Can you have two Sage servers use the same wiz.bin file?

[wayner]

I have a server running Sage and a separate server running WHS. I have a second Sage license for the WHS box but this box doesn't have any tuners. Assuming that I use the same UNC paths for all media files (ie \\server1\videos, \\server1\tv ) could I reinstall Sage on the WHS server and copy over my wiz.bin from server1?

Could I then continue to update the wiz.bin on a daily basis and have all media files available?

Or is there a better way to accomplish this?

[fidget]

You should be able to start with the same wiz.bin file, but there really isn't a way to keep them in sync. As far as I know, they are only written when the server shuts down. It may be written at ore times, but I doubt you could predict when.

[nyplayer]

Originally Posted by wayner

I have a server running Sage and a separate server running WHS. I have a second Sage license for the WHS box but this box doesn't have any tuners. Assuming that I use the same UNC paths for all media files (ie \\server1\videos, \\server1\tv ) could I reinstall Sage on the WHS server and copy over my wiz.bin from server1?

Could I then continue to update the wiz.bin on a daily basis and have all media files available?

Or is there a better way to accomplish this?

Why not just start SageTV with the client switch and connect to the one with the tuners? A regular SageTV install can be used as a client.

Read your PDF Doc.

[wayner]

I am aware of that and I use that functionality but there are at least two reasons to do ths:

1. Have redundant systems so that if Server1 goes down then Server2 has all of the content and you can switch to it in 30 secs with a reboot of an Extender
2. Sage doesn't scale well as the JVM starts to die at around 6-7 extenders. If you had two identical systems you could run 5 extenders off of Server1 and 5 extenders off of Server2.

[nyplayer]

You might be able to get away with it since one server has no tuners... if You put the wiz.bin on a seperate share then change the Sage properties to reflect the location.,, central folder

This way the watch Statuses will be updated.

[Fuzzy]

What I would recommend in this situation:

Run the server with the tuners as the 'primary' sagetv server. It will handle all the recording, etc.
Run the WHS server as the 'secondary' sagetv server. It would not do any recording, but it could handle playback on a few of your extenders (ones perhaps not used as often). If you set the secondary server's Media Center Import paths to point to the primary server's Recording folders, it will bring in those recordings. SageTV v7 embeds metadata in the recordings, so they will appear the same to the secondary server connected extenders, just needing a library refresh on the secondary server to pick up any new recordings on the primary.

An even better solution, though, would be to just send me a couple of those extra extenders, so you don't have to be burdened with running two separate servers..

[wayner]

What about reading in the initial metadata for video files that are either Sage V6 recordings or video files not from Sage - what is the best way to do that? Some of the data was manually entered - can I deal with this by having PrimaryServer create .properties files? Will the secondary server then load metdata by reading the .properties files when it scans the folders for the first time? Maybe that is a better idea that screwing around with the wiz.bin files.

I currently use UNC paths on the primary server so the folder names will be the same on both servers - ie \\PrimaryServer\Media\TV , \\PrimaryServer\Media\Videos so all of the file properties should be identical on both servers, assuming that they use the same AiringID and ShowID.

[Fuzzy]

yes, properties files should work. the AiringID won't be of much use on the secondary server, as it won't necessarily have and guide data... that's another thing, you won't have guide data, or tuners, and as such, won't have livetv.

Aside from that, the only other options if you are looking to have THAT many viewing locations, is to go to PC clients... PC clients don't take up much server memory if any at all.

[nyplayer]

I did some quick testing on my test machine and laptop.

I shared the SAGETV folder that contains the WIZ.bin

\\TESTSERVER\SageTV


I then installed SageTV on my laptop and changed the properties file... no tuner on laptop. Default directories. No changes. Did not even point to the server recording directories.

wizard/db_backup_file=\\\\TESTSERVER\\SageTV\\Wiz.bak
wizard/db_file=\\\\TESTSERVER\\SageTV\\Wiz.bin.

Conclusion.

1.Saw all recordings when I connect to laptop.
2. Could not view any shows currently recording... get message no encoder to tune.
3. Was able to watch any show with all the metadata including the imports... without defining them in the secondary server. Could mark shows watched and delete them with no problem.
4. No liveTV when connected to secondary server. (No Tuners)

[wayner]

This is partially an issue of too many extenders but I also want to have my backup system in a state where it is "good to go" if something happens to my main system.

I am going to post this in the BMT forum as that could be useful in this exercise as well.

[wayner]

Originally Posted by nyplayer

1.Saw all recordings when I connect to laptop.
2. Could not view any shows currently recording... get message no encoder to tune.
3. Was able to watch any show with all the metadata including the imports... without defining them in the secondary server. Could mark shows watched and delete them with no problem.
4. No liveTV when connected to secondary server. (No Tuners)

Very cool, thanks. I will try that tonight. I like the result which is that as long as I have a good wiz.bin file then I can move it to another Sage server. The only problem is that if Sage is down then there is a good probabilty that you may not be able to access video files on that Sage server as the reason that Sage is down (corrupt hard drive, hardware failure, etc) will cause the network mapped drives to also be unavailable.

I guess this is a good reason to use a NAS or something similar for at least some of your content if you want your setup to be as fault tolerant as possible- maybe not Recently Recorded TV but for archived TV and other video files.

[GKusnick]

If you want scaling to large numbers of clients you should be using SageTV Client instead of extenders. The software Client is designed to offload UI processing and JVM overhead from the server; extenders aren't.

For redundancy I would say image your server daily and have backup hardware handy that you can restore an image to as needed. At most you'd lose a few hours of downtime this way. But trying to keep two systems continuously in sync and ready to go on a moment's notice is probably more trouble than it's worth in my opinion.

[wayner]

The first point is moot unless Sage unlocks client licenses. The backup server already has Sage running and the machine is performing regular WHS duties. Why not have it ready to go so that I can restore Sage service in about one minute rather than a few hours?

It is available now as a backup but I don't have all of the media libraries configured. But my wife has used it when the primary server failed for one reason or another and I wasn't home.

Happy wife = Happy life

[Fuzzy]

Well, for starters, you already HAVE a second server license you aren't using (except for this excersise) so that can be used as a client - that's one less extender in your setup - PM me for the address to send the extra extender... Secondly, you don't NEED to use multiple licenses for this if all you are looking for is the backup capabilities. In that case, all you really need to deal with is keeping the files backed up. You won't be using both servers at the same time, and therefore, are not violating the EULA by using the same license on each.