Stack details

In the second step of the deployment process, you configure the VMS and network settings.

For details about how to set up and configure the XProtect VMS, see the XProtect VMS Administrator manual.

Stack name

Parameter Description
Stack name Specify a name to identify the XProtect BYOL CloudFormation stack with.

XProtect Configuration

Parameter Description
XProtect language

Select the display language of the installed XProtect products.

For more information about XProtect supported languages, see Milestone products supported languages.
Retention time

Select the number of days video recordings are saved for in the media database.

The default retention time is seven days.

If you increase the Retention time from the default value, you should also increase the size of the Media database volume accordingly.

EC2 Configuration

Parameter Description
User name for the administrator account Specify a user name for the administrator account. You use this account to access your EC2 instance using Remote Desktop Protocol (RDP).
Password for the administrator account

Specify a password for the administrator account.

The password must be between 8 and 32 characters long and contain at least:

  • One number

  • One special character

  • Capital letter
Instance type

Select the type of the EC2 instance.

The default instance type is c5.large.

If the template fails to deploy due to the selected Instance type, restart the deployment and select a different availability zone.

The camera numbers are estimated for 10% video recordings with 1080p resolution at 30 FPS:

  • c5.large can support up to 18 cameras

  • c5.xlarge can support up to 40 cameras

  • c5.2xlarge can support up to 96 cameras

  • g4dn.xlarge* can support up to 113 cameras

  • g4dn.2xlarge* can support up to 275 cameras

  • g4dn.4xlarge* can support up to 480 cameras

*Requires enabling hardware acceleration.

To learn more about the different instance types, go to Instance types.
Operating System Volume Size

Select the size in GB of the Elastic Block Storage (EBS) volume that contains all VMS components except the media database.

The default volume size is 150 GB.
Delete Operating System Volume

Select if the operating system volume (disk 0) should be deleted when you terminate the EC2 instance.

Terminating the EC2 instance or deleting the EBS operating system volume does not unsubscribe you from XProtect BYOL.

Media Volume Size

Select the size in GB of the EBS volume that contains the media database used to store video recordings.

The default volume size is 100 GB.

Milestone recommends that you configure the media volume size to hold a minimum of 24 hours of video recordings. You can use another storage option to archive your recordings if you need to keep them for a longer time period.

Delete Media Volume Select if the media database volume (disc 1) should be deleted when you terminate the EC2 instance.
Instance Hostname (optional)

Create a custom name for the EC2 instance to find it in your network environment.

If you leave this field blank, a random instance name is assigned to the EC2 instance.

You cannot change the Instance Hostname after deployment.

Network configuration

Parameter Description
Availability zone

Select an AWS availability zone within your selected region that the EC2 instance deploys in.

If the script fails to deploy due to the selected Instance type, restart deployment and select a different Availability Zone.

RDP ingress CIDR block

Specify the range of inbound IP addresses that will access the VPC using RDP.

VPC CIDR block

Specify the range of IP addresses that creates the virtual network of the VPC.

The default Classless Inter-Domain Routing (CIDR) IP block is 10.0.0.0/16.

Subnet CIDR block

Specify the range of IP addresses that creates the subnet of the VPC.

The default CIDR IP block is 10.0.0.0/24.

Plug-ins

Parameter Description
Surveillance Bridge by Tiger Surveillance

Select if you want to install Surveillance Bridge for archiving recordings. This plug-in requires addiional licensing. See Surveillance Bridge.

Fully-managed SQL Server database

Parameter Description
Amazon RDS for SQL Server Select if you want to use Amazon RDS instead of SQL Server. If you select true, the wizard deploys an RDS DB instance of SQL Server Express 2022 in the selected region. If you select false, the wizard installs SQL Server on the EBS volume that is attached to the EC2 instance.
Instance Class Select an instance class that matches your needs. You can select an instance class from the db.t3 instance class type.
Allocated Storage Select the allocated storage capacity for the DB instance.
Database subnet CIDR Block Select a collection of private subnets that you want to designate for your DB instance.