Hello Unraid Community,

I built an Unraid Server and had been doing alright so far, but now I'm having issues with my security cameras and it has me questioning my hardware, specifications listed below.

My security cameras are connected through a NVR which is linked to Blue Iris running as a system service on a Windows 2025 Server VM. I have six cameras total, four running 7 FPS (4K cameras) and two at 15 FPS (2K cameras). OpenAI is hosted on the VM for AI Detection for motion alerts. I am using sub-streams, direct-to-disk, and no hardware decoding.

The three primary things running on the Unraid Server at all times are Home Assistant, the BlueIris Windows VM, and Immich for automatic phone backups.

Recently, I've been trying to dial in the sensitivity of the motion detection in Blue Iris, however, the Windows VM/Blue Iris is running unbearably slow.

It is very rare that my processor is maxed out, but it does occur occasionally. Unraid doesn't seem to bog down, but interfacing with the VM definitely does.

My questions are:

1. Is this system sufficient?

   1. Any upgrades I could do or setting tweaks?

   2. Windows Server 2025 or BlueIris setting tweaks?

2. Would it be better to have two separate servers, one for security cameras and one for my other Unraid stuff

3. Do I need to build a new system?

Let me know if there is other additional information I can provide.

I appreciate you taking the time to read this and provide any insight you may have. Thank you in advance!

Server Specifications:

Unraid server Starter, version 7.3.2

Kernel = Linux 6.18.38-Unraid x86_64

Dell OptiPlex 7050 SFF (BIOS Version: 1.27.0) Mfg Date: 09/20/2017

Motherboard-

Dell Inc. 0NW6H5, Version: A00

HVM= Enabled

IOMMU= Enabled

Cache-
L1 Cache = 256 KiiB (max. capacity 256 KiiB)

L2 Cache = 1 MiiB (max. capacity 1 MiiB)

L3 Cache = 8 MiiB (max. capacity 8 MiiB)

Memory- (48GB DDR4)

Speed = 2133MHz

DIMM 1 = 8192 MB

DIMM1: 80AD000080AD HMA81GU6DJR8N-VK, 8 GiiB DDR4 @ 2133 MT/s

DIMM 2 = 8192 MB

DIMM2: 80AD000080AD HMA81GU6CJR8N-VK, 8 GiiB DDR4 @ 2133 MT/s

DIMM 3 = 16384 MB

DIMM3: 859B0000802C BLS16G4D240FSC.16FBD, 16 GiiB DDR4 @ 2133 MT/s

DIMM 4 = 16384 MB

DIMM4: 859B0000802C BLS16G4D240FSC.16FBD, 16 GiiB DDR4 @ 2133 MT/s

Processor-

Intel i7 6700 CPU @ 3.40GHz

Temp = 43 C

Graphics Card-

VisionTek HD 7750

2048 MB

GPU Clock: 800MHz

Memory Clock: 1125 MHz

Memory Type: GDDR5

Storage-

Cache = Intel 512GB M.2 2280, PCIe Gen3 x 4 NVMe (INTEL SSDPEKNW512G8H )

FS = btrfs

Boot (Flash) = SanDisk_SanDisk_3.2_Gen1 - 129 GB

FS = vfat

Array Devices-

Terramaster D4-320 connected via USB C (through USB C PCIe Card, Shared 10Gbps)

Disk 1 = Western Digital Red Plus 4TB 3.5" NAS HDD, Model # WD40EFPX

Parity = Western Digital Red Plus 4TB 3.5" NAS HDD, Model # WD40EFPX

Dockers:

Media- (not always running)

1. Arr's =

   1. radarr,

   2. sonarr,

   3. lidarr

2. sabnzbd

3. Jellyfin

Utilities-

fail2ban

Services-

1. immich server (autostart)

2. mealiev1 (autostart)

3. paperless-ngx (autostart)

Support Dockers-

1. Apache-Tika-Server (autostart)

2. gotenberg (autostart)

3. immich_machine_learning

4. immich_postgres

5. immigh_redis

6. postgresql18 (autostart)

7. Redis (autostart)

8. Unraid-Cloudflared-Tunnel (autostart)

9. HomeAssistant_inabox (autostart)

10. binhex-official-gluetun

Plugins:

1. FolderView Plus

2. Appdata Backup

3. CA Auto Update Applications

4. CA Mover Tuning

5. Community Applications

6. Compose Manager

7. Dynamix Active Streams

8. Dynamix System Information

9. Fix Common Problems

10. GPU Statistics

11. Tailscale

12. Tmux Terminal Manager

13. Unassigned Devices

14. Unassigned Devices Plus

15. User Scripts

VMS:

