Mobotix and NAS

[ssmith10pn 0]

3% CPU for 23 cams?? How much bandwidth is that server dealing with? Are you sure the cameras are connected?

 

My screen shots show DU meter as well.

Pay close attention to Server 2. That's 15 Avigilon 5mp cameras.

 

server1

 

server2

 

server3

 

What FPS and quality setting?

 

4 FPS default quality.

 

I put 4 more cameras on it and I'm going to stop there.

 

Server2 Full Load

[thewireguys 3]

It usually depends if your NVR software does any transcoding or post-processing of the data stream from the camera, or if that is handled by the viewing client. For example, Milestone/ONSSI does a lot of processing on the streams, and is fairly processor intensive, Avigilon and Exacq don't seem to do anywhere near as much processing, and so have a much lower processor load.

Good point, although that really just reinforces what I said: simply receiving the stream and writing it to disk is not processor-intensive... it's all that other stuff that is, particularly the decoding that's required for everything else to happen (analytics, motion detection, transcoding, etc.)

 

 

Agreed. Both Exacq and Avigilon use camera based motion detection so that's how the cpu usage is low.

 

 

Lets move all the Avigilon chat here

 

viewtopic.php?f=20&t=27688

[HTElectrical 0]

It usually depends if your NVR software does any transcoding or post-processing of the data stream from the camera, or if that is handled by the viewing client. For example, Milestone/ONSSI does a lot of processing on the streams, and is fairly processor intensive, Avigilon and Exacq don't seem to do anywhere near as much processing, and so have a much lower processor load.

Good point, although that really just reinforces what I said: simply receiving the stream and writing it to disk is not processor-intensive... it's all that other stuff that is, particularly the decoding that's required for everything else to happen (analytics, motion detection, transcoding, etc.)

 

 

Agreed. Both Exacq and Avigilon use camera based motion detection so that's how the cpu usage is low.

 

 

Lets move all the Avigilon chat here

 

viewtopic.php?f=20&t=27688

Now why would they want to do that

[WilsonJ 0]

If your budget is limited and you really need expensive cameras such as Mobotix, I'd go with QNAP, too. Remember Qnap is originally a NAS manufacturer!

[irishkc_1 0]

I have been a Mobotix partner for several years and have spoken at thier partner conferences in Fort lauderdale. I know the lure of Mobotix is to utilize the camera's intelligence and store directly to a NAS, but MXCC software is difficult for my end users. I've used Viostore with a Qnap NAS, but Qnap is a funny company, they get irate if you look for their product from a less expensive source, and there are several buyers groups that offer their product cheaper than you can but it from the factory. The Qnap also has had many issues of hard-drive failure or seeing hard-drives in empty bays, I would steer clear of Qnap. Exacqvision doesn't support Mobotix camera and their compression rate is untenable, for a standard installation in my world, my customers want 90days storage, to use vexacqvision and get 90 days i need 2 tera-bytes per camera. If your going to store to a NAS and don't need much in the way of storage I'd suggest two options: 1) buy an Overland NAS and don't scrimp on the hard drive or 2) contact the guys at accucom in Oshkosh Wisconsin, these guys have been Mobotix dealers for years, they offer cloud storage and can package a compatable NAS for you.

[buellwinkle 0]

I've used Mobotix cameras with a WD My Book World Edition 1TB, costs about $150-200 (depending on availability from Thailand). Actually Mobotix recomended this for up to about 3 cameras. Maybe get a Drobo if you need to use it with more cameras or need higher capacity.

[Simon Hall 0]

I totally agree with thewireguys (quote) "I would skip the cheap units."

 

We have accumulated quite a bit of data based on our own lab tests and feedback from installers using various brands of NAS. We've listed the ones that seem to be the most commonly problematic. See link below...

 

http://www.mxinstaller.com/blog/choosing-the-right-nas-for-your-mobotix-system

 

Hope this helps.

