System build for CCTV server with 30+TB storage

E

esmu

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We have 24 network cameras (1-5 megapixels each) in our facility and are in need of approximately 30 to 50 TB of storage to store the footage.

Our current server is starting to fail so we want to build a new machine that can run the Windows based recording software and house the hard drives.

Here is what we had in mind:
Case: Rosewill RSV-L4500 4U Rackmount Server Case, 15 Internal Bays $100
PSU: EVGA SuperNOVA 850 G2 220-G2-0850-XR 850W $120
MB: Gigabyte GA-G41MT-S2PT LGA 775 Micro ATX $75
Proc: Refurb E8500 LGA 775 $65 (use included fan)
RAM: 2GB
System HD: 2pc of WD40EZRX 4TB at $140 each (RAID 0)
Data HD: 12pc of WD40EZRX 4TB at $140 each (RAID 6)
Spare HD: 1pc of WD40EZRX 4TB at $140 each
Cables: Sata power Y-splitters

QUESTIONS:
We are having a hard time figuring out what Raid Controller to use as we really don't understand all the different specs listed for these cards. Obviously we need something that can support 15 4TB drives and RAID 6, but I dont think we need anything too powerful. Any suggestions what model number we should look at? We prefer LSI or Adaptec.

Will these hard drives be able to sustain continuous writing? I suppose even if they cant, the low cost of these drives might be worth the tradeoff.

Any other advice regarding the configuration?

Thank you for any help.
E.
 
I personally would just buy a Dell/HP/IBM 1u server to run the OS and then a Drobo/Synology/Whatever 12Bay Rackmount iSCSI NAS.

If you custom build it, and something fails and you lose 90+ days worth of video, things are going to look bad on you. If you go the OEM route with a 3 or 5 year warranty; at the very least you can say you did your due diligence and went with industry trusted vendors, the blame would then not be on you.
 
An OEM system would certainly be nice, but we would be looking at double the cost or more. I don't know that the data is that valuable. We can live with the potential of failure to keep the costs down.
 
esmu said:
An OEM system would certainly be nice, but we would be looking at double the cost or more. I don't know that the data is that valuable. We can live with the potential of failure to keep the costs down.
Click to expand...

In that case I would at least look at a Whitebox server like SuperMicro, just add drives and memory.

You would get real server class components at much cheaper than OEM prices.
 
In my view better option is buying dedicated surveillance server system from a specialized company like here. These servers are robust, and have many specialized functions ready. Do not know what is the price now but I bought directly a 16 analog/16 digital server a couple of years ago and it was quite cheap. Installed 8x2TB hard discs an it runs for years without single problem.
 
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I would strongly recommend AGAINST buying that case. Imagine the following scenario. You have 15 HDDs in there. One dies. You need to replace it. With a proper server case, you pull out the drive with the red blinking led, put in the new one, and begin the rebuild. Done. With that case, you schedule downtime, reschedule the downtime because a user complained, turn off the server, open up the case, disconnect a half-dozen drives or more, pull out the faulty drive, replace the drive, reassemble the case, fire it up, realize that you plugged the drives in the wrong order, rewire it, rewire it again, rewire it a third time, finally get the old array detected, boot into the OS, realize that you replaced the wrong drive, go loco, light the server on fire, and start screaming obscenities at anyone in range.

Save your sanity. Save your job. Get a real case. I'm a Supermicro nut, so I'd recommend something like the 836 chassis. 16x hot swapable bays, redundant power supplies, quality construction, and proper cooling. Hard drives get freaking hot under constant use. Your average desktop fan won't cut it. You need high static pressure and massive airflow. It's 3x the cost of your case+PSU combo, but it's worth every penny in sanity if you ever have to actually work on that server.
 
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Thank you for all the input. The most cost effective rackmount 12 bay units I could find were the Synology RS2414+ ($1850) and the RS3614xs ($3000). The second is iSCSI, I guess the first is not. How important is iSCSI for surveillance recording/storage?
 
esmu said:
Thank you for all the input. The most cost effective rackmount 12 bay units I could find were the Synology RS2414+ ($1850) and the RS3614xs ($3000). The second is iSCSI, I guess the first is not. How important is iSCSI for surveillance recording/storage?
Click to expand...

