Running the VMS on a virtual machine (VM) lets you easily test, scale, and simulate system scenarios without dedicated bare-metal hardware. When you pair the Media Server with the Testcamera emulator and/or the StubAnalytics Plugin, you can quickly build and validate test environments before deploying them to production.

System environment and performance

Because host configurations, camera counts, and third-party applications vary, we do not and cannot provide recommended hardware settings for VMs.

To optimize performance and save resources, consider using a headless (command-line only) guest operating system. To evaluate your virtualized environment's performance, use the following tools:

• The Testcamera IP Camera Emulator: Emulates IP cameras to simulate video streams.

• The Stub Analytics Plugin: Simulates metadata and analytics events.

Clone a virtual machine

Cloning lets you quickly deploy multiple identical VMs. However, cloning a VM also copies its unique Hardware ID (HWID). If multiple running servers share the same HWID, licensing conflicts will occur.

To prevent licensing conflicts, use the following workflow to prepare a template VM before you clone it.

Step 1: Install Nx Server on the template VM

1. Create a new VM with your preferred guest operating system.

2. Install the Nx Witness Media Server application.

Step 2: Clean the hardware identifiers

Before you clone the VM, you must remove the unique identifiers from the configuration. Follow the instructions for your guest operating system:

For Windows

1. Press the Windows key, type regedit, and press Enter to open the Registry Editor.

2. Navigate to: HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Network Optix\Network Optix Media Server

3. Delete the following attributes:

   • serverGuid

   • guidIsHwid

4. Close the Registry Editor.

For Linux

1. Open a terminal (Ctrl+Alt+T).

2. Change your directory to the configuration folder:

   cd /opt/networkoptix/mediaserver/etc

3. Open the configuration file in a text editor:

   sudo nano mediaserver.conf

4. Find and delete the following lines:

   • serverGuid

   • guidIsHwid=yes

5. Save and close the file.

Step 3: Shut down and clone the VM

1. Shut down the template VM.

   Warning: Do not start the template VM again before cloning. If the VM boots, the system will regenerate the IDs, and you will have to repeat Step 2.

2. Clone the VM using your virtualization manager.

3. Configure your virtualization manager to generate a new MAC address for each clone. A unique MAC address ensures that each VM generates its own unique HWID on its first boot.

Run Nx Desktop on a VM

VMs are generally less optimized for graphic-heavy applications because they rely on CPU software rendering. While performance varies by virtualization manager, running the Nx Desktop client inside a VM is typically less smooth than running it directly on a physical host OS. For the best user experience, run the Nx Desktop client on physical hardware.

Known limitations

When running Nx Witness in a virtual environment, keep the following limitations in mind:

• Permissions errors on startup: the Media Server may fail to start and log the following error: ERROR: Can't save guid. Run once as administrator. To resolve this, refer to THIS Support portal on database permissions.

• Delayed NAS initialization: Shared NAS devices may take a long time to initialize due to OS-level network delays. To prevent recording gaps, configure a large local virtual disk to handle recordings while the NAS connection initializes. When you don't own a NAS, but want to test, you can use applications like TrueNAS in another Virtual Machine to asses this feature as well

• HWID generation issues: Some hypervisors may fail to report accurate virtualized hardware information, which prevents the Media Server from generating a stable HWID.

Virtualization manager compatibility

Recommended managers

The following virtualization managers are commonly used and compatible with Nx Server on supported operating systems:

• Gnome Boxes

• Hyper-V

• KVM

• Proxmox

• VirtualBox

• VMware Workstation Player / Pro

Not recommended

• Citrix Hypervisor (formerly XenServer): Known to cause performance and stability issues with Nx Witness.

Support policy

We do not test every virtualization manager release or patch, and third-party hypervisors fall outside our official support scope.

To receive assistance with technical issues, you must be able to reproduce any reported issue on a physical bare-metal installation with a supported operating system. You are responsible for verifying VM compatibility and configuring your hypervisor settings.