[buellwinkle 0]

Clearly it depends on how much you value data safety vs. how much money you want to spend. The Mobotix can be setup to email you if it can't write so the risk of not capturing data for a long period of time is small. I figure any hard drive will last 3-5 years. If you are risk adverse and cash rich, then spending a few thousand for a fail safe system makes sense. On the otherhand, under $200 for 1TB with a 3 year warranty does represent a good value.

[Simon Hall 0]

Clearly it depends on how much you value data safety vs. how much money you want to spend. The Mobotix can be setup to email you if it can't write so the risk of not capturing data for a long period of time is small.

Agreed. But prior to installation, the end user should be given the opportunity to choose between "data safety vs. cheap storage". As long as the customer clearly understands what a $200 storage system will deliver as opposed to a $1200 solution, so they can then make an informed decision. While it's true you can be alerted to hardware failures, the question is, how long will it take to repair and what is being missed in the meantime? Is the customer prepared to take that hit in terms of loss of recording during the window of time it takes to repair?

 

I figure any hard drive will last 3-5 years. If you are risk adverse and cash rich, then spending a few thousand for a fail safe system makes sense. On the other hand, under $200 for 1TB with a 3 year warranty does represent a good value.

You dont need to spend anywhere near a "few thousand" for a quality recording system. You can easily obtain a quality NAS chassis and HDD all online for around $1200 - that would give you 1TB, RAID and Enterprise class SATA drives.

 

EDIT - Here's a NAS offering 2TB storage, Intel Atom Dual Core D525 CPU, Constellation ES HDD (Enterprise class SATA), 90MB/sec write speed PLUS 5-year warranty, for under $650.

Reference: http://www.smallnetbuilder.com/nas/nas-reviews/31471-new-to-the-charts-netgear-readynas-pro-2

 

$200 might be good value for storing photos and holiday videos, but for surveillance? Maybe for a very small installation recording at very low frame rates, where the higher probability of losing recorded footage through using a cheap storage device is not an issue to the customer.

 

I am hearing from so many installers reporting failures through using consumer-grade storage such as D-Link DNS range, Lacie d2 and WD "My Book" series. It takes me back to the days as a product manager selling Milestone XProtect systems, and having to go out onsite to help out installers and integrators who had deployed the VMS application on cheap "non-RAID PC/Server" solutions, in an effort to cut cost (or increase profit). The end result usually being, system recording errors and loss of footage.

 

In terms of recording to NAS, it seems the low end 1 and 2-bay devices are the most problematic. These have been especially an issue in sites where some of the cameras are recording continuously. A lot of this has to do with write error and drive failure. It's not surprising as constantly writing video is arduous and taxing on the recording hardware. This is why choosing good quality components is so important.

 

Take just one example - hard drives...

 

There is a reason for the manufacture of both Enterprise class and Desktop class drives. One is made for continuous I/O the other is not. Enterprise-Class disks are purposely designed for RAID environments and proactively remap and then repair defective sector within seconds, to prevent potential read/write failure. These attributes are critical for most surveillance applications. Desktop-Class are not equipped for this.

 

But at the end of the day, as long as the customer clearly understands the pros and cons of "data safety vs. cheap storage" and makes an informed buying decision based on that, then the integrator has done his (or her) job.

Edited February 29, 2012 by Guest

[jtetterton 0]

Where is the Like button?

[LC475 0]

I have used a D-Link consumer-grade NAS for 10 Mobotix cameras. It works. Not very well, but it does work. You will have to lower the frame rates down. Mobotix can deal with junkiness in a NAS, to a greater extent than other cameras, because each camera has a rolling buffer, so if the NAS is not available it can wait awhile (seconds, not minutes). Then if things are really bad the camera will automatically switch into burst mode, to transmit to the NAS in bursts instead of a constant stream.