In your case for a surveillance system, its not really needed. As long as your surveillance software support UNC paths or Mapped drives.
 
esmu said:
Thank you for all the input. The most cost effective rackmount 12 bay units I could find were the Synology RS2414+ ($1850) and the RS3614xs ($3000). The second is iSCSI, I guess the first is not. How important is iSCSI for surveillance recording/storage?
Click to expand...
The RS2414+ is an excellent system, placed halfway between an big-box OEM solution (Dell, HP, etc) and a whitebox. Depending on your speed requirements, it may suit you well. For fun, I built a 12 bay whitebox solution for you. Note that you'd still need an OS and configuration would be entirely on you for this setup:

Case: Supermicro 826 - $630
Motherboard: Supermicro X10SL7-F - $250
CPU: Intel E3-1220v3 - $200
RAM: Kingston 4GB DDR3 Unbuffered ECC - $45
Controller: Built into motherboard, LSI 2308 (8x SAS2) + 4x SATA (with another 2x SATA if you need)
PSU: Dual redundant PSUs included in case
Total: $1125 + shipping + drives

The LSI 2308 on the motherboard can actually support a heck of a lot more drives than that if your backplane has an expander (like the SC826BE16-R920WB). Just be sure to buy a fanout cable if you do something like that. I selected the "cheap" 826 because it'll save you several hundred bucks. I was running 24 drives off just four of the onboard SAS2 ports with that same combo. Note that this'll be a bit loud. You'll definitely want to stick it in the server room, and not in your office. It's about on par with a vacuum cleaner.

On the iSCSI front, I seriously doubt it's needed. iSCSI allows the OS to pretend that a remotely attached disk is connected directly to the box instead of sitting in a server somewhere else. It's generally used for installing an OS to. Most applications don't care if the disk is native or remote. They just need a place to dump their data.
 
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TeeJayHoward said:
The RS2414+ is an excellent system, placed halfway between an big-box OEM solution (Dell, HP, etc) and a whitebox. Depending on your speed requirements, it may suit you well. For fun, I built a 12 bay whitebox solution for you. Note that you'd still need an OS and configuration would be entirely on you for this setup:

Case: Supermicro 826 - $630
Motherboard: Supermicro X10SL7-F - $250
CPU: Intel E3-1220v3 - $200
RAM: Kingston 4GB DDR3 Unbuffered ECC - $45
Controller: Built into motherboard, LSI 2308 (8x SAS2) + 4x SATA (with another 2x SATA if you need)
PSU: Dual redundant PSUs included in case
Total: $1125 + shipping + drives

The LSI 2308 on the motherboard can actually support a heck of a lot more drives than that if your backplane has an expander (like the SC826BE16-R920WB). Just be sure to buy a fanout cable if you do something like that. I selected the "cheap" 826 because it'll save you several hundred bucks. I was running 24 drives off just four of the onboard SAS2 ports with that same combo. Note that this'll be a bit loud. You'll definitely want to stick it in the server room, and not in your office. It's about on par with a vacuum cleaner.

On the iSCSI front, I seriously doubt it's needed. iSCSI allows the OS to pretend that a remotely attached disk is connected directly to the box instead of sitting in a server somewhere else. It's generally used for installing an OS to. Most applications don't care if the disk is native or remote. They just need a place to dump their data.
Click to expand...


This solution looks great. Will that server case work with the WD40EZRX 4TB drives out of the box or do I need some kind of special tray to hold them (or will they not work at all)?
 
esmu said:
This solution looks great. Will that server case work with the WD40EZRX 4TB drives out of the box or do I need some kind of special tray to hold them (or will they not work at all)?
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It comes with the trays. You'll need to screw the drives in to the trays, but that shouldn't take more than a half hour or so. I'm not familiar with the WD40EZRX drives, but I don't forsee any problems. The controllers on that mobo support >2TB drives and 512/4096 native sector drives without any issues (that I've seen).

Please note that only 12 drives are supported in that chassis. If you need more, I can recommend a different chassis. Also, I'm a HUGE fan of using backplane expanders. I'd highly recommend the more expensive chassis and an 8087 fanout (or was it reverse fanout?) cable. It puts all the drives on one controller, which frees up the other ports.

...Also, the power cable from the PSU to the motherboard may be a little tight, but it should fit. Just don't expect to have any slack.

...Oh, and you'll probably need a couple SATA cables. I can't recall how many came with my motherboard.

edit: Are you looking at doing software or hardware RAID? For software, nothing further is needed. For hardware, I'd probably recommend a cheaper motherboard and a controller card. The 2308 doesn't support RAID6. You'd be looking at another $800-1000 for hardware RAID6.
 
