AXIS Camera Station version 3.50

Hardware recommendations: 1-20 cameras | 20-50 cameras | 50-100 cameras
Storage recommendations | Database best practices

Hardware recommendations for systems with up to 20 cameras

Server PC:

Operating system: Window XP Professional, Windows Vista Business, Windows 2003 Server, Windows 2008 Server, Windows 2008 Server R2, Windows 7 Professional or higher (32/64bit)
CPU: Intel dual core, 2 GHz
RAM: 1 GB
100 Mbit network adapter
NTFS formatted hard drives
Microsoft .NET runtime environment
(included in AXIS Camera Station installation package)

Client PC:

Operating system: Windows XP Professional, Windows Vista Business, Windows 7 Professional or higher (32/64bit)
CPU: Intel dual core, 2 GHz
RAM: 1 GB
NTFS formatted hard drives
Graphics card with full DirectX 9.0 hardware acceleration and onboard video memory of 256 MB or more
Professional monitor with resolution 1024x768 or higher
Microsoft .NET runtime environment
(included in AXIS Camera Station installation package)

Important! Use latest graphics card driver. Integrated graphics cards on motherboard with shared memory are not supported. Always use latest service pack from Microsoft.

Hardware recommendations for systems with 20 to 50 cameras

Server PC:

Operating system: Windows XP Professional, Windows Vista Business,
Windows 2003 Server, Windows 2008 Server, Windows 2008 Server R2, Windows 7 Professional or higher (32/64bit)
CPU: Intel Xeon, dual core, 2 GHz
RAM: 4 GB
100 Mbit network adapter
NTFS formatted hard drives
Microsoft .NET runtime environment
(included in AXIS Camera Station installation package)

Client PC:

Operating system: Windows XP Professional, Windows Vista Business, Windows 7 Professional or higher (32/64bit)
CPU: Intel Core i7, 2 GHz
RAM: 4 GB
Professional monitor with resolution 1024x768 or higher
Graphics card with full DirectX 9.0 hardware acceleration and onboard video memory of 256 MB or more
Microsoft .NET runtime environment
(included in AXIS Camera Station installation package)

Important! Use latest graphics card driver. Integrated graphics cards on motherboard with shared memory are not supported. Always use the latest service pack from Microsoft.

Hardware recommendations for systems with 50 to 100 cameras

Server PC:

Operating system: Windows 2003 Server 64bit, Windows 2008 Server 64bit,
Windows 2008 Server R2 64bit
CPU: Intel Xeon, quad core, 2 GHz
RAM: 8 GB
Multiple Gbit network adaptors
6 x 10000 rpm hard drives with NTFS files system
Microsoft .NET runtime environment
(included in AXIS Camera Station installation package)

For extra performance, install the operating system and AXIS Camera Station on a SSD.
We recommend using the Native Command Queuing (NCQ).

NCQ is a technology designed to increase performance of SATA hard disks under certain conditions by allowing the individual hard disk to internally optimize the order in which received read and write commands are executed. This can reduce the amount of unnecessary drive head movement, resulting in increased performance for workloads where multiple simultaneous read/write requests are outstanding, most often occurring in server-type applications. NCQ is activated by enabling AHCI in the BIOS.
Note: You need to activate AHCI in the BIOS before installing the operating system.

Client PC:

Operating system: Windows XP Professional, Vista Business, Windows 7 Professional or higher 64bit
CPU: Intel Core i7
RAM: 8 GB
Screen resolution: 1024 x 768
Graphics card with full DirectX 9.0 hardware acceleration and onboard video memory of 1 GB or more
Microsoft .NET runtime environment
(included in AXIS Camera Station installation package)

Important! Use the latest graphics card driver. Integrated graphics cards on motherboard with shared memory are not supported. Always use the latest service pack from Microsoft.

Storage recommendations

For best performance and stability, use local hard drives or a high
performance NAS for storage.
All hard drives, local or NAS, must be NTFS formatted.
The hard drive where Windows and the AXIS Camera Station are installed should have enough disk space for the AXIS Camera Station log files and backup of the database. Allow at least 10 GB free disk space for the log files and database. Note that this can vary depending on how many days of database backups you keep (by default 14 days). Databases can become very large if you have too many events.
It is highly recommended that you maintain at least 20% free space on the operating system drive.
The recordings should be saved on a different disk than that for the operating system disk, to avoid fragmentation and maintain general system stability.
If you use MPEG-4/H.264, recorded data from up to 15 cameras can be stored on each hard drive, since a smaller amount of data is streamed. Using MJPEG, 8 to 10 cameras is the recommendation.
It is recommend that you configure the AXIS Camera Station so there is always at least 10-20% free space on the recording hard drives. Software-based RAID systems should not be used; such a solution could result in performance bottlenecks.
AXIS Design Tool can be used to estimate the storage space required for the recordings.

Database best practices

Hard drive errors: Check periodically for errors in the AXIS Camera Station installation hard drive, run scandisk or a similar process to check for damaged sectors on the hard drive where the database is located. Errors in the disk can cause database corruption. In some cases, virus scanners can corrupt a database. Is recommended that you exclude the database from scans and other modifications such external backups. You can run your external backup in the AXIS Camera Station backup folder.
Power failure: Unexpected shutdowns can also cause database corruption. Using a UPS is recommended in critical installations.
Out of space: If the hard drive with the database runs out of space, this might also lead to corruption.
Corrupted RAM memory: Make periodic checks of the integrity of your RAM memory. Use Windows memory diagnostics tool to scan your memory for errors.