Windows Server 2025

• vCPUs: 6 cores

• Memory-

  • Initial = 8GB, Max = 22 GB

• Machine= Q35-10.2

• BIOS= OVMF TPM

• Hyper-V= Yes

Home Assistant

• vCPUs: 2 cores

• Memory-

  • Initial = 2GB, Max = 2 GB

• Machine= Q35-9.2

• BIOS = OVMF

I've always heard that Blue Iris is very demanding, it's one of the reasons I'm using Frigate-NVR instead (on top of REQUIRING windows). I imagine running just Blue Iris on a 6th Gen would probably be slow (they do specify "newer processor" and something 10 generations old is not that. Add in that your OS is virtualized + everything else, then yeah I can imagine it being slow.

Also, I don't see how Win Server 2025 wouldn't be slow by itself on a 6th Gen CPU, much less virtualized. You don't need Windows Server for BlueIris, so why not just run Win 10 - that's a far less demanding OS if you debloat it. Between Immich + AI, Windows Server 25, and BlueIris - I personally expect them all to be slow.


1. You can upgrade - moving to anything 10th Gen to 13th Gen Intel can still use your existing DDR4 memory. For this I would look for a Dell Optiplex/HP EliteDesk/Lenovo ThinkCentre SFF - essentially just a newer version of what you have. Check out this site that scrapes ebay listings or the r/homelabsales and r/hardwareswap subreddits for equipment.
2. You could split out BlueIris - running Win10 on something like one of the Micro's listed here (the 7070 with 9th Gen should be fine - I use the r/homelabsales subreddit for most of my homelab purchases). I personally think that would be enough to make everything run better.

My solution (because I ran into something similar):

I run my NVR separate from my Unraid instance, but use Unraid as storage for my NVR (mounted NFS shares). I'm using a Dell Optiplex MFF 5070 with an i5-9500T, 6 cameras (all either 2k or 4k) and my doorbell camera - a mix of wifi and poe. I separated it out because I found transcoding the video + inference put too much of a strain on my Unraid server. Not to mention buying the mini was about $250 and I couldn't upgrade my server for that little. It's been flawless since I made the change.

I also separated out Immich as well because I want to experiment with local AI inference on my pics and videos, again without negatively impacting my Unraid server. Just using Immich to store my pics was no problem, but once I started cranking up the inference/detection settings it really became more demanding. I have this running on an HP Elite Mini 600 G9 with an i5-12500T. Again, buying this Tiny/Mini/Micro form-factor desktop was cheaper than upgrading my server. I got this one with 16GB of DDR5 memory for $370.

Both of the minis together are still less than I would have spent upgrading my server and should serve me well for many years.

Edited September 5Sep 5 by whipdancer
clear up some stuff

I really appreciate the insight and thoughtful response, thank you. I don't remember the specifics of why I didn't go the Frigate route, possibly the lack of mobile app. I'm not sure whether Home Assistant works well on mobile for cameras or not. Does your setup work on mobile? Do you use a Coral TPU or anything special for the AI capabilities? How much RAM does your Frigate setup have?

It sounds like you have three servers: Frigate, Immich, and Unraid? I'm curious if this uses more electricity than a single system would.

I actually think I've fixed my setup, ironically, I think my GPU was causing issues. While fixing that I also removed the Unraid Parity Array and switched the drives to a mirrored ZFS pool, I was extremely frustrated with long parity checks. In the end, I'm not certain what exactly fixed the issues, but it's running much smoother. Your suggestion of Win10 is in the back of my mind, I may pull the trigger on that, minimum system requirements are much less than 2025 server. I have no clue why I went that route to begin with haha.

Yeah, HA works fine on mobile and I can see my cameras without issues. I don't spend much time looking at them so my benchmark is pretty low. Can I see them? check. Does each camera load quickly when I access it? check. Can I move forward or backward in time? check. Done.

I was using a Coral TPU, but I switched to a Hailo8 after my 4th camera. The 2k and 4k cameras (even using the detection streams) were taxing the Coral enough that it was leaning on the CPU a lot. The box has 32gb of memory. It's a recent move from using Unraid, but the Frigate UI and camera access are way more responsive. I need to tweak the settings around the Hailo8 a bit more to optimize things.

It should use more electricity than a single system, at least in theory. The "T" cpus are the low power options which helps.

Edited September 6Sep 6 by whipdancer