Is Virtualized iSCSI supported in Bosch Video Surveillance Environments?
Question
Is Virtualized iSCSI supported in Bosch Video Surveillance Environments?
Answer
When designing or troubleshooting Bosch video surveillance systems, it’s crucial to understand the limitations and requirements around virtualized environments — especially when dealing with iSCSI-based storage. This article aims to clarify a common point of confusion about Virtualized iSCSI.
Virtualized iSCSI — Not Supported Under Any Circumstances by Bosch
Virtualized iSCSI refers to storage systems where:
iSCSI targets or volumes are presented through a virtual layer, such as a hypervisor (VMware ESXi, Microsoft Hyper-V, Stratus Everrun), virtual SAN appliance, or others.
iSCSI LUNs are mapped to virtual disks (e.g., VMDKs or VHDs), or are mounted by the hypervisor instead of being connected directly to the Windows OS running the VRM.
Why Virtualized iSCSI is Not Supported?
It introduces latency, buffering, and performance unpredictability.
It breaks the direct connection between the VRM and the iSCSI storage, which is essential for reliable, real-time, lossless video recording.
Risk of frame loss, recording errors, or "inconsistent VRM state" increases.
Even if such setups appear to function temporarily or in isolated environments, they are not supported by Bosch and leads to inconsistent states, recording errors, and VRM instance conflicts and different errors might occur, such as: I/O error, inconsistent state or Incorrect VRM instance and Bosch cannot guarantee stability or provide troubleshooting for them.
Bosch Recommendations for iSCSI Target Configuration:
Bosch supports using Microsoft Windows Server (2012 R2, 2016, or 2019) as an iSCSI target only when running on physical hardware. If you are not using a Bosch-qualified iSCSI device, the system is not officially supported.
Bosch offers several qualified iSCSI storage devices designed to seamlessly integrate with video surveillance systems. These include:
These devices are engineered to work seamlessly with Bosch's Video Management System (BVMS) and Video Recording Manager (VRM), ensuring optimal performance and reliability. For detailed specifications and compatibility information, please refer to Bosch's official site - product documentation.
Visual Diagram to show how the supported vs unsupported architecture looks like:
Nice to know
For further clarity and validation, please refer to:
These documents explain the difference between supported virtual deployments and unsupported configurations in more detail.