Assigning tuners and channels to directories

[davephan]

I currently have five drives with no RAID. I plan to reconfigure my system so that I have five RAID 1 drive pair sets. Currently, all the recording is on one drive. Later, the files are manually copied to the other drives.

I would like to be able to assign each tuner to record on a separate drive pair, to reduce the disk contention. Is there a way that is possible? I suspect the load on the drives would be spread out better among all the drives if the tuners were assigned to drive pairs than if I just added a recording directory on each drive and let SageTV randomly select the recording directories.

I would also like to be able to assign certain channels, such as HBO, to certain directories, that would not be processed by ShowAnalyzer or Comskip. Is there a way that is possible?

Dave

[Opus4]

Originally Posted by davephan

I would like to be able to assign each tuner to record on a separate drive pair, to reduce the disk contention. Is there a way that is possible? I suspect the load on the drives would be spread out better among all the drives if the tuners were assigned to drive pairs than if I just added a recording directory on each drive and let SageTV randomly select the recording directories.

Here's a recently revived discussion about it. But, you could end up with poorly managed recording space if you find that certain tuners are used more than others & it may not be needed anyway.

I would also like to be able to assign certain channels, such as HBO, to certain directories, that would not be processed by ShowAnalyzer or Comskip. Is there a way that is possible?

No, you can't assign this per channel.

- Andy

[eric3a]

That's one of my few grudges against STV as an ex BTV user.

I regularly copy GBs of videos on to an external HD just before I head out on a business trip.
With BTV I knew where things would end up:
Documentaries in the Documentary folder,
News in the News folder,
Films in the... OK you get it.!

So grabbing the latest news a movie and a couple documetaries before hitting the road was easy.

Now I have to hunt around my hard disks to find stuff.

Oh well. I'd still take STV that works fine with the HDPVRs over BTV that didn't though.
Eric

[GKusnick]

Originally Posted by davephan

I suspect the load on the drives would be spread out better among all the drives if the tuners were assigned to drive pairs than if I just added a recording directory on each drive and let SageTV randomly select the recording directories.

I agree with Andy that you may be trying to solve a non-problem here. Also RAID 1 drive pairs are the least efficient use of disk space. You'll get more capacity out of fewer drives by putting them all in a single RAID set and letting the controller worry about spreading the load over multiple drives.

Originally Posted by davephan

I would also like to be able to assign certain channels, such as HBO, to certain directories, that would not be processed by ShowAnalyzer or Comskip. Is there a way that is possible?

The Sage Job Queue plugin is probably your best bet for sorting completed recordings into folders based on arbitrary rules.

[jpimlott]

Anouther way of doing is to setup a NAS. I use UNRAID from lime technology and it protects all of my content with parity. i have 3 TB on it now and is growing all the time. To add more space just slip a drive in and it can be added to array and will be protected like the others. I have moved all my data, downloads, install files, dvd, blurays, and sage recording to it.

John

[davephan]

Originally Posted by GKusnick

I agree with Andy that you may be trying to solve a non-problem here. Also RAID 1 drive pairs are the least efficient use of disk space. You'll get more capacity out of fewer drives by putting them all in a single RAID set and letting the controller worry about spreading the load over multiple drives.



The Sage Job Queue plugin is probably your best bet for sorting completed recordings into folders based on arbitrary rules.

My new system board has two controllers. One for 6 drives, the other for 4 drives. I was thinking of setting up 3 pairs of 2 TB drives and 2 pairs of 1.5 TB drives. Each pair would be RAID 1. My system board RAID can be setup in 0, 1, 5, or 10.

The reason for drive pairs is to improve the redundancy. If a drive failed, the other drive in the pair has file loss risk, the rest of the drives have no increase in file loss risk.

I think RAID 5 is a bit too risky, since it cannot protect against two drives failing. Maybe RAID 10 is a better choice since the redundancy and performance is much better than RAID 5. The RAID 10 arrays could also balance out the drive loads.

Maybe the solution then is to setup two RAID 10 arrays, one with 6 - 2 TB dirves, the other with 4 - 1.5 TB drives. The six drive set would give me extra disk space using RAID 10. The four drive set of 1.5 TB drives would not give me any additional disk space, but it would spread the load across those drives.

I will check out the "Sage Job Queue plugin".

Thanks for the responses.

Dave

[davephan]

Originally Posted by GKusnick

I agree with Andy that you may be trying to solve a non-problem here. Also RAID 1 drive pairs are the least efficient use of disk space. You'll get more capacity out of fewer drives by putting them all in a single RAID set and letting the controller worry about spreading the load over multiple drives.



The Sage Job Queue plugin is probably your best bet for sorting completed recordings into folders based on arbitrary rules.

I checked out RAID further.

RAID 5 is too risky. If one drive is lost, the performance is drastically decreased, and all the data is lost if another drive is lost before the rebuilding, which could take a long time.

RAID 10 is safer. With 6 drives, you might be able to loose 3 drives without a problem, but if you loose the wrong 2 drives, all your data is lost.

RAID 1 is safer than RAID 10. You can loose up to 3 drives, if the failures occur in different pairs. However if 2 of the failures occur in the same pair, then the data on that single pair is lost. However, the data on the other 2 pairs is still safe.

So I think it would be safer to setup 3 RAID 1 drive pairs for the 6 drives. I will also backup some of the more important video files to another RAID 1 set or a USB hard drive. I've been running my SageTV server for many years without RAID and without a drive failure. I think I need to make the move to RAID 1 sets now before I do have a drive failure. I will setup recording directories on each of the 3 RAID 1 drive pairs. Hopefully, that will balance out the disk load.

I started reading the "Sage Job Queue plugin" manual. The "Sage Job Queue plugin" sounds exactly what I am looking for to selectively comskip video files and for other tasks.


Dave