System reqs for 40x security video streams?

[etherealfocus]

My company just bought a new office and I'm working on a PC for the security system and public video displays. We've got 40 of these cams going in: https://pro.sony.com/bbsc/ssr/micro-government/cat-securitycameras/product-SNCDH110T/W/

The machine will also be running 2x 1080p video streams to public displays.

Our vendor recommended an Optiplex 9020 with i7 4770 and R7 270 video but quoted us a completely uncompetitive price for it - I specced out an i7 6700K + R7 370 with 16GB RAM and 250GB M.2 SSD and it came out $600 cheaper.

Questions:

-What would you guys consider an optimal video card for this? I'm not sure why our vendor quoted an R7 but I'd imagine a GTX 950/960 or a FirePro would be a much better option than an old Radeon. Overkill? If I go FirePro, is there any value in getting a 4GB card like the W5100 or am I fine with a 2GB card like the W4100?

-Wondering if I wouldn't be better off with a 5820K/5930K. Overkill?

Thanks for the help!

 

[Ken g6]

40 720p(?) streams is a lot! I'm not very familiar with security recording, but I see a couple of things you don't need.

A FirePro is designed for 3D rendering with specific applications; it's worse than most consumer video cards for video display. You could probably get away with onboard graphics for video display, but a cheap discrete card, like a 750 at most, might help save memory bandwidth. Unless you're displaying complex graphics on top of the video streams or something?

An M.2 SSD is usually more expensive than a regular SSD, and shouldn't provide any benefit. Where are you storing the videos?

If you're considering a 5820, I wonder whether two i5 systems would be a better value? And then you'd have a backup if one fails.

 

[XavierMace]

Make sure you consider the bandwidth requirements of this as well. 720p/30 using H.264, you're looking upwards of 200mbps constant for this setup. That's a substantial amount of bandwidth. I had a client tank their network because they replaced all the camera at a remote office with 1080p models without telling us and configuring them to stream back to the server at the main office. They were trying to shove 40mbps of data over a 5mbps connection.

Regarding the PC pricing from the vendor, keep in mind the vendor likely included a service agreement in their pricing. Most people don't factor that in when they try to price it out themselves. Back when I worked for a major vendor, 3yr 24x7 4hr service was placed by default on all server quotes unless the client specifically specified otherwise.

 

[Gunbuster]

Are you on gigabit Ethernet? You'll be bottle-necked by 100meg... Heck you might even be pushing gig E with 40 streams in, and 2 1080p streams out plus overhead...

 

[Homerboy]

40 cameras? you outsource this to the professionals.
You're biting off more than you can (should) chew.

 

[etherealfocus]

1. So would a FirePro W4100 actually be worse than the R7 270 the vendor quoted us? Should I just go with an R7 370 instead? I switched the build to a 5820K and broke even due to price inflation on the 6700K, so no integrated video option.

2. Yes, 40x 720p streams. That camera supports both H264 and MPEG. Obviously we'd lean toward 264.

3. Yes, we have GigE. The public displays will be over HDMI, not over the network so that'll help a bit. The cameras are on their own dedicated PoE switch which is linked directly to the video machine.

4. We are outsourcing the cameras and the storage NAS to professionals. Just doing the video streaming machine ourselves because they're overcharging for off the shelf hardware and we wanted a little more breathing room performance-wise. Their service agreement is basically the same as a standard Dell warranty, so not much value there.

5. I chose M.2 because it was only $10 extra, it reduces cabling, and improves standardization - we use a ton of NUCs so M.2 SSDs are our standard storage. The performance improvement is just icing on the cake.

 

[Ranulf]

Yes, take the 370 over the firepro.

 

[etherealfocus]

Looks like the 370 I was looking at only supports 3 screens and requires an active adapter for the third one. Any suggestions for a similar card that doesn't require active adapters, or is that pretty universal?

 

[redzo]

What is purpose of that dGPU?

Will you be doing video encoding?

I'm asking just because you do not seem to be needing 3d power at all. While it may end up slower, a gtx 950 supports natively 4 monitors and nvidia dGPUs are known for their slightly lower power consumption in multi-monitor setups compared to AMD.

https://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/Gigabyte/GTX_950_Xtreme_Gaming/28.html

 

[Charlie98]

I kind of agree... split the video up between 2 machines.

What are your storage requirements? i.e.: how many days do you need in archive?

