What hardware do I need for server -- 6 tv's

[mitchedo]

I know this question is asked a lot, but I'm going to ask it again. I need to build a server -- what do I need?

I just ordered 2 HDHomerun dual tuner thingies to connect to my off-air antenna. No cable. No satellite.

I am new to HD home-built hardware. I'm coming from DishNetwork and its excellent DVR's. They're great, but I'm tired of $117/month.

All I know for sure is I will use a single drive (maybe RAID1 here) for the OS and SageTV, and a RAID1 with two 1TB WD Black drives for recordings. I might like to use the server to be able to view one TV, though I'm not against buying another Sage extender.

I have a Gigabit network.
I have 3 Windows PC's -- no problem there; just buy client licenses.
I have 3 televisions -- each would need some way to see SageTV.

I need to build a server, either Windows XP or Windows 7 Pro (32 or 64)

I suppose the max load on the server would be to record 4 shows from the HDHomeruns while streaming 4 shows.

How much processor power do I need to do such a thing? Would a dual-core Athlon work? Is 4GB RAM enough? Is a single core Athlon and 2GB RAM enough? I already have that (would have to be XP)

Should I use the server to view shows on one TV or leave it as a server?

[graywolf]

Originally Posted by mitchedo

Should I use the server to view shows on one TV or leave it as a server?

Depends, mileage may vary.

For myself, run XP and could not get quality good enough for WAF. I'm not good at various codecs, A/V stuff. I ended up getting the HD200 and WAF improved significantly.

I have read that Win7 default codecs are a lot better but do not have a Win7 machine.

You need to take into consideration WAF (if its a factor), how much tinkering you want to do with codecs and how knowledgable you are with the A/V stuff, simplicity of the HD200 (but does cost and not currently in stock)

So should you? You'll have to decide.
Could you? Definitely you could and many here do.

[bcjenkins]

For 6 TVs -

I would use all HD Extenders rumors from the HD200 Stock thread seem to point to a September renewal of stock. Put your server on a good quality GB network switch as well. You can also consider adapter teaming for increased BW depending on the typ of content you'll be serving.

The server can actually be low powered but huge on RAM and HD storage space with a focus on disk I/O.

Increase the available memory for the JVM (I use 1024MB for 4 extenders 8GB total RAM in the server)

B

[wayner]

2GB RAM should be more than enough. Assuming that your server is not a playback device then you really don't need much CPU for the core Sage activities. However if you intend to do other stuff like transcoding then you will want more CPU.

For your TVs I would highly recommend the Sage HD-200 extender (or its successor) at your TVs as they work perfectly are totally silent and pretty much maintenance free - you just have to do the odd firmware upgrade.

I would personally recommend not using your server for playback but there may be other reasons why you would want a PC by your TV.

[Beefcake550]

Ok, from experience, every asks the wrong questions.

Ok, so you have 2 HDHRs, I'd get a seperate NIC on the server for just these. You DON'T want to put both of them on the gig network. On a seperate NIC, hookup to your Gig Network. Done...

Now, 4 recording with at most 6 watching? Do you plan on doing any comercial skipping? that would be another read stream. Point is CPU/Mem power is not the question, it's hard drive power. Go with running Win7 Pro, any dual/quad core will be fine. I'd go with 4GB of RAM, you definitely won't need more. This newer machine should ONLY be a server, I'd suggest NOT using it as a playback device.

Now, I'd get 1 OS drive + 4 hard drives (one for each tuner). Set Sage to have each tuner record to it's own drive. The point is you want to spread around all the media files as muich as possible so you have the largest number of spindles handling to IO load...

another question is, how many client will actually be viewing at the same time?

[najames]

Interesting Beefcake, I never thought of individual drives for each tuner like you mentioned!!

I built a WHS server setup (storage pool) after reading about it here, bought 3 HD200 clients and it has been awesome since June 2009. No codecs, no video cards, central storage, high WAF. I restarted a HD200 client a couple times and that is about it, updated firmware a couple times. Actually, if I just had the HDHomerun on the server it would never need rebooting, or much maintenance. The HDPVR worked good except for a short time when I **think** the Comcast box was updated and powered itself down.

Watching/recording really doesn't use much CPU. The thing that makes it beg for mercy is running MediaShrink, all 4 cores are pegged at 100% during Handbrake. I've only tested this on a few recordings though.

I have been researching for a couple weeks and am considering downsizing the server CPU/motherboard. I may even consider Linux, but WHS has worked really well. I'm going to update to SageTV 7 then too. I've been running a pretty vanilla SageTV and want to add some goodies in round 2.

