Dell EMC Storage with Bosch Video Management System (BVMS) Configuration Best Practices

Abstract

This guide is intended for internal Dell EMC personnel and qualified Dell EMC and Bosch partners. It provides configuration instructions for installing the Bosch VMS video management software using Dell EMC storage platforms.

Dell Technologies Solutions

Notes, Cautions, and Warnings

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Chapter 1: Introduction

Topics

• Purpose
• Scope
• Assumptions

Purpose

This configuration guide aims to help Dell EMC field personnel understand how to configure Dell EMC storage system offerings to simplify the implementation of Bosch VMS. This document is not a replacement for the Bosch implementation guide nor is it a replacement for the Dell EMC Storage with Bosch VMS: Sizing Guide.

Scope

This guide is intended for internal Dell EMC personnel and qualified Dell EMC and Bosch partners. It provides configuration instructions for installing the Bosch VMS video management software using Dell EMC storage platforms.

The following Dell EMC storage systems have been tested:

• Dell EMC PowerVault

This guide supplements the standard and provides configuration information specific to Bosch VMS.

Assumptions

This solution assumes that internal Dell EMC personnel and qualified Dell EMC partners are using this guide with an established architecture.

This guide assumes that the Dell EMC partners who intend to deploy this solution are:

• Associated with product implementation
• Bosch-certified to install Bosch VMS services

The configurations that are documented in this guide are based on tests that we conducted in the Dell EMC Safety & Security Lab using worst-case scenarios to establish a performance baseline. Lab results might differ from individual production implementations.

Chapter 2: Configuring the Dell EMC solution

Topics

• Design concepts and disclaimers
• Releases tested
• Dell EMC Safety & Security Lab test environment
• Dell EMC PowerVault ME4
• Multipathing and NIC failures
• Large LUN support
• Storage configuration with Bosch cameras

Design concepts and disclaimers

The Bosch VMS provides a seamless management of digital video, audio, and data across an IP network. It seamlessly combines Bosch IP cameras, encoders, video management, and recording systems so there is never a need for an operator to worry about where the video is coming from.

The following figure illustrates the Dell EMC components that were tested.

Releases tested

The following tables list the firmware builds and software releases used for our tests.

Dell EMC Safety & Security Lab test environment

The Dell EMC Safety & Security Lab is constantly being upgraded to the most recent software releases.

In order to test this solution, the Dell EMC Safety & Security Lab was configured as follows:

• The VMS components were built on VMware ESXi Hypervisor 6.7 U2
  • ESXi Host: Dell EMC PowerEdge R440
  • Processor: Intel(R) Xeon(R) Gold 6126 CPU
  • Datastore: RAID 6, local Datastore
• Bosch VMS: 9.0 server:
  • Guest OS: Windows server 2016 Standard
  • CPU: 8 vCPU
  • Memory: 16 GB
  • NIC: vmxnet3 (10 GbE)
• Bosch Operator Client:
  • Guest OS: Windows server 2016 Standard
  • CPU: 8 vCPU
  • Memory: 16 GB
  • NIC: vmxnet3 (10 GbE)
• Bosch Simulator:
  • Guest OS: Windows server 2016 Standard
  • CPU: 8 vCPU
  • Memory: 16 GB
  • NIC: vmxnet3 (10 GbE)
• Camera Streams:
  • Camera type: Bosch IP camera and Virtual IP camera
  • Codec: h.264
  • Bitrate: 2 Mb/s, 5 Mb/s, and 12 Mb/s
  • Frame rate: 25 FPS
  • Resolution: 1920 x 1080

The Dell EMC Safety & Security Lab's host hardware met and exceeded the minimum system requirements for an ESXi/ESX installation. The Bosch BVMS VM was running on an ESXi 6.5 host using Dell EMC PowerEdge servers. For more information about VM configuration, see the General recommendations for storage and sizing section of the Using EMC VNX storage with VMWare vSphere guide.

Dell EMC PowerVault ME4

The Dell EMC PowerVault ME4 Series SAN/DAS Storage Series is optimized to run a variety of mixed workload applications - physical and virtual - for small businesses.

Based on the family of Intel processors, Dell EMC PowerVault ME4 Series storage implements a block architecture with VMware virtualization integration and concurrent support for native iSCSI, Fibre Channel, and SAS protocols. Each system leverages dual storage processors (single storage processor systems are available) and a full 12Gb SAS back-end. Additional storage capacity is added via Disk Array Enclosures (DAEs) while Distributed RAID (ADAPT) delivers faster drive re-build times. And all ME4 Series arrays are managed by an integrated HTML5 web-based GUI.

Frame loss was observed during testing on the ME4 platform a tier 1 storage.

Dell EMC recommends using ME4 platforms for:

• Small implementations
• Archive storage as a second tier
• Installations that include noncritical cameras where some video frame loss is acceptable during storage recovery activities, such as disk rebuilds and controller outages that are required for maintenance upgrades or failures

Behavior can vary per video management software product and implementation decisions, such as selected infrastructure hardware, camera setup, and so forth.

The ME4012 was configured using disk groups with a 512k chunk size. Tests were conducted with a single storage controller and different disk group configurations as described below :

• 1 capacity tier disk group with 12 NL-SAS disks in ADAPT Linear
• 1 capacity tier disk group with 24 NL-SAS disks in ADAPT Linear
• 1 capacity tier disk group with 48 NL-SAS disks in ADAPT Linear

Multipathing and NIC failures

Bosch VMS did not support multipathing and controller redundancy with Dell storage platforms at the time of our testing.

The Bosch Video Recording Manager load balances the write throughput across all available storage. A NIC failure causes a target and the associated LUNs to be unavailable. No data loss is observed in case of a failed storage target, however the data on those LUNs is inaccessible until the network connectivity is restored.

Large LUN support

BVMS supports 2 TB LUNs by default, with 1024 MB block size and 2000 blocks. Large LUN support must be enabled on the VRM to use larger LUNs. Dell Technologies Safety and Security Lab recommends staying with the default block size of 1024 MB.

BVMS recommends the following maximum limits per Bosch Video Recording Manager instance:

• LUNs: 254
• LUN capacity: 64 TB
• Capacity: 2 PB
• Blocks: 2,000,000

Storage configuration with Bosch cameras

The storage device must be prepared before it can be used in a BVMS configuration.

Depending on the device, the necessary preparations are as follows:

• For native iSCSI storage devices, the iSCSI capabilities must be enabled.
• For storage devices that do not have native iSCSI capabilities, the device must be configured in a Windows Server environment. For more information, see BVMS - Configuring Microsoft iSCSI target.

Chapter 3: Conclusion

Topics

• Summary

Summary

The Dell Technologies Safety & Security Lab performed comprehensive testing with Bosch Video Management System against Dell EMC PowerVault series arrays. Depending on the implementation needs, you can use Dell EMC storage for Bosch Video Management System

The Bosch architecture and product suite allows extreme scaling, from a few cameras to up to tens of thousands of cameras, by using Dell EMC storage.

Dell EMC arrays

The use of storage pools to create LUNs within the Dell EMC arrays greatly simplifies the configuration and increases the performance when compared to traditional block-level storage. Either iSCSI or FC can be implemented. FC performs better than iSCSI.