AXIS Camera Station 5 Hardware guidelines

Supported products

AXIS Camera Station 5 is compatible with most Axis devices as well as older models with firmware 4.30 or higher. For exceptions and details, please see AXIS Camera Station 5 release notes.

SEE COMPATIBLE PRODUCTS

Third-party devices

Third-party devices are required to be ONVIF Profile S conformant, see onvif.org for complete listing. For detailed information about support for third-party devices, see the latest technical paper about third-party device support in AXIS Camera Station 5.

To verify compatibility with AXIS Camera Station 5, please use:

AXIS CAMERA STATION DEVICE COMPATIBILITY TOOL

PC Hardware guidelines

System hardware requirements

The hardware requirements of an AXIS Camera Station 5 system depend on a wide number of factors:

  • The total bandwidth retrieved by the server from all video sources
  • The Bandwidth used by clients for video viewing both live view and playback, as well as the number of clients
  • The bitrate delivered by each video device varies and depends on the scene complexity, the chosen frame rate, resolution, video codec, compression, illumination, as well as the number of streams fetched from each video source
  • The number of open network connections on the server side (between server and clients as well as server and devices)
  • The number of alarm events and overall log activity generated
  • The advanced configurations using the rules engine that might trigger background data traffic and load on system
  • and more…

 

There are no hardcoded limitations on the number of clients or devices connected to an AXIS Camera Station 5 system. This gives great flexibility but also requires the system designer to make responsible designs and it is very important to use server hardware that can handle the worst-case scenario of each individual system.

Axis Network Video Recorders and Workstations have been validated during extensive testing to provide a reliable recording solution with outstanding user experience. Check the product pages for more details on our Out-of-the box ready recording solutions.

Our general recommendations for system design are:

  • It is always preferable to have multiple servers sharing the load.
  • It is a good practice to keep the number of connected video channels below 150 per physical server. 
  • When adding devices that do not require a video stream such as speakers, access control and input/output devices, it is possible to connect larger number of devices, but we do not have any verified limits today. Therefore, system designers should be prepared that it might be required to add more servers. 
  • The user behavior has a significant impact on the system, which is hard to quantify. Therefore, we propose to have spare system resources on the server to handle multiple viewing clients. In many installations, it is also a good practice to have viewing clients and devices on two separate networks. This makes the network load easier to predict and control.
  • If large amounts of motion in an area during specific times is expected, it is in general preferable to use continuous recordings as opposed to loading the system with very large numbers of video motion detection triggers.
  • Verify the recorded material quality over at least 24 hours so that all possible illumination conditions are covered. Do not rely on the live view only when verifying the quality of video. 
     

REMEMBER: ALWAYS CALCULATE ON THE WORST CASE SCENARIO.
For bandwidth estimations please use AXIS Site Designer.

System setup guide (Minimal recommended)

  • Up to 100 Mbit/s recording bit rate or 16 video channels and a maximum of 32 doors

AXIS Camera Station 5 client & server**
Operating System*: Windows 10 Pro or later
CPU: Intel® Core i37th Gen / Intel® Elkhart Lake or similar
RAM: 8GB, DDR4
Graphic card: Intel® HD Graphics 630
Network: 1 Gbps

 

  • Up to 200 Mbit/s recording bit rate or 32 video channels and a maximum of 64 doors

AXIS Camera Station 5 client & server**
Operating System*: Windows 10 Pro or later
CPU: Intel® Core i58th Gen / Intel® Core i312th Gen or similar
RAM: 8GB, DDR4
Graphic card: Intel® HD Graphics 630
Network:1 Gbps

 

  • Up to 300 Mbit/s recording bit rate or 64 video channels and a maximum of 128 doors

AXIS Camera Station 5 client
Operating System*: Windows 10 Pro or later
CPU: Intel® Core i5 latest generation or similar
RAM: 8GB, DDR4
Graphic card: Nvidia Quadro P620, NVIDIA T400 or equivalent
Network: 1 Gbps

AXIS Camera Station 5 server**
Operating System*: Windows 10 or later
CPU: Intel® Xeon E11th Gen / Intel® Xeon Silver2nd Gen scalable or similar
RAM: 8GB, DDR4
Network: 1 Gbps

 

  • Multi-server system above 300 Mbit/s recording bit rate

All systems with higher performance requirements should use multiple servers**

Add more AXIS Camera Station 5 servers and divide bandwidth load equally per server, each within above specifications.

More client recommendations:

Always use the latest graphics card drivers.
Multi-screen support - Up to 4 monitors per graphic card or multi-4K stream support:

  • At least 2 GB dedicated video memory
  • HDMI 2.0 or Display Port 1.2 support
  • For example, NVIDIA® QUADRO® P620 or NVIDIA T400


Please note that multi-4K stream and multiple monitors will put more load on your client and network.
Using H.265 video coding will put more load on the graphic card.

Non-video devices

When non-video devices are used in AXIS Camera Station 5, they will still use performance of your server.  Although they are not using more bandwidth than cameras, depending on the system configuration, such as Action rules they will place a load on the system and need to be verified on a case-by-case basis.