[Beefcake550]

najames... I went with WHS and 3 HD200 clients as well. WAF went through the roof with that decision.

I take it one step further as well. Since I use the drive pool for recordings, I wrote a tool called "Drive Balancer". What happens is this....Sage records all shows to the pool, WHS puts all files on the hard drive with the least amount of free space. Then, my tool manipulates WHS's drive pool algorithm to then evenly distribute the files on the "loaded" drive with the latest recordings to all the other drives. viola....you have the maximum number of drive spindles in a random environment. It has served me well now for over 2 years.

Yeah.. same thing for me is comskip/showanalyzer. I use SJQ to semi-intelligently start comercial skippping detection when no extender is connected to the server and nothing it being recorded at the moment. I run comskip single threaded so only one core per job (MPEG2 recordings are hard drive limited while H264 recordings are CPU limited). I let SJQ have two "slots" (cores) which can either only ever have 1 MPEG2 or 2 H264 recordings at a time.

-Brian

[wrems]

Beefcake, I’m not saying the setup you’re recommending is wrong, at the same time, it seems unnecessary to run 2 nics. If one has a descent GigE switch it should be fine to handle all the network traffic...

To each their own. I do think that its best to keep it simple, less points of failure/problems. I would set up on 1 switch first and if for some reason it becomes a problem then think about segregating network traffic across 2 nics.

My .02.

Oh, and don't forget to put a dedicated NIC in your server. Don't use the onboard Ethernet controller get a descent Intel controller or similar.

[Beefcake550]

wrems - I hear ya... I did setup my network with the HDHR prior to their optimization where it only records the one subchannel you care about. It did cause problems with 2 clients reading at the same time. So, when I did my final server build, I found a board with 2 NICs built in (and yes, I agree off board NICs are better).

Obviously, YMMV and it's probably worth trying it with only one NIC first. I did and got burned, so I always suggest seperate NICs when going with 2 HDHRs or multiple clients at the same time.

[ChaOConnor]

Does anyone have a recommendation for a decent seperate NIC to go into a WHS box? I've been using the onboard and have various network issues (now solved i think), but I'm wondering if it was the onboard NIC.

[thomaszoo]

Originally Posted by Beefcake550

...

Set Sage to have each tuner record to it's own drive.

...

OK, so how is this done. I just went through the setup screens and couldn't find any options for this.

Wayne

[Beefcake550]

Originally Posted by ChaOConnor

Does anyone have a recommendation for a decent seperate NIC to go into a WHS box? I've been using the onboard and have various network issues (now solved i think), but I'm wondering if it was the onboard NIC.

PCI - http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16833106121
PCIe - http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16833106033

both are $30 and well worth the extra cost over a no name brand.

[Beefcake550]

Originally Posted by thomaszoo

OK, so how is this done. I just went through the setup screens and couldn't find any options for this.

Wayne

Check this thread....
http://forums.sagetv.com/forums/showthread.php?t=16961

the value is
mmc/encoders/<tuner number>/forced_video_storage_path_prefix=<full path to directory>

Import thing is that this is a limit...not a new place. i.e. - you have to have each area in the list of recording dirs in the setup. This just points each tuner to a specified place.

[evilpenguin]

Originally Posted by Beefcake550

Ok, so you have 2 HDHRs, I'd get a seperate NIC on the server for just these. You DON'T want to put both of them on the gig network. On a seperate NIC, hookup to your Gig Network. Done...
...
Now, I'd get 1 OS drive + 4 hard drives (one for each tuner). Set Sage to have each tuner record to it's own drive. The point is you want to spread around all the media files as muich as possible so you have the largest number of spindles handling to IO load...

Yep, i'm with Beefcake. That's all solid advice.

[reggie14]

Originally Posted by Beefcake550

Go with running Win7 Pro

Out of curiosity, why? If money were no object, sure, but I'm not sure this is that important. While I'd generally prefer Win7 to WinXP (using 32-bit to try to avoid driver signing issues), I'm not sure its worth buying a license if you already have a WinXP license you're not planning on using it as a client.

I'm also not sure Pro offers anything particularly valuable over Home Premium, unless you really like Remote Desktop over VNC (which I actually do, but I'm probably in the minority). Pro has backup functionality not found in Home Premium, but its inability to do incremental backups to a network drive make it a non-starter for me.