 

Conclusion: all the other advice is fine, and they're right that the better NASes are, well, better! But if you will only have one camera one consumer-grade NAS will work OK for you. That is, unless you need to save 30 frames a second or something -- just keep it to something reasonable like 5 frames a second and no problem. The big issue I would consider is: how long? The consumer-grade NASes do fail more quickly. Do you want to come out again in two years if it goes bad?

 

If you are just putting in one camera, you could just buy a 128 GB SD card to replace the one in the camera. That will give you two weeks, maybe four. That would be the most elegant solution, hardware-wise.

 

http://www.amazon.com/Lexar-Media-Flash-Memory-LSD128CRBNA133/dp/B004SAMZW4/

[buellwinkle 0]

I can certainly understand where you are coming from, but I've been there done that. It's worth it for some to put in RAID to have the protection, but I don't buy that enterprise grade drives are far superior to consumer grade drives. The people that believe that the manufacturers MTBF rates are real are just drinking the Kool-Aid.

 

Worked for one of the largest SAN manufacturers and even did a project with the other largest SAN manufacturer testing different drives and SAN scenarios for a project. I can tell you, that the difference between consumer and enterprise drive life is insignificant, it's mostly hype.

 

Google, who believe or not is the largest manufacturer of servers in the world and they don't even sell them, just for internal use, has done a study and found insignificant differences between consumer and enterprise drives. There study is below -

 

http://static.googleusercontent.com/external_content/untrusted_dlcp/research.google.com/en/us/archive/disk_failures.pdf

[akelley 0]

I agree with buellwinkle for the most part. I do believe that there are specific specs that your application may require found in enterprise class drives that you can't get in consumer versions, but for probably 90% of the installs that your typical security system will require, consumer drives in a RAID array will be sufficient. Enterprise drives can be 3 or 4 times the cost of an equivalent consumer version, so for that cost, you can easily have on hand several spares to swap out of an array without data loss or downtime.

 

Where you'll see a drive's life cut short is in the number of, and sustained period of, read/write operations. That's where enterprise drives are designed to be more robust than consumer drives - also similar to consumer AV drives that are designed for DVR devices (i.e, TiVo) that are continuously recording (TiVo always records a realtime buffer, so the hard drive never stops writing to the hard drive). So, if you have a single camera that only records on motion, it's likely you don't need a HD that can maintain sustained read/write cycles 24/7, year after year.

 

And one other thing to consider is that heat will reduce any hard drive's life expectancy. In a lot of the cheaper NAS units, they're not engineered to provide proper air flow, which runs the drives hot.

 

So as always, it's a cost/benefit analysis based on the project's specific needs and budget, over using enterprise class drives over much less expensive consumer drives.

[buellwinkle 0]

Based on Google's study, it's best to replace hard drives once they reach their 3rd birthday. One interesting thing I recently found out about is that SSD's have a life and it's determined by the number of read/write cycles. They usually come with a reserve of memory to replace where memory errors are detected, but there's a difference there between consumer and enterprise drives as to how much of this spare space there is and you can tell how soon an SSD is going to die by how much of this space has been used up. Common wisdom would dictate that SSD's would last forever since they have no moving parts, but apparantly that's not true and in some cases, a spinning drive could outlast an SSD.

[Simon Hall 0]

Based on Google's study, it's best to replace hard drives once they reach their 3rd birthday.

A Google study also revealed that "drives less than 6 months old show a decidedly higher probability of failure when put into a high activity environment".

 

The one consistant factor I have found to be true: hard drive life is determined by data throughput. So if you were to compare the life expectancy of the same hard drive in two different scenarios: camera system writing 300 event sequences a day, or a camera system writing 3000 sequences a day - the drives would last longer in the site recording fewer sequences. Why? high writing means increased mechanical wear.

[Simon Hall 0]

And one other thing to consider is that heat will reduce any hard drive's life expectancy. In a lot of the cheaper NAS units, they're not engineered to provide proper air flow, which runs the drives hot.

