MS Windows/Virtual Appliance

Limitations for deploying on MS Windows

Altough Zoneminder´s interface is based on PHP and the system database uses MySQL, (both of which that may easily be deployed under Windows nowadays), the system core components are coded in Perl, guided towards a Linux-like traditional structure;

The new virtualization softwares available, on the other hand, may ecourage experiences of deploying the ZoneMinder system into a virtualized space under Windows; but then a first and strong limitation would be the capture device´s sharing;

Observing that most users deploy ZoneMinder systems using PCI (cheap or professional) capture devices, sharing the device among the host and the guest system would be the first challenge to face; One possibility that shows up for that is the use of PCI PASS-TROUGH methods;

PCI pass-trough is a recent implementation for some virtualization softwares that may share the capture device resources, or even assign it´s resources exclusively to the guest system; unfortunately, accomplishing that may not be an easy task; you may find below some web links that may introduce those subjects, but it would be worthy to rethink on how useful or how stable a Windows implementation would get in the end;

A Much better, simpler, safer and more reliable solution would be to forget the Windows implementation entirely and use the available live cd ZoneMinder Distributions; they´re actively updated, and you may even experiment a full working ZoneMinder system without even changing one bit in your hard-disk;

For more information on ZoneMinder Live Cd distros, roll down the ZoneMinder downloads page; Please also get to check the announcements as newer implementations seem to appear first there and only aftterwards on the downloads page;

Pros and cons on the Windows Implementation

Pros

• Windows users may use their ZoneMinder Server side-by-side with a Windows OS; traditionally, dual boot implementations are used to have ZoneMinder in one partition (or entire disk) and Windows on another, so you can´t use both at the same time;

Cons

• Stability and safety: Windows safety implementations are known to be harder to maintain (arguable, tough);

• Permormance: sharing your operational system with another virtualized systems, besides it´s implementation efforts, will result in degraded overall performance; Using a dedicated surveillance system is far better and safer;

• Getting support, mainly free support, under a virtualized implementation of ZoneMinder, under Windows, is a challenge itself; maybe you will find yourself in a very uncomfortable situation on which you´ll be on your own;

External references

• Virtualization: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Virtualization
• Pci Pass-trough: http://bitbud.com/2008/11/12/a-virtualization-first-from-kvm/
• Pci Pass-trough: http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=974060