Blue Iris in a VM.

E

EagleEye7

Getting the hang of it
Jul 29, 2024
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UK
Thinking of deploying a new BI machine, and wondering whether to run in a VM or not.

I have yet to get some hardware to run the system, but I thought that if BI was running in a Windows VM, I would be able to utilize any spare capacity on the server with other VM's, which could make the system more flexible.

However, I don't know if this is a good idea - If I did use the VM idea, it would probably run on Proxmox, and the BI VM would have a virtual OS disk (on an SSD on the host), and then the surveillance HDD passthrough-ed to the VM - also perhaps GPU passthrough, if the hardware has one.

I did install a quick Windows Server Eval copy in a tiny VM on a fairly low-spec Proxmox server, and tried installing the BI Eval. It did install, and I managed to add one camera to test - however, I did not spend any time optimizing this, and I have had a few issues - UI3 lagging / crashing, and the most concerning being the whole Proxmox host crashing when fiddling with Blue Iris (Using UI3 from another PC) - this has happened twice now, have to physically power cycle the Proxmox host to get everything online again. That may be totally unrelated to BI though, I don't know :idk:.

Anyway, overall, good idea or not?


EDIT: Not really relavent to my question, but I just found on the latest Proxmox 'crash', unplugging the NIC and then reconnecting brought Proxmox and the BI VM online again - no power cycle needed.
 
Really depends on how many cameras you have and what your expectationsare. I have 9 cameras running in a w11 vm running on a hyper v server and have no issues. It also does open up some additional options for things like snapshots/checkpoints depending which can be handy for backups/restores although my BI vm can't have checkpoints due to the size of the disks- I dont have enough overall disk space.
 
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Guess it's difficult to say without knowing what hardware I am likely to be using.

Hoping to support 16 cameras, ideally with a little headroom for some more in the future. Most in the 4-5 MP range.

Another thing is Windows Licensing. Generally when I get a PC, whether new or a used, older one, which is likely what I will be using for BI, it comes with a Windows license.

If I run in a VM, I suspect I will not be able to use the Windows license the hardware comes with, and may need an additional one?
 
Depending on the type of license you can move it from one pc to another, lots of instructions out there on how to move the key
 
EagleEye7 said:
Aren't they often OEM licenses, in which case they are tied to the hardware?
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They may or may not be. You'd have to read the eula of that manufacturer. There are ways to move the key still to another computer. Or for a small investment and peace of mind you can buy a key. Found some on ebay for under $15...
 
EagleEye7 said:
Thinking of deploying a new BI machine, and wondering whether to run in a VM or not.

I have yet to get some hardware to run the system, but I thought that if BI was running in a Windows VM, I would be able to utilize any spare capacity on the server with other VM's, which could make the system more flexible.

However, I don't know if this is a good idea - If I did use the VM idea, it would probably run on Proxmox, and the BI VM would have a virtual OS disk (on an SSD on the host), and then the surveillance HDD passthrough-ed to the VM - also perhaps GPU passthrough, if the hardware has one.

I did install a quick Windows Server Eval copy in a tiny VM on a fairly low-spec Proxmox server, and tried installing the BI Eval. It did install, and I managed to add one camera to test - however, I did not spend any time optimizing this, and I have had a few issues - UI3 lagging / crashing, and the most concerning being the whole Proxmox host crashing when fiddling with Blue Iris (Using UI3 from another PC) - this has happened twice now, have to physically power cycle the Proxmox host to get everything online again. That may be totally unrelated to BI though, I don't know :idk:.

Anyway, overall, good idea or not?


EDIT: Not really relavent to my question, but I just found on the latest Proxmox 'crash', unplugging the NIC and then reconnecting brought Proxmox and the BI VM online again - no power cycle needed.
Click to expand...
I ran BI on a vm on a VMware cluster for many years. Only 6 cameras, but I didn't use substreams at the time - 4 + years ago - lost it all in a wildfire :-(. I did IT for a bigger company and had access to licenses and some nice h/w they were throwing out so I built a 4 node cluster with vSAN storage running on 10Gb fiber. Loved that system. Long and short of it, had 0 problems running on a VM and I could migrate it from one server to another in the cluster during maintenance etc, all the bells and whistles.
 