Originally Posted by Beefcake550

Now, I'd get 1 OS drive + 4 hard drives (one for each tuner). Set Sage to have each tuner record to it's own drive. The point is you want to spread around all the media files as muich as possible so you have the largest number of spindles handling to IO load...

Here's my main question: how do you load balance then? Sage only uses the second tuner if the first one is in use. It only uses the third tuner if the first two are in use. I'm not even sure Sage will automatically move to the second tuner if the drive attached to the first tuner is full (I suspect you just get an error).

Does anyone know if Sage implemented a new load balancing algorithm for recordings? I thought I saw a post a while back that suggested Sage was going to more intelligently pick a recording drive so that it wouldn't just send all simultaneous recordings to the drive with the most space. If they did that then it wouldn't make sense to have a dedicated tuner for each drive.

[Spectrum]

In V7 there is an option in detailed setup -> general -> Video Recording Path Optimization Style that can be set for space or for bandwidth

[mitchedo]

Urf! I need to spend some more time lurking here...

What about onboard SATA RAID? I HATE it when a drive goes bad. I've been running RAID 1 on most every PC in the house; it's saved my fanny more than once. It seems the bigger the drives get, the more often they go bad. I've taken to buying WD Black in hopes they'll be better.

What about this?
2 drives RAID 1 for OS
2 drives RAID 1 for video
2 drives RAID 1 for video
and that fills the onboard SATA ports.

Crud! Will the 500W power supply I have be enough for all those drives? 28A, 336W on the +12v rail.

There would be at MOST -- 4 recordings and 4 viewings at the same time. More likely not more than 2 recordings with 4 viewings would be more likely. There just isn't that much on OTA.

As far as NICs go, is there any issue with running a PCIe and a PCI? Could I use the onboard NIC at all, or do I need 3 NICs?

This is getting spendy. My cart at Newegg is already at $700 for the server and I need a case still.

700 server + 200 HDHomeruns + 600 for the Sage stuff eats a whole year of satellite savings.

[david1234]

Originally Posted by Beefcake550

Check this thread....
http://forums.sagetv.com/forums/showthread.php?t=16961

the value is
mmc/encoders/<tuner number>/forced_video_storage_path_prefix=<full path to directory>

Import thing is that this is a limit...not a new place. i.e. - you have to have each area in the list of recording dirs in the setup. This just points each tuner to a specified place.

I just don't see the value of this... I'm sure I'm missing something, but wouldn't one drive just fill up more quickly, since the first tuner in the list gets used the most often? And then, that tuner won't be able to record at all! Sage doesn't round-robin it's use of the tuners does it?

[wrems]

You may want to post your server specs for the group to see. May be able to cut corners here and there. As far as running RAID for your recording directories you'll get mixed feelings. I could care less if I lost a drive full of recordings. They can be re-recorded, you can catch them on Hulu, go and buy the TV DVD series when it comes out etc. IMO, it's not worth doing RAID on your recording drives. Pictures, home videos etc yes raid can be helpful, but its still not backup.

You can always do daily images of your OS drive too with something like Acronis. If that drive fails you won't lose much... And you'll be back up and running in no time, not as fast as RAID but can save you some money.

Raid and other stuff can always be added later as your needs change/grow. The basic initial setup doesn't necessarily need to cost an arm and a leg.

[mitchedo]

I have the following in my cart:

2 WD Blue 500 GB 7200 rpm drives --- $40 ea (on sale) and free shipping
4 WD Black 1 TB 7200 rpm drives ---- $80 ea (on sale) and free shipping
3 Intel NICS ------------------------ $30 each and total $3.00 shipping
Rosewill Case with lots of fans -------- $45 and $10 shipping
AMD Athlon X2 250 (3.0GHz) --------- $63 and free shipping
Biostar TA785G3HD AMD 785 mobo -- -$65, free ship, $10 MIR
G.SKILL 4GB (2 x 2 GB) DDR3 1333 (PC3 10600) $81

Ultra 500W power supply I already bought.

No RAID and 5 x 750 GB HDDs would be $60 each -- $300 instead of $400. The 750's are $10 cheaper than the 500's. Without RAID I definitely would have to buy the black WD drives.

I don't see anywhere else I could skimp. It's a hundred bucks diff to go non-RAID -- not worth it if RAID performance will be adequate. Gotta think about WAF.

If I built this with Win 7, I'd use the copy I'm currently dual-booting with (never boot to it), so I could use 4 of the 6 GB of DDR2 RAM in my current machine. ...if I could find a good mobo that still uses DDR2.