NVR build

Posted by Vivid_Mongoose_8964@reddit | sysadmin | View on Reddit | 13 comments

hey all. need to brainstorm here. We have lots of sites with lots of cameras. Typically I've been using Synology iscsi NASs DS920+ but lately they're locking up and not very reliable. I need about 15TB's of storage. Our Exacavision NVR can use local or iscsi storage for video and I've been thinking about maybe moving to a local solution. Perhaps a large desktop with raid5 that will give me the storage I need. Has anyone else done something similar and happy with the outcome before I go down this rabbit hole. Money is not an issue, reliability is. My first thought was some older dell servers, but I really don't wanna go for a bunch of pizza boxes, they're just really big in a small IT closets.  Thoughts?

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13 Comments

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datec@reddit

That's not a model I would run iSCSI on at all... That's a pretty low level model... It would work for a home user looking to back up their pics/videos but not NVR storage for more than maybe 4-5 cameras. Synology makes a pretty good appliance, especially for camera systems, but you need to spec them appropriately. You haven't said how many cameras at each site. No one can give you any help without more information.

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Vivid_Mongoose_8964@reddit (OP)

honestly, the resource usage on the device is pretty low. theres about 15 cameras at this one site im messing with at the moment. the cpu on the nas runs around 10%, memory 10%, network traffic is around 9mb/s on the write. honestly, its not taxed whatsoever. the problem seems to be in their iscsi software stack from what i can tell. i'm looking at terrastation d5-300 at the moment as it'll do usb straight to the nvr with raid5 and i can just move my drivers from the snyology over to that.

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datec@reddit

You're doing iSCSI over a gigabit connection. Max you could ever get over gigabit is 125MB/s reads/writes and that's just because of the network. If you're using RAID5 and HDDs you're probably not going to get over 50MB/s writes.

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Vivid_Mongoose_8964@reddit (OP)

as mentioned i'm only pushing down 9mb/s to the nas

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datec@reddit

Synology's iSCSI is not the problem.

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210Matt@reddit

RAID5 sucks for writes, so I wouldn't use it. If all you need it 15tb, why not get 2 20tb drives in a raid1? Or if you need more IO go 4 10tb drives in RAID10.

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Vivid_Mongoose_8964@reddit (OP)

not a bad idea. got an external enclosure you can reccommend?

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StefanMcL-Pulseway2@reddit

Seem like you want set up with high reliability and high capacity storage so with this in mind the Raid 5 is definitley a good option for a workstation, you might want to have some enterprise-grade hard drives that are made for 24/7 operation and consider using a hardware Raid controller. For servers definitley look for servers that are designed for good storage but have a smaller footprint. Brands like HPE, Dell, and Lenovo. And if budget isnt a concern you might consider a HCI. Also if the the workload is high in terms of read/write operations, consider using SSDs for faster data processing and reduced latency. Lastly I would also consider using a cloud storage solution for better redundancy and maybe looking for a company that specializes in building custom storage solutions.

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Vivid_Mongoose_8964@reddit (OP)

I have some older netgear readynas that have been running for years perfectly, but they stopped making them. these synology's are crap. i'm looking at qnap and buffalo. i'd prefer to stick with something external where i can swap drives easily in the event of failure. just need iscsi or usb

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StefanMcL-Pulseway2@reddit

Qnap and Buffalo are good options if you want to keep it external, Qnap has a good range of high performance NAS, I would look for models that support RAID configurations for redundancy, like RAID 5 or RAID 6. Qnap devices also usually come with good ram and strong processors out of familiarity on my part I would lean toward QNAP

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Vivid_Mongoose_8964@reddit (OP)

i found this. raid5 and usb, thoughts? buffalo did not have good reviews at all when googling around. i'm going to look into qnap as well. [https://www.terra-master.com/us/products/homesoho-das/d5-300.html](https://www.terra-master.com/us/products/homesoho-das/d5-300.html)

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StefanMcL-Pulseway2@reddit

That doesn't seem too bad of an option, its pretty flexibility and has a 2 year warranty too.

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pdp10@reddit

Look at the number of cameras and the actual bandwidth of their output stream. Higher resolution cameras are more demanding, even if the actual optical/video quality isn't as high as the resolution suggests, which is why scaled IP surveillance tends to use higher-quality cameras with modest resolution.