Network Attached Storage Solutions

[tmiranda]

I recorded directly to the NAS using UNC paths.

[darcilicious]

Originally Posted by vexhold

On a side note: Just found Seagate 2TB 3.5" Hard Drives for $110 - $30 MiR = $80

THANKS!

[civerson4]

I have a Thecus N7700 (7 bay NAS) running 7x 1 TB disks in Raid5 configuration on a gig-e network. Use it to store and stream dvd's/music and blu ray movies to the HTPC and extenders (both compressed and uncompressed). Works great. I regulary achieve 60-70 MB/sec write speeds on this thing. I did alot of research before I got this unit. Has been "appliance like" in reliability and performance.

[loomdog32]

unRAID is awesome if you know what you are getting into. As long as your gigabit NIC is on the PCIx bus and using SATA II/3.0 drives (inclusing interface), you will be fine using unRAID for recording to and streaming HD.

I was able to record 2 HD shows and playback 1 HD show while streaming HD content to 3 different PCs (2 of the PCs were wireless)..

The systems bought from LimeTech use Promise TX4 PCI controller cards (they used to anyways - the reason I purchased one when I had the unRAID server). I have had hit/miss success using these controller cards. Specifically because they DO NOT pass ANY S.M.A.R.T. info!!!!!! I found out the hard way when I had several drives overheat....

Im thinking of bringing back my unRAID box as a backup solution (turn on the box, backup everything, turn off the box - repeat weekly).

[vexhold]

Getting kinda torqued at Lime-Tech. I have sent them 3 emails now and they have yet to respond to any of them.

Boo!!!

[Bizarroterl]

The owner can get busy and may not answer emails for a few days. Be patient for a couple more days.

[DualQuad]

I have used a home built UNRAID server for about a year and half now with next to no issues. I record directly to the server using the cache drive (2 HDPVR sources and 1 R5000) and provide playback to 4 clients around the home. I have kept drives in the main Sage server for the unlikely event that the UNRAID box is unavailable and a recording occurs.

My UNRAID drives are the hodge podge collection of drives decommissioned over the years (all SATA). The array contains 14 drives (If I recall correctly) with sizes ranging from 300G to 2TB. The smaller, older drives are being slowly replaced as finances/sales allow before failure occurs.

So far, I have replaced/upgraded the parity drive without issue, added a new drive to the array, replaced a smaller drive with a larger and replaced a failed drive. All functionality worked as intended. The ability to use any drive in the array is a winner and worth the $100 license fee.

As others have mentioned, the non-striping of the drives makes the I/O slower than the traditional RAID arrays, but the only time I have longed for more speed was during the initial setup. During my initial setup I copied over a couple TB of data, no matter what kind of array you are using, that activity is gonna take longer than your patience allows.

DQ

[leagle]

I'm thinking of doing something similar to the OP. I was planning to keep my recordings drive on the Sage Server and then point sage at another server where all of my music, dvd rips, etc live. Has anyone experienced any problems with doing it like that? Does everything show up in the GUI just like it was all stored on the same machine that is running Sage? Basically, I'm wondering if Sage is ok acting as a middle man between the extenders and the main fileserver.

Thanks.

[DualQuad]

Originally Posted by leagle

I'm thinking of doing something similar to the OP. I was planning to keep my recordings drive on the Sage Server and then point sage at another server where all of my music, dvd rips, etc live. Has anyone experienced any problems with doing it like that? Does everything show up in the GUI just like it was all stored on the same machine that is running Sage? Basically, I'm wondering if Sage is ok acting as a middle man between the extenders and the main fileserver.

Thanks.

Thats a wonderful thing about SageTV, as long as you set the paths up correctly, all of your media exists in one massive display. The only issues I have noticed with using a separate fileserver is the "wakeup" delay. I configured my UNRAID to spin down disks that aren't in use to conserve some power, so it takes a couple seconds to "wake" the disk. My network is entirely GigE with video and "computer" traffic segregated, I really cant tell much of a difference between offboard an onboard disk storage.