* For a list of all supported Operating Systems, please check the release notes. Always use latest service pack from Microsoft.
**The operating system physical disk should not be used for recordings. This will help maintain general system stability and achieve better performance, while avoiding fragmentation and bottlenecks. If the operating system and recordings need to be combined on the same physical disk, recordings should be kept in a different partition than the operating system.
UPS recommended: To avoid unexpected system shutdowns, which could cause database corruption

HARDWARE RECOMMENDATIONS FOR AXIS CAMERA STATION 4 AND BELOW

System design and maintenance

System design

  • Planning 
    Use AXIS Site Designer to plan your system and keep track of your projects. Estimates for storage space, network bandwidth and equipment are available.
  • Power 
    Unexpected shutdowns can cause database corruption and damage hardware or Windows. Using a UPS is highly recommended. In critical installations, add a redundant power supply on an emergency power circuit. Consult your equipment or UPS manufacturer to know which UPS is recommended for your equipment. To ensure the maximum continuity of recordings, it's recommended to configure the Axis Camera Station 5 server computer to restart automatically after a power outage.
  • Dedicated Server 
    It is highly recommended to run AXIS Camera Station 5 Server in a dedicated computer, i.e. without any other critical or management software like databases, Active Directory servers, print or telephony servers, etc.
  • Storage - hardware - drives 
    For best performance and reliability use local storage or high-performance storage medium. In intensive or critical installations, use only Surveillance-class or Datacenter-class drives for video storage. USB drives are not supported as they are not suitable for constant video recording. 
  • Storage - hardware - RAID 
    Video is quite operation intensive. When using RAID technology make sure your RAID controller has enough performance.
  • Storage - recordings 
    The operating system physical disk should not be used for recordings. This will help maintain general system stability and achieve better performance, while avoiding fragmentation and bottlenecks.
  • Storage - extra performance 
    For extra performance, install the operating system and AXIS Camera Station 5 on a dedicated SSD drive.
  • Virtual Machines (VM) 
    AXIS Camera Station 5 server may run on virtualized Windows® machines. For more information, please see the latest technical paper about AXIS Camera Station in virtual environment.
    Running AXIS Camera Station 5 Client on a VM is NOT supported, mainly due to graphical limitations.
  • Connected clients 
    Although a limit per se does not exist, the increasing number of connected clients will impact performance, mainly if all demand multiple live view streams or are connected remotely with limited bandwidth available.

System maintenance

  • General
    Make sure the System setup guide recommendations are met.
  • Free space – Operating system drive
    It is highly recommended to maintain at least 30 GB free space on the operating system drive. If the hard drive where the database is stored runs out of space, this will likely lead to corruption. Depending on how many days of database backups are kept (by default 14 days). Databases can become very large if there are too many events or issues.
  • Free space - Storage drives
    We recommend that you configure the local storage drives in AXIS Camera Station 5 to keep 5% free space for optimal performance. If you’ve configured less than 5%, AXIS Camera Station 5 will still function, and prevent the storage drive from becoming full, however, you may experience performance issues on larger systems.
  • Integrity - Hard drive and file system
    Errors in the disk can cause corruption in database, operating system or recordings. Check periodically for errors or damaged sectors in the hard drives. Tools like CHKDSK are generally available in Windows to check file system integrity. For preemptive maintenance the S.M.A.R.T. monitoring system is often available, for which several monitoring tools exist.
  • Integrity - RAM memory
    Memory issues are among the hardest to detect and troubleshoot, and can affect the system in unpredictable ways. Make sure to periodically check the integrity of your RAM memory. Windows offers a Memory Diagnostics Tool to scan memory for errors. Often it might be necessary to use a more advanced memory diagnostic tool.
  • Antivirus and firewalls
    In some cases, virus scanners can corrupt the database. It is recommended to exclude the database and recordings from scans. Both antivirus and firewalls can alter the traffic coming from video devices. Make sure you allow traffic from those devices to flow freely.

    Information regarding the exclusion for Antivirus can be found in the FAQ:
    What to include in an Antivirus approved list for AXIS Camera Station 5.

    Information regarding the exclusion for the firewall can be found in the following FAQ:
    What do I need to configure in my firewall to allow access to AXIS Secure Remote Access?
    Which ports does AXIS Camera Station 5 use?
     
  • Backups
    External or operating system backups can impact the system performance. It is recommended to keep these at a minimum and not let them consume all the resources. AXIS Camera Station 5 performs nightly backups of the main databases and can backup recordings on demand or per schedule as an export. Click here for more information. 
  • System Updates
    Allowing Windows Updates to download and install automatically may downgrade network performance and cause the system to reboot, which can corrupt the AXIS Camera Station 5 databases. It is advised to schedule a maintenance window for Windows and drivers update.
  • Sleep, hibernate, suspend
    A recording server should never be allowed to sleep, hibernate or suspend. Not only will recordings stop, but database corruption might occur from the unexpected stop. Make sure to disable these functionalities in the Windows Power Options.
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