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TeeJayHoward said:
It comes with the trays. You'll need to screw the drives in to the trays, but that shouldn't take more than a half hour or so. I'm not familiar with the WD40EZRX drives, but I don't forsee any problems. The controllers on that mobo support >2TB drives and 512/4096 native sector drives without any issues (that I've seen).

Please note that only 12 drives are supported in that chassis. If you need more, I can recommend a different chassis. Also, I'm a HUGE fan of using backplane expanders. I'd highly recommend the more expensive chassis and an 8087 fanout (or was it reverse fanout?) cable. It puts all the drives on one controller, which allows you to use RAID6 on the controller instead of requiring software raid. I'm reading through the manual right to to verify that you can do RAID6 on the 8 drives you'd have connected to the 2308.

...Also, the power cable from the PSU to the motherboard may be a little tight, but it should fit. Just don't expect to have any slack.

...Oh, and you'll probably need a couple SATA cables. I can't recall how many came with my motherboard.

edit: Are you looking at doing software or hardware RAID? For software, nothing further is needed. For hardware, I'd probably recommend a cheaper motherboard and a controller card. The 2308 doesn't support RAID6.
Click to expand...


We wanted to do hardware RAID 6
 
esmu said:
We wanted to do hardware RAID 6
Click to expand...
Okay, for hardware RAID6, I'd change a few things. The cheapest route would be to get a 826 with an expander backplane ($950) instead of the 826 without one, and a cheap SFF-8087 controller like the 9260-4i ($310). It's a bit of an older card (2-3 gens behind) but it's still rock solid. Total cost = +$630

The alternative is to buy a big-ass controller card like the LSI00208 ($755) and four fanout cables ($15 x4=$60). Total cost = +$815

Either way, because you don't need the 2308 on the motherboard, you could get a cheaper motherboard like the X10SLL-F. It's only $170 instead of $250, so it saves ya $80.
 
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Hey esmu, not sure if you have considered the 6tb WD Reds, but I have a synology 1512+ that I am looking to sell as I migrated from that to a dedicated server. The Synology's have a SHR-2 (or two disk redundancy mode) which would get you about 20tb with 5 6tb drives. From what I can tell it has the same processor as the RS2412+ ( Intel Atom D2700), and a similar feature set minus the total number of drive bays and 2gigabit Ethernet vs 4. PM me if you are interested.
 
rhansen5_99 said:
Hey esmu, not sure if you have considered the 6tb WD Reds, but I have a synology 1512+ that I am looking to sell as I migrated from that to a dedicated server. The Synology's have a SHR-2 (or two disk redundancy mode) which would get you about 20tb with 5 6tb drives. From what I can tell it has the same processor as the RS2412+ ( Intel Atom D2700), and a similar feature set minus the total number of drive bays and 2gigabit Ethernet vs 4. PM me if you are interested.
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Thank you for the offer but we need the 12 bays, and the form factor of the RS24 will be better for our rack...
 
Rock on you should be happy with the unit, just make sure to update to the latest dsm when you get it to avoid the nasty Linux vulnerability. An additional feature you might consider is the ssd cache drives for the unit, but it really depends on how much traffic your camera's really generate.
 
I was just getting ready to pull the trigger on the Synology RS2414+ and a Dell R220 server and was told by my server vendor to be careful, that I may not be satisfied with the performance of the NAS over a gigabit network. Will this be fast enough to write 24 IP megapixel cameras to?
 
esmu said:
I was just getting ready to pull the trigger on the Synology RS2414+ and a Dell R220 server and was told by my server vendor to be careful, that I may not be satisfied with the performance of the NAS over a gigabit network. Will this be fast enough to write 24 IP megapixel cameras to?
Click to expand...

Changed my entire post:
1 megapixel @ 10fps is about 1.25MB/s for MJPEG, or 250KB/s for h.264. (Depending on compression settings. More for higher quality, obviously!)
24 1-megapixel cameras would use 30MB/s (MJPEG) or 6MB/s (h.264)

You can probably multiply that by 5 for your 5MP cameras.

The RS2414+ supports LACP and has 4x 1Gbps NICs. Theoretically, it can support 480MB/s through the network. Realistically, that's closer to 400MB/s. Unfortunately, the hardware only supports about 200MB/s writing to the disk. As long as your total bandwidth is under 200MB/s, you should be good to go.
 
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