Thanks all for the responses. Sounds like I might get away with it then.

bp2008 said:
Hardware accelerated decoding doesn't really matter anymore so the only reason to pass through a graphics card would be if you need it for something else, maybe AI analytics.
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OK. I am thinking of probably running CPAI, either on the same VM or a VM of its own, and thus if (big IF) my hardware has a discrete GPU, I would have thought it would be smart to pass it through for CPAI?

One other thing, is there a preference for Windows 11 over Windows 10 for BI? Not promoting the use of unsupported Operating Systems, but I will likely be firewalling (+VLAN) my BI server anyway, pretty much treating it like I would any old Dahua NVR, and disabling Windows Updates (because they can cause issues with BI, and why update the machine if it is running BI fine, and security patches are less significant if the machine is walled off, and not being used for everyday tasks).

So thus, for the sake of Hardware Compatibility, I can't see any reason not to use Windows 10 if needed, unless BI has strict OS requirements?

Finally, I have read that Xeon CPU's (especially older ones) are power-hungry and inefficient. Thoughts on this? I am not sure what hardware I have available to use yet, but Xeon based is likely one option...
 
OK. I am thinking of probably running CPAI, either on the same VM or a VM of its own, and thus if (big IF) my hardware has a discrete GPU, I would have thought it would be smart to pass it through for CPAI?
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Also, I believe if you passthrough a GPU to a VM, the video output of that GPU comes directly from the VM's OS, so it could be useful for viewing the BI local console on a physical monitor, without having to go through the Proxmox web UI, or RDP, which generally reduces the video quality / causes stuttering etc... Could be useful.
 
Blue Iris is pretty good about supporting older Windows, and will run fine on Windows 10 now and for the foreseeable future. I still have a 5.9.9.73 copy running on Windows 7.

CPAI certainly should be able to use the GPU if passed through to the VM that is running it, and yes, a side benefit of passing through a GPU to the Blue Iris machine is you can connect a local display to it and have good access to the local console that way (add a keyboard/mouse too or use software like Mouse Without Borders).

Whether all of that is worth the added cost of buying and running the GPU, only you can decide.

EagleEye7 said:
Finally, I have read that Xeon CPU's (especially older ones) are power-hungry and inefficient. Thoughts on this? I am not sure what hardware I have available to use yet, but Xeon based is likely one option...
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Xeon branding has been used since the late 90s so you need to research the CPU model and look at its performance (e.g. on cpubenchmark.net) to judge if it is worth running in 2025.

Also be aware that a lot of enterprise servers will have significantly higher noise levels and power consumption than a quiet workstation/desktop PC from the same era.
 
Whether all of that is worth the added cost of buying and running the GPU, only you can decide.
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Very true. If I was buying new hardware I would likely not buy a GPU for it unless absolutely needed. However, I am unlikely to be buying new, but rather using surplus which is available, which may well include some old PC's with GPU's.

Also be aware that a lot of enterprise servers will have significantly higher noise levels and power consumption than a quiet workstation/desktop PC from the same era.
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Of course. I am unlikely to use a true server machine, but one possible option is a fairly powerful (but old) workstation. The reason I am gravitating to a decent workstation machine rather than a SFF PC is simply disk space (physical space + SATA ports for Disks) - no doubt the CPU in a mid-range SFF PC would be adequate, but I don't want to run into limitations in the disks I can add...
 
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Xeon and power saving can't be used in the same sentence. With HD capacities what they are though a couple of 8 tb drives go a long way for video systems with only a few cameras so off SFF pcs can be a thing. But if you have to buy everything and you already have the server you'd have to calculate if the cost savings would ever pencil out over the expense to be worth the effort.
 
One option I have is a machine which I may be able to get for free, with a Xeon E5-1630 v3 - according to Intel, the TDP is 140w, so fairly high, but I'm not sure what the consumption would be under a moderate to low load.

The machine with this CPU has a massive amount of physical space for disks, and quite a few SATA ports, as well as 64GB RAM, and an (older) Nvidia GPU - so it could be a powerful option?

I will measure the actual power consumption of the machine tomorrow.

The other thing is that if I can consolidate a hardware NVR and a few physical machines into this one server (with VMs), I might not really be increasing the power consumption all too much...
 
Also not sure if the above mentioned CPU supports hardware video processing - although I wonder if this is really needed with ample raw CPU power and substreams...
 
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