Idea about mass storage - Using a NAS?

area651

area651

Getting comfortable
Aug 18, 2018
470
410
San Antonio/McAllen Texas
I've been using BI for about a year. The computer where it runs only has a 500gb C: drive and then a 1TB D; drive in it. I know I "could" just buy a replacement 6TB D: drive for that machine but the thing is, I have a NAS with probably 14tb of available space on it. For the past year, what I did was set my "Stored" location to be a shared folder on the NAS. When "New" hit its size limit, it would move a file over to "Stored" (which was on the NAS) and from there, I'd just occasionally go in and delete out a month or two to get some space back if I remembered. If I forgot, not a big deal as I had plenty of space. The problem with doing it this way was that often I would start looking at the previous night's vids ("new" stored locally on the BI machine) and during review, a move to the NAS would start (of files a couple days back) and the whole system would start to crawl. I would have to wait until that move completed and then I could continue.

How should I solve this if I wanted to use the big storage NAS that I have extra? I see there's a "Queue for backup" option I guess where you can specify the time that it happens.
Would this be the plan: (remember I have only a 1tb local D: drive for BI. My OS is on a 500gb C: drive)
Under Blue Iris Settings>Clips and Archiving,
1. Set "new" with a size limit of 600gb and then have it move it to "stored"
2. Then set the size limit to "stored" to be about 400gb and have it nightly FTP to the NAS and delete what's left behind.


Any ideas on how you'd do it other than buying a new local drive? I guess I could do that but it seems I have a lot of free space on the network I could use instead.
 
Moving files from new to stored is a waste of processor and disk time. Just set new onto your NAS and set an appropriate size that you want to devote to video sotrage. Do not use time, days, for deletion. Let BI handle it based on size only.
 
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sebastiantombs said:
Moving files from new to stored is a waste of processor and disk time. Just set new onto your NAS and set an appropriate size that you want to devote to video sotrage. Do not use time, days, for deletion. Let BI handle it based on size only.
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really? I thought it was majorly encouraged to use only local storage for new. (maybe I misunderstood or I'm not remembering correctly)
 
Local is preferred, but if you want to use the NAS, effectively, do that. A number of people have posted saying they do that. I wouldn't, but that's me and my choice. It would be better than moving files from a local drive to the NAS, IMHO.
 
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area651 said:
really? I thought it was majorly encouraged to use only local storage for new. (maybe I misunderstood or I'm not remembering correctly)
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You are probably thinking local SSD storage for the DB which is correct.

In one of my BI deployments I save everything to a NAS (really a Debian VM setup with Samba storage but essentially the same thing). In the other deployment its all local storage. Honestly, its best to buy the biggest case you can, and stuff the thing with the highest density HDD's you can. But saving to a NAS works fine.
 
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How many cams do you have, what resolution and bitrates and what is the NAS? Dependant on those answers you might find that you could potentially overload the NAS in terms of its write capabilities? Worth checking, my Buffalo NAS, even though it has 2 gigabit ports the things maxes out at just above 20MB write speed.
 
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IAmATeaf said:
How many cams do you have, what resolution and bitrates and what is the NAS? Dependant on those answers you might find that you could potentially overload the NAS in terms of its write capabilities? Worth checking, my Buffalo NAS, even though it has 2 gigabit ports the things maxes out at just above 20MB write speed.
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very good point. Here's my cams and bitrates. I have the 2 gigabit ports bonded on the NAS as well and I think it's holding up ok. I actually only have 1 nic on the BI desktop. I could I guess get another but it's not needed. If I happen across a free one then I guess...

I have noticed that if I get a lot of movement like movement in 2 cameras then sometimes the movement will stutter. Maybe that could be the overload you mention. Also I just started Continuous recording of every cam outside. So that could be contributing to it. I'll set backyard and patio to "triggered" and see if that helps.

Interesting....I've never noticed the "HA" column before. Any idea what that is? HA to me means "high availability" or I've seen some use it for "home Assistant". My BI version is 5.2.9.23 x64 if that helps.
Annotation 2020-07-13 125449.jpg
 
HA = Hardware acceleration...I = Intel, I+ = Intel Plus

I see you're not using the substream feature yet. I'm running about 12MbPS and 300 MPS with 12 cameras. I don't think you're NIC is choking, yet. Have a look in task manager and see what te total network utilization is. I'll bet it's well under 200MbPS.
 
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sebastiantombs said:
HA = Hardware acceleration...I = Intel, I+ = Intel Plus

I see you're not using the substream feature yet. I'm running about 12MbPS and 300 MPS with 12 cameras. I don't think you're NIC is choking, yet. Have a look in task manager and see what te total network utilization is. I'll bet it's well under 200MbPS.
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Interesting on the HW Acceleration. So should I go to each camera Camera_Settings>Video tab and set it as Intel or Intel+VPP for each one?

Yeah mines only around 66Mbps down. You mention 300 I see. What is that referring to? So those numbers are with substream. Maybe I don't have a good grasp as to what substream really is. I thought that you'd have TWO streams coming out of your camera, a main and a sub. The main would still get processed by the BI and the sub would be only to reduce the overhead when you're looking at the live view. I'm getting the impression that's not right though.


Capture.JPG
 
Since BI is already reporting hardware acceleration I'd say you have already set that, possibly as "default" and BI is picking what works best.

The 300 number is mega pixels per second. The 12 is mega bits per second. Both of those numbers are coming off of the "cameras" tab from the control panel of BI, itself.
 
I originally started out with a 8TB local HD for storage of vids. Migrated to a smaller footprint case (USFF) which forced me to use my Synology NAS. Hiccups and delays constantly with 14 cam's up around 8000 kB/s. Cat 6 cabling, Ubiquiti 48 port POE switch...but yet, that terrible delay for alert window population and live stream camera's disconnecting constantly (up to 30 seconds at times). Went back to local HD for everything with a new server case build. No issues.
Not sure what caused the delays and disconnected. Could be cause I didn't know how to optimize NAS setup for video surveillance purposes, or same for camera's/blue iris on one VLAN and NAS storage on another.
 
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sebastiantombs said:
Since BI is already reporting hardware acceleration I'd say you have already set that, possibly as "default" and BI is picking what works best.

The 300 number is mega pixels per second. The 12 is mega bits per second. Both of those numbers are coming off of the "cameras" tab from the control panel of BI, itself.
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Hmmm....my BI control panel Cameras tab looks like this. Maybe b/c I'm only on v5.2.9.23 x64?
Capture2.JPG
 
Hardware acceleration is set in the properties of each camera on the "video" tab down at the lower right.
 
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Here's a screen grab of the numbers I referenced -

BI_status.JPG

And resource monitor -

resource_monitor.JPG
 
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As long as you aren't crazy like Linus, then you should be fine :)

 
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