Virtualize Surveillance System...

[wdsonny]

I have been using Virtual Machines for a few months and now I want to try and Virtualize 15 DVR's at my work. Can anyone here talk tech on how to get the VM's to recognize the capture card and replicate the BNC backplane for the camera connections. Basically, I want to have one master VM server with 14x clients all VM workstations but use the existing hardware but "virtually". This way, if a DVR "dies", I can just reload the VM for that machine. I have 15x Intellex Ultra16 DVR with anywhere from 1TB to 4TB. Come on you techie guys.

[ExtremeX]

It's possible.... I have a couple software based NVR applications running as guests in ESXi server.

If you need the capture cards to have direct connect to a guest VM you new to use VT-d and setup direct I/O for the cards...

I do this for my NIC cards for I/O reasons for the NVR...

Another thing to take into consideration is the storage side... Do you have a SAN or something that will keep up with that load? What storage solution ate you using?

[wdsonny]

Currently each DVR has it's own storage array. This is probably more trouble than it's worth. I have to keep up to 30 days of video.

[ExtremeX]

You need to look hard at system requirements before making a change like this... There is a point where systems are large enough to require dedicated systems...

I'm my case I already have an existing VMWare vSphere system in place... Adding a few software NVRs was the cheapest and cost effective solution.

[wdsonny]

Yeah, my "setup" is all analog cameras, converted to POe then back to analog then into the "DVR". Each DVR has the capability to handle 16x cameras, but we only put about 12x on each. The BNC backplane and the VCard are the biggest problems at the moment. The rest of the process is easy. I can make a NAS device out of a spare machine with enough storage. Just those blasted BNC connectors.