 

[yinan]

I agree storage will be your main problem. You will fill up that puny drive in no time at all. Probably a couple hours. You will really need a separate storage subsystem for this. You could probably run the capture devices as VMs as well, so that if one system goes down you can easily fail over to another.

 

[etherealfocus]

The vendor is supplying a NAS for storage, no worries there. And no, no video encoding. This machine is purely to display video; not to store it.

I'm going AMD only because it's closer to what the vendor spec'd out and I haven't been able to get in touch with them to confirm no problems using nVidia. If I manage to get in contact that'll change.

 

[yinan]

If it is only displaying video, then you can use whatever. There really isnt anything intense going on. But you want to stick with their recommendations so that when something goes wrong you can blame them instead of them telling you, its your fault.

 

[Charlie98]

I'm going AMD only because it's closer to what the vendor spec'd out and I haven't been able to get in touch with them to confirm no problems using nVidia. If I manage to get in contact that'll change.

I think at this point I'd try to find another vendor. Imagine if you let them build your display system... and then you needed some support? I understand you want to save money by building it yourself, but it couldn't hurt to get a second opinion. I've installed a few prebuild video recording systems, unless I'm missing something I don't think you are even going to need a CPU that big... not if it's just passing through.

 

[etherealfocus]

40 720p H264 streams isn't intense?

Honest question - that seems like a pretty heavy workload to me.

And agreed, the biggest thing here is CYA. There are lots of vendors who like to punish people for not paying their hardware tax and they'll take any excuse they can get. I don't think this security company will turn out that way but you never know.

 

[etherealfocus]

Charlie - comms problem is on our end, not theirs. The guy who contracted them hasn't gotten me their phone number or even the vendor name yet. It's kind of an ongoing facepalm at the moment... we won't order anything until it's resolved.

 

[yinan]

40 720p H264 streams isn't intense?

Honest question - that seems like a pretty heavy workload to me.

And agreed, the biggest thing here is CYA. There are lots of vendors who like to punish people for not paying their hardware tax and they'll take any excuse they can get. I don't think this security company will turn out that way but you never know.

No it is not. He will be limited by his network connection which will be probably 1gb. None of this is 3d or heavy graphics work. It is just 40 Windows media player windows. He we be getting about 3MB/sec for each stream so I honestly do not know how he will display them at full bandwidth.

 

[etherealfocus]

I don't think we're doing 30fps. 15-20 more likely. Also, the cameras use motion sensing so likely all 40 won't be streaming at once most of the time (some are in fire escapes and such, back parking lot, etc). I don't have details on our system yet unfortunately but it looks like most camera systems also support automatically degrading stream quality and/or fps when bandwidth limited. Not ideal of course but better than dropping streams. Remember this is just for display - and the cameras themselves have SD cards to buffer writes.

According to the bandwidth calculator at http://www.stardot.com/bandwidth-and-storage-calculator we're definitely pushing the limits of GBe but should be ok as long as we stick to 15-20 fps.

Agreed that splitting this into two systems would make a lot of sense for bandwidth and fallback reasons, but for whatever reason that's not the way the boss wants to go.

I did a little informal load testing just now on the laptop in my sig - opened a bunch of WMC windows playing 720p streams and my laptop bogs down at around 10-12 windows. Granted it's got nowhere near the performance of even a Haswell i7, but it would seem to indicate some significant demand being placed on the system. Maybe that's overhead from a bunch of separate WMC instances rather than a single player tiling a bunch of feeds?

 

[Gunbuster]

So let me get this straight, The cameras are recording direct to a NAS, but you are also pointing the desktop to the NAS and playing the recordings streams back from there for real-time monitoring? Effectively doubling the NAS workload?

I didn't know the software can work like that. The 4 cameras we keep up on a big screen record to one PC for archival but also stream direct to the PC running our TV.

 

[etherealfocus]

Good question. I could guess but I don't know. I can say that the vendor is handling everything except the physical acquisition of this machine so I assume they have a plan for it. Until I can get them on the phone, I'm in the dark beyond that.

 

[Charlie98]

40 720p H264 streams isn't intense?

Honest question - that seems like a pretty heavy workload to me.

Not really... it's just passing video through. It's not writing it, it's not doing anything with it. The 8-channel system I just installed has some lame-o imbedded chip in it, and that's handling writing and streaming at the same time.