 

It's interesting because a Google study (EDIT: into hard disk failure), also found "Failures do not increase when the average temperature increases. In fact, there is a clear trend showing that lower temperatures are associated with higher failure rates. Only at very high temperatures is there a slight reversal of this trend,"

 

But I agree with you, I have found increase in heat (generally caused by lack of ventilation) creates performance issues and failure rates.

 

My earlier post was not about HDD alone, it was just one example I was giving. It's about going for best quality. I have found over the years that Enterprise drives do perform better, and dont really cost a lot more, but of course its up to the installer. However, there are other factors to consider, CPU, OS etc. Better quality NAS use higher class CPU (e.g. Intel Atom Dual Core), this is important when using RAID. Because most NAS are based on software RAID, the consistency of the write performance is determined by how well the CPU can manage the RAID component. Differing levels of RAID required more or less CPU power.

 

Either way MOBOTIX offers loads of options in terms of storage. More than any other camera manufacturer. This means you can use lower cost NAS - but it should only be used where it suits the application. My aim in my posts here is to help installers be aware of the potential issues and think about aligning the right storage device with the system requirements.

 

I get a lot email through on a weekly basis with storage questions, and those that are having recording issues have in most cases under-specified the storage device, either through lack of capacity or write speed. For example: one retailer had setup up 7 x cameras to record at 12 frames per second in 3.1 megapixel to a $290 D-Link NAS, which caused recording problems simply because the device couldn't handle the write throughput.

[akelley 0]

Simon, I completely agree with everything you wrote above, especially that the HDD is just one part of the whole NAS/RAID solution. And I will say, after watching your videos and reading MxInstaller, to me your message is clear - I think you do a great job explaining the whole storage situation and its importance in putting just as much analysis into the proper architecture as you would with camera placement, lenses, MP, etc. for your client's particular needs.

 

Buellewinkle, yes, SSDs definitely have a life expectancy based on write cycles. The cost/performance ratio for advocating SSDs as mass storage is a high bar. Unless your particular application requires really large amounts of data with high throughput, the cost of SSDs as mass storage is hard to justify. I have one client (not for surveillance, US government research - can't say which) that uses SSDs in their SAN - but they generate TBs of data per second which needs to be captured and stored (think high energy physics experiments). The SSDs in those arrays are swapped out on a regular basis before they have a chance to fail. Of course, they have a multi-million $$ budget.

[Simon Hall 0]

As a final note - another important storage device consideration apart from what has already been mentioned, is - will the NAS autoboot after a temporary power outage and reconnect to the network? I am amazed at how many installers opt for a cheap NAS to cut cost, but also do not include some sort back up power supply (UPS) for that very same reason. Their logic? "what are the chances of that actually happening?"

 

I'm constantly hearing of cases where someone has installed a NAS device that does not have the auto-boot feature, and worse, has not been connected to a UPS. One day it's found turned off and of course not recording due to a 10-second power outage that had occurred sometime weeks earlier. The discovery is usually made by the end user who is wanting to search for an incident but finds they can't.

 

Due diligence is key. If the customer is bothering to pay someone to install a recording device for surveillance purposes, are they really benefitting by going with a $200 storage device? Have they been made fully aware of the potential downsides by going cheap?

 

If the customer values highly, 24/7 recording uptime, if it's something that is of absolute importance to their site, then they will see the viability of buying a quality storage solution. This approach assists the end user and protects the installer.

[buellwinkle 0]

When you compare this to common NVR solutions costing thousands, most do so without RAID at all. So not sure if the requirement is that common if common commercial NVR products do not include it. Maybe it's more of the thinking of someone coming from an IT background. Sure, I can understand a casino having 24/7 surveillence, storing their video maybe on a NetApp NAS, but probably not for small businesses. Also consider that with Mobotix, you can have each camera or small groups of cameras on different NAS devices, thereby lowering that risk that you'll lose everything because one NAS dies byt by distributing the camera amoung several cheaper NAS devices, you could move a camera to another NAS while the defective NAS is being repaired or replaced.

