Virtual server questions

[sethlocks 0]

 

Hello,

I have a client who would like to run an exacq start system with 15 cameras on a virtual machine. Customer's IT department is on board, and they will provide virtual machine and have ample resources. They want to virtualize Exacq Start, not run Exacq virtual, as the IT department does not want any Linux systems to manage.

 

Have any of you done this for a medium sized business? Any headaches you have experienced that you would like to share?

 

[buellwinkle 0]

Doesn't sound like a real IT department if they prefer Windows over Linux. I don't see a problem, just connect to the VM like any other PC. Are they going to put other VM's on the same physical server?

[sethlocks 0]

 

I have set up integration demos on virtual machines for many of my access control customers, so the install will be pretty straightforward.

Client will have a couple VMs on physical machine, but has promised to allocate adequate resources.

Customers IT department is windows certified, and proud of it. I don't even want to rock that boat by trying to convince them on Linux.

Main issue is the client reads the specs for the proposed server and says, "I have all of that available, can we just install software?"

Exacq kinda supports virtualization, but not this configuration.

I will have to ensure a nightly data dump for backup, but I cannot think of any major downsides which canot be quickly addressed.

 

[buellwinkle 0]

 

The only issue I can see on a shared server is the network. 15 HD cameras can chew up a good bit of bandwidth and if they start putting other network intensive loads on the server it could be a problem. I know about Windows people, drove me nuts when I was given responsibility of SQL Server as a DBA manager, 600 Windows database servers, it's like non-Microsoft products makes them cry.

 

You can test it home, download the free VMware Player (name is a misnomer, it's actually VMware server) - https://my.vmware.com/web/vmware/free#desktop_end_user_computing/vmware_player/6_0

 

And create a VM on your PC and install the software and see what happens.

 

[thewireguys 3]

I have been running https://www.virtualbox.org/ for testing and I find it to work very well.

[MR2 0]

 

we have Virtualized both our Milestone Pro installs...

 

I think that Microsoft Hyper V is superior to VM Ware which is why I chose it, not sure why network would be much of an issue, and my experiance with Hyper V, as long as it's a clean install the software does not notice any issues..

 

on the topic of shared resources, Milestone that we use does not really leave any spare resources so sharing was not really an issue, but I agree that sharing it with anything that's also intensive would not really be a crash hot idea (seeing as VMS smash pretty much every part of the system)

 

the reason we Virtualized our security installs honestly, was for ease of moving between hardware, I'm well sick of re-installing due to a hardware upgrade.

 

[ssmith10pn 0]

 

I don't see where the software would even know it's on a virtual box.

 

I have Plenty of Avigilon in here.

 

 

 

[Razer_SE 0]

 

Thats hot.

 

 

 

I have 71 Exacq servers but they are all in 71 locations and managed here. I'd love to see them all in one location in a rack just to actually see what all I've built lol!

 

[Brenning 0]

For bandwidth issues you could always try a network team on the server (assuming the switch supports it). We usually Team 3 nics to load balance based on packet destination which also provides fault tolerance when teamed across more than 1 switch. Ideally for 15 HD cameras you would want a seperate network and switch to run them through to avoid saturating your data network. You could go quite in-depth with this conversation.

 

To all those out there who judge IT professionals based on if they prefer linux, you have to appreciate that people specialise in different areas. I specialise in Windows Server for example but I am aware linux is very good at specific roles, we just dont offer it out as we dont specialise in that area and our small business customers have never expressed any interest in linux / windows server is normally easily up to the job

[MR2 0]

For bandwidth issues you could always try a network team on the server (assuming the switch supports it). We usually Team 3 nics to load balance based on packet destination which also provides fault tolerance when teamed across more than 1 switch. Ideally for 15 HD cameras you would want a seperate network and switch to run them through to avoid saturating your data network. You could go quite in-depth with this conversation.

 

To all those out there who judge IT professionals based on if they prefer linux, you have to appreciate that people specialise in different areas. I specialise in Windows Server for example but I am aware linux is very good at specific roles, we just dont offer it out as we dont specialise in that area and our small business customers have never expressed any interest in linux / windows server is normally easily up to the job

 

that depends on how your getting the streams, we have 18x 3mp streams at max quality settings and we're only using 28% download of a gigabit connection, for sure you can bond other links, I can't see network being that much of an issue really...

 

General recommendations for Visualization include storing your VHD's on a separate HDD to the Host system, having a separate network card for the Guest OS's... but you can't really go wrong.

[sethlocks 0]

Thank you all for the responses. I agree that the software wont know it is running in a virtual box.

 

I am going to have to meet with the client regarding the VHD and network issues brought up. Thank you for that. I can set up my own small networks, but I like to leave the advanced networking to the professionals.

[ssmith10pn 0]

I have a hospital with 2 VM servers and 10 Avigilon servers. About 400 cameras.

All running on the hospital switch fabric with a seperate Vlan but not blocked because all the clients are on different Vlans.

 

Never had a network related problem in 3 years.