Milestone XProtect Advanced VMS 2014 - Manual (Page 18)

Milestone XProtect ® Advanced
VMS 2014
Administrator's Manual
www.milestonesys.com 18 System overview
Active Directory
You normally add users from Active Directory, but you can also add users without Active Directory.
Active Directory is a distributed directory service included with several Windows Server operating
systems. It identifies resources on a network in order for users or applications to access them.
Virtual servers
You can run all system components on virtualized Windows ® servers, such as VMware ® and Microsoft ®
Hyper-V ® .
Virtualization is often preferred to better utilize hardware resources. Normally, virtual servers running
on the hardware host server do not load the virtual server to a great extent, and often not at the same
time. However, recording servers record all cameras and video streams. This puts high load on CPU,
memory, network, and storage system. So, when run on a virtual server, the normal gain of
virtualization disappears to a large extent, since - in many cases - it uses all available resources.
If run in a virtual environment, it is important that the hardware host has the same amount of physical
memory as allocated for the virtual servers and that the virtual server running the recording server is
allocated enough CPU and memory - which it is not by default. Typically, the recording server needs
2-4 GB depending on configuration. Another bottleneck is network adapter allocation and hard disk
performance. Consider allocating a physical network adapter on the host server of the virtual server
running the recording server. This makes it easier to ensure that the network adapter is not overloaded
with traffic to other virtual servers. If the network adapter is used for several virtual servers, the
network traffic might result in the recording server not retrieving and recording the configured amount
of images.
Clients
About the Management Client
Feature-rich administration client for configuration and day-to-day management of the system.
Available in several languages.
Typically installed on the surveillance system administrator's workstation or similar.
For a detailed overview of the Management Client, see Management Client overview (on page 49).