 

There sure is a difference between how the government prints and spends money than the commercial world.

[Simon Hall 0]

When you compare this to common NVR solutions costing thousands, most do so without RAID at all. So not sure if the requirement is that common if common commercial NVR products do not include it. Maybe it's more of the thinking of someone coming from an IT background.

 

Yes JBOD has been common practice with traditional DVR system, but it's kind of ironic when you consider that the storage component of those security systems is not secure. Anyway, times have changed. Cost is simply no longer an excuse not to install a RAID device. In fact a quality NAS with key features such as RAID, Auto-Restart on power failure, Intel CPUs and 24/7 HDD can easily fit into even very small budgets. It seems many installers are simply not aware of the available options and assume thousands of dollars have to be spent to get quality storage or conversely somehow seem convinced that a $200 NAS is good enough - which is simply not the case for most surveillance systems. I will be covering these details in a NAS report as a guide to installers as to storage options. This will published in the April 2012 edition of MxInstaller magazine.

[buellwinkle 0]

Would you go with something low end like Netgear ReadyNAS or Drobo 4 bay and run Raid 5 as 3+1 in that $400-800 price point instead or is that not good enough?

[Simon Hall 0]

Would you go with something low end like Netgear ReadyNAS or Drobo 4 bay and run Raid 5 as 3+1 in that $400-800 price point instead or is that not good enough?

If you want to know what defines a quality storage device then check out this tutorial on YouTube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7O9ypphv504

 

A product that is "good enough" is defined by two things:

a). the needs of the application (no. of cameras x recording x storage etc)

b) AND the expectations of the customer

 

Storage selection should be based on the above two factors first, not price.

 

I am in communication with installers from around the world on a daily basis, and I have found that those who win business consistently don't achieve this by being the cheapest. They align the right technology to the needs of the site. They consult with the customer first.

 

While every customer has a budget, they should be presented with options with expected outcomes explained for each. Remember you are the expert who has been called in to help them. With this in mind, the installer should never assume they are doing the customer a favor by specifying cheap storage. If the customer insists on going with the cheapest, then they should be informed of the consequences. This is important. The customer will not thank you later if you saved them $300 on their storage, but data is lost because there was insufficient storage or power redundancy.

 

An installer should always ask when talking about storage needs - "How much are the video recordings worth to you? Can you afford to lose recordings?" I have yet to meet an end user that is happy with the higher probability of losing recorded sequences, by going cheap. Remember, customers dont deal with security everyday, so they have to be reminded as to why they are installing a security system, and what the most important factors within that decision are.

 

In regards to which product is good enough...consider this scenario:

a) needs of the application are...

• 12 cameras recording at 6fps on event @ 1.3 megapixel resolution

• recording activity low

• storage - 14 days

 

b) expectations of the customer

• the client has made it absolutely clear that recording footage can never be missed or lost.

I would be offering options, but would highly recommend they go with a NAS and UPS back up and configured to RAID 10, rather than RAID 5. Then explain to the customer how that is aligned with their expectations.

 

Here's another scenario:

a) needs of the application are...

• 12 cameras recording at 12fps on event @ 1.3 megapixel resolution

• recording activity very high

• storage - 30 days

 

b) expectations of the customer

• the client has agreed that a maximum downtime of recording is allowable (e.g. 3 hours, 1 day).

Then I would be presenting options, but recommending a NAS that will cater to the higher write speed, so Intel Dual Core and configured to RAID 5. Then explain to the customer how that solution is aligned with their expectations.

 

A good installer is always consultative during the pre-sales visit, they find out what is most important to the customer in regards to capturing and recording, and then presents options.

 

BTW dont think cheap storage can be a potential problem for the end user only - they are often a constant source of problems for installers and I'm not just talking about write speed or redundancy - there's also NTP issues, power supply failure, board fatigue...seriously it's just not worth it!