DQ

[Fuzzy]

I really don't see the point in adding an extra device to the equipment manifest. Why go NAS, when most of it is going to be accessed by, or through, the sage server anyways? Just put the storage local to the server. Just because you are out of internal SATA ports, doens' t mean you couldn't make VERY good use of either a PCIe SATA card, or at the very least, a port multiplier or two. If you are out of room in the case, you can go with a second case, but I certainly don't see the point in devoting a processor, memory, motherboard, etc JUST to add storage to an existing system.

the advantages of a NAS are the always on availability of data to any device on the network. If you've already GOT a 24/7 server, than any shared drives on that server have the advantages of the NAS, without an extra 'device'.

[Lucas]

Once, I came to the same point as the OP. I set up 2 NASLite servers (~4Tb with 300Gb Drives).
After about a year I realised that maybe it was over the top to run 3 servers 24x7. The power cost was high and the 6x10ft computer room needed airconditioning during the summer months.

So, I rebuilt my main SageTV server with a huge case(Thermaltake Armor+ 6000) that can take up to 16 Hard Drives. This has proved to be the right decision. I am currently at 10 Hard Drives ~ 10TB(4x500Gb +6x1.5TB - Raid5) with room for another 10TB. The power bill is manageable.

[stanger89]

Originally Posted by Fuzzy

I really don't see the point in adding an extra device to the equipment manifest. Why go NAS, when most of it is going to be accessed by, or through, the sage server anyways? Just put the storage local to the server. Just because you are out of internal SATA ports, doens' t mean you couldn't make VERY good use of either a PCIe SATA card, or at the very least, a port multiplier or two. If you are out of room in the case, you can go with a second case, but I certainly don't see the point in devoting a processor, memory, motherboard, etc JUST to add storage to an existing system.

The advantage of unRAID is there's just nothing else like it. It gives RAID-like redundancy, but across an arbitrary set of disks. You just can't do that (AFAIK) running on a Windows/Linux/Mac system with Sage. FlexRAID has some similarities, but isn't the same.

If unRAID had/were a Windows driver/service I'd be all over it, and I'd have it running on my SageTV server already. As it stands I'm still hesitating for the reason you mention, I don't want another machine.

[graywolf]

Question for you NAS folks to see if I understand correctly.

If you are not recording to the NAS drives but rather using them for Archives, I assume that you have it configured as a Recording Directory with USE ONLY and set to small value. This way SAGE recognized the Recordings in the directory but would not record to them.

Then when you move the Recordings from the local directory to the NAS directory, what other steps are needed for SAGE to recognize the move? Or would Sage (v6) automatically recognize it, or at least during next scan?

[Fuzzy]

Originally Posted by stanger89

The advantage of unRAID is there's just nothing else like it. It gives RAID-like redundancy, but across an arbitrary set of disks. You just can't do that (AFAIK) running on a Windows/Linux/Mac system with Sage. FlexRAID has some similarities, but isn't the same.

If unRAID had/were a Windows driver/service I'd be all over it, and I'd have it running on my SageTV server already. As it stands I'm still hesitating for the reason you mention, I don't want another machine.

I DO see the advantages of UnRAID, however, I'm just not convinced i even NEED any sort of RAID for a media server... certainly not to the point of running another system. It's all recorded TV, which wouldn't be a catastrophic loss, or Ripped DVD's/BluRay's that are stored in the next room. I have thought about running UnRAID in a VM on my windows server, but, really, the need hasn't gotten high enough in my mind to even go through that.

[stanger89]

Well of course you don't "need" it, but I personally wouldn't want to run that much storage without any redundancy. I don't actually put any recordings on redundant storage, my redundant storage is all for my ripped media.

The reason I "need" it on redundant storage is I've got a lot of time invested in ripping it all, and I don't want to do it again. Redundancy means I don't lose all that work if/when the most likely failure (disk failure) happens. FWIW, I've got 4.5TB on my NAS (ReadyNAS X-RAID), 1.75TB on my original SageTV server (via 3ware RAID-5), and another TB on a test unRAID/VM machine. So that's 7.25TB of data, and the way my storage is configured that's spread across 12 drives. That's a lot of locations to keep track of so the "RAID" function of grouping those into only 3 volumes makes management much easier, and the redundancy means I don't lose anything (or everything) when a drive fails. The redundancy on my ReadyNAS and 3ware arrays has already saved data a few times for me.

