There are multiple options to choose from when designing an integrated computer vision (CV) and video management system (VMS) for a large environment. Most implementations include products from multiple vendors and then require a significant integration project effort before operations can begin. Dell Technologies together with three market-leading VMS and CV vendors have designed an integrated solution running on a Dell Validated Design for AI platform that is easy to operate and easy to grow. This document describes how we designed and tested our integrated solution on a common platform and presents some preliminary sizing guidelines that can jump-start an environment-specific design tailored to the needs of a large site.
This Design Guide describes how to implement virtualized instances of Genetec Security Center for video management together with CV applications from both BriefCam and Ipsotek. All three applications were implemented following guidance from the vendors on how to take advantage of native high availability (HA) features and scale-out performance that would be critical in an enterprise-class solution.
We chose the VxRail HCI system with VMware virtualization plus Nvidia A40 server-class GPUs with vGPU compatibility for the Dell Validated Design for AI platform. The VxRail systems and VMware virtualization are design components that are already familiar to many IT and OT (operational technology) professionals. These components also provide additional features for managing high availability and scale-out needs that can complement the native features of the CV and VMS applications.
All products were installed on a single VxRail 5-node cluster for full system integration testing. Storage for the video management archive was provided by Dell PowerScale scale-out NAS storage. All video streams used for testing were provided by camera simulation software reading from prerecorded local video files in a continuous loop. We tested a maximum of 675 simulated camera streams being archived to the VMS together with each CV application performing real-time analytics on 75 camera streams each. We also found that a single VM with one Nvidia A40 GPU could process real-time analytics from 30 camera streams reliably.
We found that the VxRail with VMware provided a reliable and scalable Dell Validated Design for AI platform for hosting VMS and CV applications from different vendors.