Applies to: BLAZE

Summary

This article helps distinguish between BLAZE recording appliances and BLAZE recording servers.

BLAZE Recorders

The two BLAZE Recorder categories are:

• BLAZE Appliances, which are purpose-built to only run BLAZE. They are simpler to install, license, and maintain because of the hardened OS. Semantic search is only available on a P-series appliance.
   
• BLAZE Servers, which are Windows or Linux-based PC servers. They are optimized to efficiently run BLAZE, which is pre-installed. They offer more flexibility with licensing and camera counts.

Appliances and Servers may be combined in a BLAZE system. Key differences are listed in the table below.

*A channel is considered a camera stream, or for audio-only devices, an audio stream. For example, a quad-sensor or 4-channel encoder would count as 4 of the 16, 32, 64, or 256 channel limit. Appliances are channel-bound, so you cannot exceed the channel limit for the model of appliance. A BLAZE server is still bound to the 256-channel limit (varies by model). However, the number of licenses required varies by the type of device. For example, 64 licenses is sufficient for 64 quad-sensors, which is 256 channels.