I'm considering getting a "High-End Virtualization Server 12-Core 128GB RAM 12TB RAID Dell PowerEdge R710" for use as a Blue Iris server (on a 24-32 camera system).

Does anyone here have any experience and/or thoughts on whether this would be a good fit?

Specifications:

System: Dell PowerEdge R710 6B LFF Server
Processors: 2x 2.80GHz X5660 12-Cores Total
Memory: 16x8GB(128GB)RAM
Hard Drives: 6x 2TB 7.2K SATA 3.5" HDD
RAID: H700 w/ 512MB, iDRAC6
Optical Drive: DVD-ROM
Power Supplies: 2x 870W PSU
Bezel: Yes
Rails: Yes
Operating System: None

Any feedback you might have would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks,

- Forrest

I'm testing a BI5 setup with 5ea 2MP cameras right now on a Dell T420 running ProxMox 6.0-4 What type of cameras are you looking to use? 2MP? 4MP?

I have my VM set up with 24GB memory and the processor at 4 sockets w/4 cores running W10 Pro. The VM doesn't need this much memory or processor with this arrangement, I'll probably bring it down. Processor is showing 25-30% when I'm reviewing clips and memory around 10-15% as things sit. What platform hypervisor are you looking at? I think the machine you are looking at has the horsepower to run your cameras if they are 2MP, 4MP is probably pushing it. For what it's worth I have direct to disk recording turned on for all cameras and frame rates limited to 10FPS. I've seen some "rules of thumb" type posts for processor power vs. total megapixel of camera for BI but can't seem to find that now (on the other board).

My server is running four other Linux VM's. I have the BI/W10 VM using two dedicated NIC's, one to isolate the cameras from the internet and the other for my local network where I use the UI3 interface to monitor the system. Proxmox was really easy to configure for this. I have very little experience with virtualization and this has been really simple so far. I've had the machine up & running without a hiccup for almost a month. I need to sort out a good path forward for video storage (larger drives purpose built for surveillance i.e. WD purples or similar). The biggest issue with an approach like this is in general the server hardware is going to use a lot more power than a dedicated i7 or i5 bare metal box doing the same workload. My server is using 100-120 watts all day long in my use case, depending on where you are that can be pretty expensive. I've also built out similar bare metal BI setups that use way less power with 4th - 7th gen processors that match or exceed the performance of this VM using a fraction of the servers power draw (down into 30 watts or less +/-)

I'm curious to hear about your results if you go down this path. Sorry I don't have a good comparison because I'm only running five cameras. I may add four more over the next few months but they will also likely be 2MP cameras.

This T420 is setup like this:

Dual Xeon E5-2430 @ 2.20Ghz (six cores each)
64GB DDR3 1600
iDRAC 7 Enterprise
PERC H710p RAID controller
6ea 600GB 15k SAS HD's
Redundant 750W power supplies

-Ben

That is a 10 year old CPU.

You should really look at its benchmark scores against a modern Intel CPU.

Too many people are fooled into thinking these high end decade old processors are a good value.

@benak

Thanks for the reply. In my case, I'll probably be running 24 cameras. 4k / h.265 / 15fps 24x7. I'm thinking of using Ubuntu host, with VirtualBox as the virtualization software with Win10 in a VM and probably 16 TB (4 x 4TB WD Purple) drives.

@HenryH

Thanks - I understand that the processors are old tech - I just wasn't sure if BI is more memory-intensive or CPU-intensive (sounds more like the latter from what I've been reading).