What GPU for Blue Iris on VM

[alitech]

I am planning on running BI on a VM within Unraid. I plan to run Plex on a docker and BI on a VM but as I cant share the GPU between VM and Docker, I need to get a dedicated GPU just for BI for the windows VM.

Can someone please let me know what sort of card I can get away with? I just need something that will run about 8 cameras mostly in 4K. I dont want to hammer the CPU as I am using most of it in Unraid and a couple of dockers.

THere are 2 PCI slots on my mobo, one of them will be used for an Nvidia Quadro p2000 card and the other one, I want to use for BI.

If anyone has any experience with this that would be great. ALso I have space for a shorter PCI slot..here is a pic of the mobo

[HeneryH]

Can you get a card to dedicate to the host OS and then use the onboard GPU for the Win/BI VM?

I was noodling over this since BI tends to run really well with the intel quick sync on onboard GPU and less well on add-on cards.

[alitech]

Yes, I was pondering that.

The CPU in question is Xeon D1541. The onboard GPU is not that powerful, in fact I cant seem to find any specifications on the Intel HD graphics of this CPU.

I feel the CPU is going to be hammered by BI. What are your thoughts?

[Matts1984]

So just in regards to the CPU, I think you might actually be ok... depending on how much of those resources will go to your BI VM. You're using a newer Xeon than I am, though our setups are a bit different. My gut says you would be ok if you're able to do some optimizations in BI (run at default and max everything you will def be at 100% though!).

I'm currently running VMWare ESXi on a server with Dual Xeon E5520s (I literally just bought some upgarded CPUs off ebay that are sitting on my desk though). By using the free version of ESXi I am limited to providing 8 cores to a single VM... which I've done and BI uses very little memory so thats not a major concern. I have 4 cameras currently registering a total of about 220 MP/s. By taking advantage of Direct-to-Disk recording, ensuring my camera Key-frames are set correctly, and using 'Limit decoding unless required'... I run at 10% CPU normally, and it jumps to around 25-30% when viewing a stream. I know there can be drawbacks to the 'Limit decoding' but I found that last week and love it. I have found no change with the alerting and it has made my CPU run much more smoothly when a human is not watching them. Yes it effectively drops them to 1fps (note the recordings using direct-to-disk are still at normal) but the intelligence still works with that low of a level. If I actually want to watch the feed, it picks up instantly to what I need.

All that to say, I have older CPUs and they do not support Quick Sync (most Xeons don't) and I'm very happy with my installation. It doesn't mean I won't stop tweaking but BI gives a lot of flexibility. FWIW, I am upgrading to dual Xeon X5650's. They will give my VMWare host more cores (still artificially limited to 8 on my BI VM) but I'll have a slightly better clock rate. Looking forward to getting them swapped out.

[alitech]

So just in regards to the CPU, I think you might actually be ok... depending on how much of those resources will go to your BI VM. You're using a newer Xeon than I am, though our setups are a bit different. My gut says you would be ok if you're able to do some optimizations in BI (run at default and max everything you will def be at 100% though!).

I'm currently running VMWare ESXi on a server with Dual Xeon E5520s (I literally just bought some upgarded CPUs off ebay that are sitting on my desk though). By using the free version of ESXi I am limited to providing 8 cores to a single VM... which I've done and BI uses very little memory so thats not a major concern. I have 4 cameras currently registering a total of about 150 MP/s. By taking advantage of Direct-to-Disk recording, ensuring my camera Key-frames are set correctly, and using 'Limit decoding unless required'... I run at 10% CPU normally, and it jumps to around 25-30% when viewing a stream. I know there can be drawbacks to the 'Limit decoding' but I found that last week and love it. I have found no change with the alerting and it has made my CPU run much more smoothly when a human is not watching them. Yes it effectively drops them to 1fps (note the recordings using direct-to-disk are still at normal) but the intelligence still works with that low of a level. If I actually want to watch the feed, it picks up instantly to what I need.

All that to say, I have older CPUs and they do not support Quick Sync (most Xeons don't) and I'm very happy with my installation. It doesn't mean I won't stop tweaking but BI gives a lot of flexibility. FWIW, I am upgrading to dual Xeon X5650's. They will give my VMWare host more cores (still artificially limited to 8 on my BI VM) but I'll have a slightly better clock rate. Looking forward to getting them swapped out.

Thank you for your reply. Much appreciated.

I will give windows VM a go in unraid to see if the XEON Cpu that I have will cut it. Yes, it doesnt have quicksync. I also need to do a lot of customisation on BI. I beleive I can cut out a lot of processing if I use ONVIF triggers instead of motion detection in BI. There doesnt seem to be a comprehensive guide on how to do all the optimisation in BI anywhere. I am on the latest version.

Let me pain a better picture,

I currently have a number of PCs running doing a multitude of things. I need to consolidate as I am using 1.2Kwh at least 24/7. This is costing me a bucket load.

Current setup:

pfSense box:
i5-6400T
GIgabyte z270n Wifi with 2 intel nics
8GB Ram
128GB SSD

The pfSense box is fine, nothing to change there.

Main rig:
Asus x570 gaming F
Ryzen 3950x
64GB RAM
2TB Rocket
10GB SFP+
Watercooling

Currently my main rig is running Blue Iris with 8 4K Ip cameras and the Plex server. Plex picks up the content from the Unraid box. Also have backblaze, Google photo sync, Megadrive and Amazon photos running on this rig. I also use this for video editing and my main PC for everything else.

Unraid box:
SuperMicro MBD-X10SDV-TLN4F-O
XEON D 1541
32GB Non-ecc DDR4
1TB NVME
10 HDDS
Node 804 case

The unraid box is just doing Unraid at this time, without any dockers or VMs.

Download box:
i5 something
Cheap mobo
8GB DDR3
128GB SSD

The download box could be migrated to a VM.

---

I want to offload most of the heavy lifting to the main rig to the Unraid box and I am trying to figure out how to that efficiently and ensure there is enough juice in the box to handle everything

I want to move the following:
Blue Iris on a WIndows VM (blue iris is quite hungry and works best with Intel CPUs with h264 and h265 decoding)
Plex server in a docker with about 20TB of content.. needs to transcode about 5 to 6 heavy streams.
Backblaze for the whole system
The download box in a ubuntu VM with a dedicated network port (1GB is fine)