Sizing Help
I am considering making some upgrades to my residential security set up. Currently, I have an analog NVR (Wirepath) with some analog cameras. It's all integrated into Control4 and the NVR is very reliable. I also have two Axis PoE cameras in the garage, a 1054 and 1034, running on iCamPro. I currently have an ancient Mac Mini (early 2009) running OS X Server supporting the two Axis cameras. Data is stored to a 24TB Snology NAS running in RAID 5.
However, the camera quality is lacking on the analog side. And night vision is rather poor. So I've picked up a Hikvision camera as a POC (http://overseas.hikvision.com/us/Products_accessries_10533_i7698.html). The ultimate goal would be to upgrade all four of my analog camears to the Hikvision item noted above, get rid of the Wirepath NVR and invest in SecuritySpy.
So... I realize I'll have to upgrade my infrastructure. The whole house is wired with cat 6 and everything is gigabit switched now, so I am not all that concerned about overloading the network with 3MP cameras; and of course I could dial down the resolution should that be a issue.
My bigger question is the Mac mini. Can I get away with 8/16 gig of RAM and the 2.6GHZ i5 mini and I'd throw in an SSD, or do I need to go with the i7? Realize all are dual core and Apple got away from the quad cores. I'd like to run all 6 (two Axis and four Hikvision) all on the new mini. The mini also would serve as a VPN server, file share, etc as it does today...
What I don't want to get into is buying a new server and it's not able to handle the load. I realize there is a modeling tool here, but I'd like some real world feedback.
Thanks!
However, the camera quality is lacking on the analog side. And night vision is rather poor. So I've picked up a Hikvision camera as a POC (http://overseas.hikvision.com/us/Products_accessries_10533_i7698.html). The ultimate goal would be to upgrade all four of my analog camears to the Hikvision item noted above, get rid of the Wirepath NVR and invest in SecuritySpy.
So... I realize I'll have to upgrade my infrastructure. The whole house is wired with cat 6 and everything is gigabit switched now, so I am not all that concerned about overloading the network with 3MP cameras; and of course I could dial down the resolution should that be a issue.
My bigger question is the Mac mini. Can I get away with 8/16 gig of RAM and the 2.6GHZ i5 mini and I'd throw in an SSD, or do I need to go with the i7? Realize all are dual core and Apple got away from the quad cores. I'd like to run all 6 (two Axis and four Hikvision) all on the new mini. The mini also would serve as a VPN server, file share, etc as it does today...
What I don't want to get into is buying a new server and it's not able to handle the load. I realize there is a modeling tool here, but I'd like some real world feedback.
Thanks!
Comments
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Hi - it sounds like you've already found the System Requirements Calculator - this gives a good idea of what kind of Mac is required for a particular system.
Your Mac mini is still a capable machine, and you will be able to build an effective video surveillance system using it and the 4 Hikvision + 2 Axis cameras. You may need to dial down the frame rates of the cameras somewhat to fit within the mini's capabilities - probably to around 5fps, which is still a decent rate for general-purpose video surveillance.
While reducing the resolution of the cameras also reduces the processing requirements on the Mac, I wouldn't recommend it, as you will lose important detail in the pictures. For this reason it's generally much better to reduce the frame rate, rather than the resolution, in order to reduce the load on the server.
SecuritySpy won't benefit very much from the installation of an SSD, however the Mac's other functions (especially file sharing) will, so this is probably a good idea.
The biggest factor in how well a server performs is the number of processor cores, so if you do decide to upgrade your Mac, see if you get a previous-generation 4-core model, rather than one of the current 2-core lineup, which are significantly less powerful.
Hope this helps. -
Thank you. This helps.
