AXIS Camera Station - Support: guidelines

AXIS Camera Station version 3

Hardware guidelines
The computer that AXIS Camera Station is installed on should be:
	dedicated mainly for running this application
	'clean' Windows installation with all the latest service packs and security upgrades installed
	designed for continuous 24/7 operation at high CPU and hard disk load
	located in an environment with sufficient cooling

Note: Standard desktop office computers/laptops are not recommended for 24/7 operation.

Minimum requirements
Hardware Client PC
	Windows Vista Business or higher, XP Professional, Windows 7 Professional or higher
	CPU: Intel Pentium 4 or higher, 2 GHz (Intel Core 2 Quad recommended for larger systems)
	RAM: 1 GB (4 GB recommended for larger systems)
	Screen: 1024 x 768
	Graphics card with full DirectX 9.0 hardware acceleration and onboard video memory of 256 MB or more. Important! Use latest graphics card driver. Integrated graphics cards on motherboard with shared memory are not supported.
	Microsoft .NET runtime environment (included in installation package)

Hardware Server PC
	Windows Vista Business or higher, XP Professional, 2003 Server, 2008 Server, Windows 7 Professional or higher
	CPU: Intel Pentium 4, 2 GHz (Intel Xeon recommended for larger systems)
	RAM: 1 GB (4 GB recommended for larger systems)
	Microsoft .NET runtime environment (included in installation package) Note: Always use latest sevicepack from Microsoft
	NTFS formatted hard drives

Note: Minimum recommended requirements for a full 50 camera system:
	Intel Xeon Quad processor
	2 GB Ram
	1 Gbit network adaptor
	4 x 7200 rpm Hard drives with NTFS files system
	Windows XP Professional SP2, Windows Vista Business or higher, Windows 7 Professional or higher
	XVGA (1024x768) graphics card with 512 Mb memory and DirectX 9.0c compliant
	Microsoft .NET 3.5

Notes
	For best performance and stability, use local hard disks or high performance NAS for storage. All hard drives (local or NAS) must be NTFS formatted.
	The disk drive (normally C:) where Windows and AXIS Camera Station are installed should have enough disk space for the AXIS Camera Station log files. Allow at least 1 GB free disk space for the log files.
	It is recommended that the recordings are saved on a different drive letter than the operating system, e.g. the recordings are preferably saved on D: if Windows is installed on C: etc. For smaller installations, two different partitions can be made on the same physical disk to achieve this.
	For the best long term reliability and performance, it is recommended that the recordings are saved on separate hard disks. For a system recording 10 cameras continuously at 25 fps in CIF (320/240) format, one hard disk could be sufficient, while a system recording at 25 fps should have maximum 10-15 cameras on the same hard disk. Software based RAID systems should not be used, as such a solution could result in performance bottlenecks.
	The AXIS Design Tool can be used to estimate the storage space required for the recordings. Be sure to verify that the amount of remaining storage space is sufficient when the system has been running for the specified number of days (Save recordings for days setting). Increased activity will result in larger image files, thus requiring more storage space.
	The system should be designed taking future expansion into consideration (see recommendations above). Adding too many cameras to a small system may result in an overall decrease in performance and stability and even loss of recordings due to limited storage space.
	It is recommended that defragmentation is regularly run on the hard disks used for AXIS Camera Station recordings as this will improve performance, storage capacity and long term stability.
	If a true PC server is used for AXIS Camera Station, it is recommended that AXIS Camera Station Client is installed on an ordinary desktop PC for viewing and playback as PC servers do not normally have a high performance graphics interface.