Small Business CCTV Linux Server Build

[G33kman]

So I work for a small company as the IT guy and we have an old HP Proliant ML350 G6 and I have been trying to find a use for it since it still runs fine so I have been looking into getting some ip cameras and setting the server up with linux and installing ZoneMinder. I have a pretty decent understanding of what I will all need but I need to know if I'm missing anything.

Here's what I know I'll need so far. Any help would be greatly appreciated!

 

Here's the specs for the server:

Intel Xeon E5506 @ 2.13GHz

6GB DDR3 @ 1333MHz

150GB SATA setup in Hard Raid 1 (will be upgrading the storage capacity)

 

Server (with ubuntu server installed and ZoneMinder setup)

x amount of ip cameras

Gigabit Switch

 

I'm just starting to plan this and am just looking for some insight on what other people may have done. My tech knowledge is definitely above par but I wouldn't say I'm an expert in this department.

Thanks again!

Ryan

Edited December 9, 2015 by G33kman
Didn't need the video capture card

[Techie2000]

One thing to consider is power - are you going to power each camera locally or via a PoE switch?

Also if you have VLANs configured I would recommend creating a separate VLAN for CCTV traffic (if you haven't already) just to segment the traffic.

[jamesreedersmith]

Have you looked at the ubiquiti cameras and software?

[G33kman]

@Techie2000 - I was hoping to run 4 of the 8 over PoE. As of right now I'm just going to keep this network separated from the rest of the network I just want them running to the server that I am going to use.

@jamesreedersmith - I have not but I definitely will check into it. Thanks! - I checked the site out it looks like some pretty nice equipment but the price seems higher than we're looking to invest. We're mainly going to use this setup to watch over some of the equipment in our shop and also to see when crews leave and get back to the shop. So we're trying to keep the cost low.

Edited December 9, 2015 by G33kman
Added thoughts about the ubiquiti cameras

[dhicks]

We use Ubiquiti's cameras and software. The software was certainly easy enough to install and set up, but we're finding the playback facility a bit limiting - all recordings get split in to 10 minute chunks, and locating a particular event at a particular time can be rather long winded. There's no double / quadrupel speed fast-forward through a video file, and trying to export a bunch of video all in one go to sift through in an external editor causes the export operation to crash. We also found the record-on-motion option to be impractical (we have a very busy school, there's motion most of the time during the day where the cameras are located). The video quality is very good though - you can actually identify faces from the footage.

 

In your setup above, do you plan a larger storage array for the footage itself? We have 8 2TB drives in RAID 6, so around 12TB in total, which is letting us keep (I think, must check usage) 3 months or so of footage (old footage is automatically removed). Are you planning to use hardware RAID or Linux's software RAID?

[G33kman]

We use Ubiquiti's cameras and software. The software was certainly easy enough to install and set up, but we're finding the playback facility a bit limiting - all recordings get split in to 10 minute chunks, and locating a particular event at a particular time can be rather long winded. There's no double / quadrupel speed fast-forward through a video file, and trying to export a bunch of video all in one go to sift through in an external editor causes the export operation to crash. We also found the record-on-motion option to be impractical (we have a very busy school, there's motion most of the time during the day where the cameras are located). The video quality is very good though - you can actually identify faces from the footage.

 

In your setup above, do you plan a larger storage array for the footage itself? We have 8 2TB drives in RAID 6, so around 12TB in total, which is letting us keep (I think, must check usage) 3 months or so of footage (old footage is automatically removed). Are you planning to use hardware RAID or Linux's software RAID?

 

Thanks for the review on the Ubiquiti's cameras and software!

As far as storage goes I was planning on using the hardware raid that's already in the server and I want to keep at least a weeks worth of footage on hand. Storage isn't too expensive so I'm thinking we should be able to go longer than that.

[dhicks]

As far as storage goes I was planning on using the hardware raid that's already in the server and I want to keep at least a weeks worth of footage on hand. Storage isn't too expensive so I'm thinking we should be able to go longer than that.

 

Good plan. Just so you know, we are using 2TB WD Caviar 7200rpm "green" drives for our CCTV storage array - when new they were sold as affordable "large capacity" drives, if a bit slower performance-wise. However, we've found performance to be absolutly fine - we have 10 CCTV cameras managing to write to an 8-disk array of these drives 24 hours a day with no disk performance problems. Reliability has been good, too - I think we've swapped two drives out in the last 3 years or so.