[eric3a]

I DO see the advantages of UnRAID, however, I'm just not convinced i even NEED any sort of RAID for a media server...

Same here. I'd love to have an easily expandable storage solution and have ran out of disk bays in my SageTV server.
Like you I am not sure I need a whole new motherboard, cpu, power supply, etc... just to add storage.

If you are out of room in the case, you can go with a second case, but I certainly don't see the point in devoting a processor, memory, motherboard, etc JUST to add storage to an existing system.

Could you please epxlain a little better how you would go about expanding storage without a NAS then?

Eric

[rrhorer]

Originally Posted by eric3a

Could you please epxlain a little better how you would go about expanding storage without a NAS then?

Eric

I probably should not butt-in on this discussion; but here's my $0.02 anyway. I use swappable stroage for archiving purposes. That tends to free up storage for the more mmediate needs (recording, etc.) of your server. Depending on your setup, you could go with one of the two solutions that I use or you could go with something like the following:

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16817198044

which would provide a lot of extra storage with Sata II access speeds. I cannot recommend this device from my own experience (I have no experience with it); it is simply one that a quick search on NewEgg (using "Best Rating") produced. You would need a rear panel esata port, either directly from the motherboard or from a add-on card.

If a four bay enclosure is more than you need or want, I am quite happy with the following device:

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...-031-_-Product

It fits in a spare external 5 1/4 drive bay and uses one of the SATA II ports on the motherboard. However, if I understand your problem, the necessary SATA port is not available and you may, instead, be interested in the following solution:

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16817153071

Again, it would be best to use an esata connector. If esata is not an option, consider the one I use:

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...-066-_-Product

It is stricly usb 2 but still quite useable.

[eric3a]

Thanks.
I welcome all solutions!

I'm dreaming of adding a lot of storage (say eventually 12 drives or more), hence the appeal of a NAS... Maybe that's what I'll end up with.
Eric

[Fuzzy]

There are a lot of options out there.. the funny thing is, there are a lot of 'storage' cases, designed for eSATA, or SAS, or whatever, all geared towards hot-swap bays and such... all overpriced for what they do, especially compared to any cheap microatx case. You can buy a couple eSATA port multipliers for cheap, with an eSATA backplane adapter connected to your server's motherboard, or cheap SATA card, and turn any 'scrap' pc case with cheap power supply into a huge storage case. Since most of our servers are in a remote closet or something, appearance doens't matter, and really, neither does space (you could probably figure out a way to store a couple HD-PVR's in the empty case-space as well). Just takes some creativity. As for the power supply, there are a couple ways to go, you can 'slave' if off the main server's PS, with a relay, or, the simpler solution, just leave it on all the time...

Either way, a budget microATX case, with PS, will cost you 1/10th the cost of a comparable 'storage enclosure', and not really have any drawbacks.

[eric3a]

Thanks Fuzzy: Much appreciated.
I hadn't realized there were such things as eSATA port multipliers. Do you know if you can daisy chain these or if they must be in parallel? Just thinking that it'd be better to have the storage box linked to the server by 1 eSATA cable only, and there the eSATA would be multiplied as often as needed. First iteration, 5 HDs, 2 daisy chain gives 9, etc...
If not, I have 6 (currently used) eSATA headers on my motherboard, so that gives me a max theoratical of 30 HDs!

I fit your assumptions exactly: My SageTV server is in a a closet, so esthetics do not matter. The server is on all the time, and the extra storage box would also be on all the time. Like many of us, I also have a spare case or 2, so this shouldn't be expensive at all. Best of all it is scaleable: Just pop in another HD when needed.

I dont really care for complicated back-ups. Some redundany would be nice, but I can always record again.

Eric