simo923

Excellent, thanks for the advice. Realistically there is no after hours as they will be operating 24/7, the thing that worries me is bandwidth. If the DVR software (probably Geo) can save the data direct to the SAN, this will be 4 machines saving 32 channels each all the time, that is a lot of traffic, not even including the 4 workstations accessing the data. I have a feeling the gigabit network won't cope. This would be the ideal situation for me. I really need to see how the Geo systems work, can't get my head around how clustering several systems will affect storage.

I am looking at building a system consisting of 4 different machines, each running 16 channels. So in total that is 64 channels of audio and 64 channels of video, all recording full time at best res. Now, i can go with 8Tb of HDD in each machine and save to there, or have a centralised storage server with all machines saving to that point. Anyone have any tips or suggestions. I would like to have 1 centralised area for backups and locating files, but direct access to their own HDDs will be faster. Any views greatly appreciated

Hi guys. I have been looking into building a system recently and have had quotes from £6000 to £100000. What i need to do is have live monitoring and recording at all times of 64 video and 64 audio feeds. All need to be independant. By this i mean, if i want to playback 1 camera i can also playback any audio feed at the same time. 1 camera might give a good view but a microphone and a different location might give a good audio. I have been looking at a Dual Processor rack mount PC, gigs or ram attempting to power a couple fo cards totalling upto 64 channesls but now i realise i have been looking at it the wrong way. Does anyone have any tips for completing a system built up of several PCs. For redundancy it would probably better having seperate backup servers running 16-32 video and 16-32 audio each. Also, i would like to have 2 identical systems both using a centralised storage area, probably 30Tb RAID 6 using iSCSI over Cat6 Gigabit network. if the live system falls over then there is a hot standby that can access all the saved data and carry on recording. A lot of information and i left a lot out, hopefully i can get a good discussion on this and get all the pros and cons. Money is no object. Thanks

Thanks guys, loads of input there. I am definetley going with seperate machines running 1 set of cameras each. I was thinking 4 computers all running 16 channels each. Hardware specs, obviously i would be looking at an Intel board, probably 2 x 3.0Ghz HT processors, 2 gig upwards of RAM. Now, my next problem is bandwidth. I am looking at centralised storage, so a SAN or NAS, 30Tb upwards. When i was just having one DVR machine i was going with a quad Gigabit Intel network card running 4 links into an iSCSI Storage Server. Now i will have 4 machines, all contending for bandwidth as well as the operators attempting to view the live monitoring over 3 workstations. Thats a shed load of network access. I see this as my next hurdle. With regards to live monitoring mics and cams seperately, i think i am going to have to give that a miss as it does not seem possible. It will have to be done in editing. I am tempting to go with an Eyewatch system from watch-it and just get them to build me a system to let me get on with the covert cam install.

Excellent. I think i will go for several seperate machines, fairly high specced. The Hyking card previously mentioned will probably go in or a Geovision card if the GUI will see all 64 channels. As long as all the machines can save to the same centralised storage then that is great, also that the GUI can see all the channels and pull back any archived data. I would love to go with standalone DVR's for stability but i just don't think that they would offer the functions that i need, neither the storage space. Thanks for all your help guys, i will probably be posting a lot more this week as i start building the system.

Thanks. I didn't think that live monitoring and recording at the same time was an issue. Where i saw an issue was playing 2, non related channels at the same time. I have seen plenty of system where i can lvie monitor a video and associated audio channel. Basically i have 2 cameras in a room and 4 microphones, i would like to put cam 1 on the screen and listen to anyone of the microphones. If this is not possible i would like to be able to do it with playback of previous recordings. I do like the look of that card though. What would be best? One large PC (duel xeon processors, as much RAM as possible) with cards stacked upto 64 channels, or a couple of seperate machines, each with 16 or 32 channels ( spread workload, if one system goes down at least some cameras will stay up) with all the computers saving to a centralised network storage. Any advice is great guys.

Thanks guys. With regards to the linux idea. This system is going to be left in a foreign location so i need something that the locals can administrate so this may be an issue. 8x8 channel DVRs, would we be able to group them giving users a 64x64 view in total, i would want it to appear seamless to them. With using standalone DVRs i see storage being a problem as well. They want to records a full res, 25fps all 64x64 feeds in colour every second of every day. With the PC i have been looking at a 30-40Tb iSCSI centralised storage solution with LTO-4 archive. I take it from the two different solutions you guys came up with, that playing 1 audio and a different video channel together is going to be a problem. I have come across a lot of systems that automatically corrospond audio channels to video channels, many people claim that you can play a video channel and ANY other audio channel but i have yet to see one.

Hi guys. Thought i would come in and say hi before i ask for everyones help. I'm in TSCM and surveillance with a strong background in the army and IT/IS. If i can help anyone i will be more than welcoming although for now i can see me asking more questions.