WHS Performance Issues?

[Evil_Attorney]

I know a few of you use Windows Home Server, so I thought I would post here first. Basically, large file transfers onto/off of the hard drive slow the operating system down to the point that it is unresponsive for about 30 seconds or more.

Some background, my server recently died and I used this opportunity to get a smaller, more efficient HP EX495. This model comes with some media conversion/streaming software that I turned off and windows search, which I uninstalled.

I filled up the bays with two 2 tb drives and a 1.5 tb drive (total two 2tb and two 1.5 tb). I installed Sage and copied over about 1 tb of data (TV shows and movies) to a share with duplication turned off initially (I later turned it on after the transfer).

Any time I would copy files over ethernet or from another hard drive (not added to the pool yet), the OS screeches to a halt and any other operations and transfers slow way, way down.

The end result is that Sage performance sucks. It previously took about 3 seconds max to get a live TV show streaming to a client. Now it takes at least 5-10 seconds. Also, there is now about a 5 second pause between live shows. I had much better performance on my old system via Raid mirroring.

Has anyone had similar issues? Am I doing something wrong?

[dead_ferrets]

I would be surprised if this was a WHS issue. I occasionally copy substantial data files, e.g., blu-ray rip over ethernet to my WHS and I haven't noticed much (if any) of a performance impact on the OS.

With respect to streaming during the transfer, I'm not sure I ever noticed an issue either. Shouldn't we expect a small amount of lag in the stream initiating since the transfer is taking up some disk i/o?

Sorry I can't be of more help but next time I do a disk transfer I'll be more observant to see if I notice any of this.

Oh and I saw your posting in another thread. If you're running the new v7 of Sage then formatting to 64 clusters is no longer required and FWIW I have my recording drive in the WHS drive pool.

[Evil_Attorney]

I was playing around with it last night. I turned off duplication for the recorded TV directory. After that, I could record two HD shows and stream a blu-ray without any problem. I suspect that as each show is recorded, WHS begins the duplication process shortly after, which is degrading performance.

DF, do you have duplication turned on for your Sage recordings directory?

[KarylFStein]

FYI, I have duplication turned on for all shares including TV recordings, (plus real-time comskip processing), and my OS disk is a RAID-1 array. I stress tested it once, but forget the details. Anyway, it was at least 2 recordings (1 or both HD), and 2 playbacks going at once along with comskip running on the recordings. If I remember, the only slow-down I saw was you'd get the spinning circle for 1 - 2 seconds when a commercial was skipped. But, it was unscientific and I didn't add file transfers to the mix. I mean, I do transfer large files to it and haven't seen any issues with that, but never saw if that affected playback. On the other hand, this is a Q6600-based machine with 3G RAM, so guessing more power, (and power draw), than an OEM device. Maybe HP could help?

[Evil_Attorney]

I have a 2.5hz dual core with 2 gig of ram. I would think that would be enough to do fine. Also, the SMART status of all hard disks checks out fine. I doubt HP could help but I may use them as a last resort.

The other thought is that maybe my hard drives are going into PIO mode. However, I am unable to check on their state. When I go to the disk controller in the device manager, it doesn't have the "Advanced" button that would normally show that info.

[dead_ferrets]

I have folder duplication turned off for all folders except photos so that could be playing a role. Especially if you see a big performance change when switch on/off.

[sic0048]

What SageTV version are you running? V6 or V7.

[Evil_Attorney]

V7. Would that matter? I get performance issues when Sage isn't recording and files are being copied to a duplicated share.

[sic0048]

I suspect that using only two drives and 2gb ram is part of the problem. When the duplication process starts, it is probably banging on the two drives pretty hard and using a decent amount of RAM.

I'm running WHS too, but don't use the file duplication on my Sage recordings. In my household, there simply isn't any TV that is so important that it needs to be duplicated. I do use duplication on other important folders/files.

[Evil_Attorney]

I think you are correct that duplication is the problem. I have had it turned off for recordings for the last day and a half or so and everything has been streaming very smoothly. I am a little disappointed that I can't duplicate these files. My previous server had all hard drives in RAID 1 mode, so this seems like a step down.

[sic0048]

You might try adding more HDs and RAM - especially if this is a long term goal anyway. I suspect that spreading out the duplication over several drives will help allow the system to do other R/W during the duplication process. Extra RAM should help with this too.

PS - I didn't think you could even use duplication unless you had 3 or more drives attached, because WHS wants to leave the system drive only for tombstones and use at least two other drives for duplication. But I must be wrong. Still, getting at least a third drive in there would probably do wonders for your system and make sure your data is more secure. Right now if the system is recording information on the system drive, you could loose data and the tombstones in the event of a failure which is bad.

[Evil_Attorney]

I have 4 drives total which are only about 1/3 full each. As for the ram, this is a compact, HP EX495 which I think only has one memory slot. I assume a 3gig memory stick will be a little pricey. I'll probably stick with the 2gig and no duplication for now. I wish there were some settings to help determine when (i.e., time or disk load) duplication can occur.

[OneOfMany]

Originally Posted by Evil_Attorney

I think you are correct that duplication is the problem. I have had it turned off for recordings for the last day and a half or so and everything has been streaming very smoothly. I am a little disappointed that I can't duplicate these files. My previous server had all hard drives in RAID 1 mode, so this seems like a step down.

In my case, there are recordings I want to keep, and those that I just want to watch and usually discard.

I remote into my server periodically and copy the series that are keepers into appropriate TV or Movie diresctories that ARE duplicated. After a refresh of media, everything gets itself sorted out.

Grant