Subscriber Discussion

Recording Issues For Mobotix Cameras Connected To Buffalo NAS

JV
Jason Vidéo
May 23, 2014

Hello IPVM

  • A customer is experiencing bizarre recording errors on the NAS device.
  • Cameras are saying they are having issues writing to the NAS
  • NAS stores data from 14 of the 16 cameras up to 7 days and the remaining 2 for 3 hours

The recording on this site is crucial and the network is made up of printers, machinery, computer, etc.

The cameras are in DHCP (requested by client) and the NAS has a fixed IP.

The concern is replacing the NAS with a VMS which depending on the above issue may not resolve the problem.

Any insight would be great and if any clarification is needed please ask.

JB
Jeremiah Boughton
May 23, 2014

Are the cameras recording 24/7 or just on motion?

JV
Jason Vidéo
May 23, 2014

HI Jeremiah

They are recording 24/7 as requested by the customer

When they are on MD they are not able to capture the video well enough to use MD... although the recroding issues arose when the cameras were recording on MD as well.

JH
John Honovich
May 23, 2014
IPVM

Jason, is this recording to QNAP or Synology? Is this a NAS with its own embedded / included VMS software? If not, what is the VMS / recorder software being used?

JV
Jason Vidéo
May 23, 2014

Hi John

The NAS is a Buffalo TerraStation 5400.

(has recently been modified from RAID 5 to RAID 10 as result of the recording issues mentioned above)

The cameras are a mix of Mobotix M22, M24, M25, M15, Q24, Q25

What makes it even more bizarre is the recording issues are not from any camera in particular... the database seems to get corrupted on any of the cameras with no logic, as in a dated firmware or camera model.

JH
John Honovich
May 23, 2014
IPVM

Ok, so each Mobotix camera is managing its own recordings and there is no centralized VMS.

Have you talked with Mobotix technical support? I recall Mobotix and Buffalo being a common combination so I would think they would have good advice on troubleshooting this.

JV
Jason Vidéo
May 23, 2014

They do and this is what they responded:

Hello,

all three reports show the NAS is operating at its limit.

Storing data to it is delayed, and sometimes fails completely for short periods.

A solution would be to reduce the workload of this device by reducing framerate and image size of the recordings,

or even have some cameras store to a additional NAS.

Issue is how do we know it's the NAS and not the network....

JH
John Honovich
May 23, 2014
IPVM

What's your network setup and load?

You have a 100Mb/s or 1Gb/s connection to your NAS?

JV
Jason Vidéo
May 23, 2014

6 of the cameras are all connected to a Cisco 300 Gigabit Poe

The NAS is connected to 1 of the 4 Uplink ports at 1GBPS.

The max these cameras have been recording in was Mega Resolution or 1.3MP and 12 FPS with a 60% image quality.

Should be max 80MBPS bandwidth for all 16... also these issues occurred when there were only 11 cameras.

The network has Websense and other rules and the cameras are in DHCP. Is it not possible the issues can be related to the network and not exclusively the NAS? If it is a NAS issue would a Milestone Professional or Husky NVR resolve the issue.... based on our experience the answer would be ... not sure.

JH
John Honovich
May 23, 2014
IPVM

If you are happy with the Mobotix client software, then follow their recommendations and upgrade the NAS.

Switching VMSes may indirectly solve it because you'd be moving to a PC / server but it comes at double cost (licenses and hardware).

JV
Jason Vidéo
May 23, 2014

Thanks John

If the VMS will solve the issue (better management of recordings) it is worth the upgrade....concern is it will not.

Have modified the setup according to them and still having issues... it's an industrial environment with unions and heavy machinery... recording errors can be acceptable if it does not destroy the entire folder....am sure you can appreciate the need for a reliabe system.

RW
Rukmini Wilson
May 24, 2014

If you are happy with the Mobotix client software, then follow their recommendations and upgrade the NAS.

If there is no requirement for a VMS and he's Ok with Mobotix software, do you think edge recording, on some of the cameras is worth discussing? The retention is only 7 days which should be able to be met with a 64 GB card, or longer with motion detection. Less < $50 camera.

Buffalo TerraStations, IMHO, are not high performance systems, (and I've had three). I'm would bet the IOPS of all the edge storage put together is easily better than the ErrorStation.

RW
Rukmini Wilson
May 23, 2014

Jason, can you enable the edge storage on some of those cameras as a temporary work around, and to see what effect a reduced load on Buffalo has? If they are alreading recording to edge also, maybe shut it off. To fix the corruption, do you need to delete the cameras db altogether? How quickly does it get corrupted again. Are there any 'hard' disk/raid errors on the buffalo? What does the network util% look like?

JB
Jeremiah Boughton
May 23, 2014

I notice Buffalo has their owner surviellance recording software but they make you buy licenses. kind of wierd.

Avatar
Aaron Saks
May 23, 2014

Have you tried to lower the number of cameras on one NAS? Some can't handle that many connections at a constatnt data stream. Also, is each camera recording to a seperate share, or just a different folder in one share?

JV
Jason Vidéo
May 23, 2014

Hi Aaron

They are all recording in Raid 10 with 1 share folder with each camera having it's own sub folder.

Issue is it was having errors in the Mortion recording as well.... The cameras are set on VGA at 8 FPS... DVR's can handle 16 camera's full time in H.264....

Avatar
Aaron Saks
May 23, 2014

I don't know that NAS, but see if you can create indivudial shares, and assign each camera to each one. Obviously, create a folder in the share for the camera as well. I have seen a system where if you had x many cameras writing to one NAS share it wouldn't handle it, but if you had X shares on the one NAS, then it was fine...

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