Introduction:
For large enterprises, it may make sense to use custom-configured server hardware to host the 3VR VisionPoint systems. While we do not intend this guide to replace or override the recommendations of IT professionals, we can offer some general guide lines of best practices for managing storage that will give our customers the best possible experience with our software solutions. Note that this document will make extensive reference to different types of RAID (Redundant Array of Inexpensive Disks) configurations and partitions. For a quick background primer on RAID, we recommend this short article on Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Standard_RAID_levels. For a quick background primer on disk partitioning we also recommend Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Disk_partitioning.
Minimum Recommended Storage:
The bare minimum HDD storage configuration should be 4 enterprise class HDD's. In this scenario, the 4 drives should be divided into 2 independent RAID 1 pairs. The first RAID 1 pair can be small enough to hold just the Windows operating system along with at least 50% additional free space. The second RAID 1 pair should be as large as possible to hold both the video information and the database file. Please see the table below:
| Role | Disk Drives | Configuration | Settings | Partition(s) |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Boot Volume | 2 Enterprise Class HDD's any RPM/Cache | RAID 1 (Mirror) | n/a | Recommend single partition with NTFS or ReFS to hold Windows Operating System |
| Video/DB Volume(s) | 2 Enterprise Class HDD's, 7200 RPM/256MB Cache | RAID 1 (Mirror) | n/a | Recommend single partition for both video and database |
Ideal Storage:
In the ideal scenario, there are separate RAID arrays for the boot volume, video application volume and the SQL storage volume. Again, only enterprise class HDD's should be considered. This scenario presumes that the database will be stored locally instead of a dedicated Database Server. If you are using an external Database Server, you can disregard the Database Volume row.
| Role | Disk Drives | Configuration | Settings | Partition(s) |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Boot Volume | 2 Enterprise Class HDD's any RPM/Cache | RAID 1 (Mirror) | n/a | Recommend single partition with NTFS or ReFS to hold Windows Operating System |
| Video Volume | 2 Enterprise Class HDD's any RPM/Cache | RAID 1 or RAID 5 | If RAID 5, default stripe block size | Recommend single partition |
Database Volume | 2 Enterprise Class HDD's, 7200 RPM/256MB Cache | RAID 1 or RAID 10 | if RAID 10, consider minimal stripe block sizes to improve IOPS | Recommend single partition |
RAID Settings:
It is beyond the scope of this document to try and illustrate every possible hardware/software RAID configuration. Instead the settings from the 3VR VMS appliance will be used merely to provide an example. The current 3VR appliances use the Intel Rapid Storage Technology to manage RAID configurations.
Volume Settings:
Once the RAID volumes have been created and a file system created on a RAID volume, there is one last setting which can dramatically improve performance on the volume: the file system write buffer flushing.