How to record content across network, to a file server?

[steingra]

I am thinking about alternative ways to setup as much hard drive space as possible, as cheaply as possible. External USB drives are a lot more expensive. So I was thinking of IDE raid or SATA RAID. I think I want a raid card with 4 channels, so I can hook up 4 IDE drives to it. I dont care about redundancy. I figure if I dont offload my shows to DVD's before the hard drive(s) crash oh well. Im not gonna lose any sleep over it. But I would like lots of cheap capacity.

I have a Dell poweredge 1600 server (??? I think thats what it is anyway) from about 2 years ago with 2.4 Ghz Intel CPU. 512MB RAM. Its a little older by todays standards, but mostly collecting dust right now. So I thought it would be perfect use for a file server for private use by SageTV.

OK So here are my initial thoughts about this...

C drive OS - 40GB drive - already has windows 2000 server on it.
D drive CDROM

New stuff to add:
E Drive/Raid card 1 (has 4 channels) - uses RAID 0, 4 IDE drives
400 x 4 = 1.6 TB
F Drive/Raid card 2 (has 4 channels) - uses RAID 0, 4 IDE drives
400 x 4 = 1.6 TB
(and future expansion if needed by adding one more RAID card)

So this would give 3.2 TB's of storage (minus overhead of course).
And I would use 64k blocks sizes on all raided drives.

HOW WILL SAGETV work over a network? I thought I remember reading somewhere on the forums that it can be made to work to record its tvshows over a (100 Mbps) network, to a back end file server. I think this is where the UNC paths would also come into play, that I remember reading about.

Any thoughts, comments, things to look out for...??? from someone who has gone down a similar path?

PS
I once experimented with Windows DFS services. I was thinking I might able to just use that, and not have to use raid at all, since it combines a bunch of physical drives into one shared logical drive. It seems like that might work to. And then I could just point sagetv at the "X" drive or whatever I call it in DFS services. And the DFS service just keeps filling up the drives. Not sure if that would work, but wanted to throw it out there too as a cheaper option than using RAID cards.

Thanks again for your help!

[stanger89]

Setup a share, tell Sage to record to it.

[steingra]

Originally Posted by stanger89

Setup a share, tell Sage to record to it.

Yeah thats a good point, I could just share each raid array/drive as a Windows *share*, and then point sagetv at it. Then DFS is not needed at all. That would keep it simple as far as pointing sagetv at its storage locations.

[jchiso]

I have two Sage systems set to record to shares on a dedicated "server" system. My main Sage system has two capture cards in it and gigabit lan. The other system has a single card and 100MB NIC. Both systems work flawlessly with simulatneous playback from multiple clients.

The server system has two (different model) RAID cards with eight drives attached, plus a small drive for the OS. I should point out that it is running WindowsXP on a 500MHz Celeron with 128MB of RAM.

You do not have to use RAID cards; rather you can just drop in a PCI controller card or two to supplement your on-board cards. If you go this route you can set up each of the drives as individual devices, set up a directory on each (such as "\\SageStorage\SageVideo01", etc.) and designate each directory as a video directory within Sage.

You could also replace the 40GB OS drive with a larger one and create a small (4GB-6GB) partition for Windows and use the rest of the disk for a partition to hold your first Sage storage directory.

[steingra]

Originally Posted by jchiso

The server system has two (different model) RAID cards with eight drives attached, plus a small drive for the OS. I should point out that it is running WindowsXP on a 500MHz Celeron with 128MB of RAM.

Well thats nice to know . Maybe I can use one of my older systems then, and just load it up with hard drives. And extra PCI IDE controller cards.

Originally Posted by jchiso

You do not have to use RAID cards; rather you can just drop in a PCI controller card or two to supplement your on-board cards. If you go this route you can set up each of the drives as individual devices, set up a directory on each (such as "\\SageStorage\SageVideo01", etc.) and designate each directory as a video directory within Sage.

So once I setup the extra controllers and format the drives in Windows XP..I would share them like you said...and point SageTV at each of the *shared drives* like the

D Drive would be shared as \\SageStorage1\SageVideo1
E Drive would be shared as \\SageStorage1\SageVideo2
F Drive would be shared as \\SageStorage1\SageVideo3

is that what you meant?

This way, I can use a cheap PC, dont need RAID, and just need to load up a bunch of the largest (best priced) hard drives. And they dont even have to be matched in size. Since this wouldnt be raided.

hmmmm I like this plan. Its cheaper, easier, and expandable to a certain point. I dont actually know how many PCI IDE cards can be in an older Windows XP machine...never had more than the built in controllers before.

EDIT: Oh yeah, I also meant to mention that SageTV must be OK with recording its content over the network in this fashion. I wasnt 100% sure there wouldnt be problems. Although I have not done all the math to figure out what exactly would be needed/required to support this type of network based recording. You have content that is streaming across a network to be written to a hard drive, in real time using a windows UNC path to the hard drive. So you have several factors to take into account. Network switches, network cards, hard drives, and the OS itself on either system, the SageTV server or the backend file server....from what you what you are saying it seems like this will work just fine, and even using a much older *file server* and not even RAID.

[jchiso]

Originally Posted by steingra

So once I setup the extra controllers and format the drives in Windows XP..I would share them like you said...and point SageTV at each of the *shared drives* like the

D Drive would be shared as \\SageStorage1\SageVideo1
E Drive would be shared as \\SageStorage1\SageVideo2
F Drive would be shared as \\SageStorage1\SageVideo3

is that what you meant?

Yes, something like that. Though you would need to create a directory in each of the partitions; i.e. create a dir named \SageVideo in each and share it as \SageVideoN, where "N" is a number or other string used to identify the share. Point to each share in the Sage system.

Originally Posted by steingra

... I dont actually know how many PCI IDE cards can be in an older Windows XP machine...never had more than the built in controllers before.

I have not tried multiple generic controller cards but I can say that two RAID cards (again, different models and vendors) work without issue in my old Slot 1, native ATA-33 motherboard. I am using an ATA-100 card in another old system I have and it works fine. Inasmuch as you can add four drives to one controller as well as use the onboard controllers (assuming they support large drives) you can easily throw several drives into the unit without any particular effort.

Writing to these disks as well as streaming from them shows no performance hits versus using a native drive. I use gigabit switches at both ends for my main Sage server and a 10/100 switch for the Sage system with the 10/100 nic.

[olyar15]

Another option is to move all the capture cards to the server and run Sage on the server and clients on all the other PCs. That way, no worry about network disruptions or throughput when recording, and only one computer (the server) needs to be on 24/7.