Best way to set up a huge 10~20TB for camera surveillance?

[v12dock]

I setup a storage server for surveillance we used WD blacks and RAID 0. I played with the raid controller for days trying to get the performance I was looking for

 

[yogurt_21]

If you really need that much storage, DO NOT tie it down to one machine. You want the storage dtachable so that if the server goes you can restore image to another server and hook it up to the data.

A single workstation is usually not a good way to go (for something like this which is essentially a video server). You're better off building a super cheap server with detachable storage. Just my 2c. Also detachable storage usually has its own monitoring and alerting tools, which will make your life alot easier.

ah a poor mans SAN, interesting. When it comes to storage reliability SAN's are the creme of the crop so it does make more sense to try and move in that direction.

you could then setup 2-3 cheaper machines to hook to it in a high availability cluster. They don't take long to setup and will give instantaneous failover so you can fix the issue when you get to work in the morning rather than getting an alert in the middle of the night and having to hop out of bed and go down there to fix it.

 

[jsfitz54]

This company may have used hardware that is suitable: http://www.aberdeeninc.com/

 

[phanbuey]

ah a poor mans SAN, interesting. When it comes to storage reliability SAN's are the creme of the crop so it does make more sense to try and move in that direction.

you could then setup 2-3 cheaper machines to hook to it in a high availability cluster. They don't take long to setup and will give instantaneous failover so you can fix the issue when you get to work in the morning rather than getting an alert in the middle of the night and having to hop out of bed and go down there to fix it.

Yeah that would be ideal - some applications don't love clustering, but if OP can do that he will save himself a good deal of gray hairs.

 

[mcloughj]

I know Qnap have surveillence software built into their NAS range, but importantly they do motion detection. Not having your cameras active 24/7 could save you a lot of expense in terms of storage etc.

 

[n-ster]

They are going to be motion detection, but the busiest cameras will be on a good 14~15 hours a day, and the least busy will probably be about 6 hours.

Considering that the data isn't that critical and we can afford to loose it in rare circumstances, and I just don't have much space in that office, and I want it to be cheap, I'm leaning towards having either an internal RAID array.

How do RAID Controllers work? and what are those multi-lane things? Do you get a multi-lane to 4 SATA port adapter and plug in the hard drives to that and that's it? you don't even need to use your mobo's SATA ports (except for the OS drive) ? So if I have the OS drive connected to the mobo and then I can connect 8 HDDs in RAID onto the controller right? Seems like the simplest and cheapest solution to me

SAN, NAS etc are nice but aren't worth it for my uses IMO. Sure I can afford it but it just seems like a waste of money

 

[jsfitz54]

Perhaps this new hardware would work: http://www.madshrimps.be/articles/a...S-Server-for-SMB-Users-Review/1#axzz1plmsdsvN


"Synology Surveillance Station offers a centralized interface to manage IP cameras deployed in your office or home, allowing users traveling miles away to safeguard the environment by watching live views, recording events, and taking snapshots with a computer or mobile device."

 

[n-ster]

The standard camera software takes care of remote accessibility, and wouldn't it be more reliable to use the RAID controllers + internal HDDs? better cooling, more direct...

 

[theeldest]

For reference, a Dell server with 10TB of useable storage (6x2TB drives in RAID5) would be about $3k with a 3 year basic onsite warranty.

Can you rackmount this? or does it need to be standalone?

 

[n-ster]

Isn't rackmount much more expensive?

 

[theeldest]

Isn't rackmount much more expensive?

Yes and No.

If you're only looking at the switch and storage(/server) then standalone will be less. If you have a rack environment then you will have more expandability with rackmount (a 24 drive chassis for example)

 

[yogurt_21]

Isn't rackmount much more expensive?

nope the rack itself is, but the rackmounted server isn't. kinda moot when it sounds like you don't already have a rack to put it in though.

 

[n-ster]

Haha yea this is going to be in the middle of an office so there are no racks

 

[jsfitz54]

in the middle of an office

Spying on employees???

 

[TheoneandonlyMrK]

wizz has his shit in order in all the above listen to him,
ive used shity caviar blues(250) x3 in raid 0 for going on 5 years and only one has bit the dirt ,i now have four as i replaced 1 with 2 as they were half price then.

they last ages even cheap ones if kept below 40 degrees and above 30, and on a 10x sata raid board 8x 2.5TB drives ,say an asrock 990FX extreme 4 with an 8120cpu, wizz you know this better for server type stuff and encodeing and that 2mb cache might actually get used by you , you will be able to multi soft raid ie you dont have to make just 1x array you could make 2, and software raid overclocks hardware does not

 

[n-ster]

Spying on employees???

It's in the middle of the Boss' office lol, and he actually has meeting with people in there (office is tiny, we got 3 offices and one of them is in the Boss' closet). The cameras are for a grocery store, and they both look over employees (they steal money sometimes, give free stuff to their friends, steal food themselves, or sue us for injury that they never had) and basically anywhere in the store to watch for shoplifters.

 

[jsfitz54]

If the office is small and this is going to be used for 1 purpose only (not the boss's dual use desktop/security system) why not go for a wall mount rack system. Out of the way with no one to kick it or take up desk space. Just kicking around ideas.

Well at least you didn't say you were covering the washroom!

 

[n-ster]

It's going to be used mostly to view the video surveillance and save the parts we need on an external HDD and/or USB etc, so the USB ports have to be accessible

Maybe I could just put the PC in the backroom and have long USB extenders/hubs for my USB needs and a long DVI or HDMI cable for the display!