.

UM
Undisclosed Manufacturer #1
May 01, 2013

Wow, it still sounds like a lot of bloat. 385MB for an archive player? I've never used Genetec, but other's I've used were never more than 25mb or so for the standalone player.

SP
Sean Patton
May 01, 2013

Yeah I can't really explain/defend/comment on the size of it, other than it is as fully featured as their main client; it is not a limited, thin version of their full Security Desk.

UM
Undisclosed Manufacturer #1
May 01, 2013

Not that I'd be interested in it, it pretty much blows it out of the water, but just as an FYI does that player require installation or is it a standalone program?

SP
Sean Patton
May 01, 2013

It is a standalone program

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