Server upgrade options and futurproofing

[BobPhoenix]

Originally Posted by drewg

Maybe a dumb question, but why are you guys using ESXi? You're like a bunch of battered wives... Have you tried KVM under Linux, HyperV under W2K8, or even VirtualBox?

I can guess why highpoint does not have ESX support -- ESX's developer program does not want to deal with smaller hardware vendors, and makes things as difficult as possible for us with massive amounts of red tape, and the buggiest certification tests I've ever seen. As a driver author for a small hardware company, there is nothing more I would like than to drop ESX support. They are a huge, massive PITA to deal with. About an order of magnitude worse than WHQL.

Drew

Linux is not my OS so KVM runing on it really isn't going to work for me but that would be the best alternative. HyperV doesn't like my nic chip straight out of the box and I haven't researched how to add a driver to the standalone HyperV yet. Need it to be free so can't use W2K8 also I want my SageTV software on a VM rather than having other software in a VM on my SageTV box. Virtual Box only does pass through on Linux so I would use KVM instead but once again not my OS. ESXi was easy to install especially with the instructional post over on the unRAID forums to use as a guide.

[bbig119]

This weekend I was finally able to get Sage working on my new server build. Sandy knocked out my power for two weeks, and Saturday was the earliest Verizon could send a tech out to replace the cable card for my HDHR prime; the one I got in the mail wouldn't activate.

I've got 16 gig of ram, 3570k, running windows 7 on an old 75 gig WD Raptor drive that I found unused at work. I don't think I'll be able to easily contain the OS within that 75 gig, so I'm considering options for larger drives. I have an old 400 gig drive that would work, but I'm curious if I would benefit from a SSD.

I realize that SSDs won't make a huge difference in servers, but Sage (primarily phoenix) has tons of thumbnails for various media. Would an SSD speed up the loading time, and general use on either my client computer or the HD300.

[MattHelm]

Originally Posted by bbig119

...I don't think I'll be able to easily contain the OS within that 75 gig, so I'm considering options for larger drives. I have an old 400 gig drive that would work, but I'm curious if I would benefit from a SSD.

Wow, what are you putting on there? My OS sizes are around 25GB for Windows 7, and less than 15GB for XP.

Originally Posted by bbig119

I realize that SSDs won't make a huge difference in servers, but Sage (primarily phoenix) has tons of thumbnails for various media. Would an SSD speed up the loading time, and general use on either my client computer or the HD300.

The SSD will mainly help with boot up, but it will help all programs across the board, some. I really like the new SSDs.

[panteragstk]

Originally Posted by MattHelm

Wow, what are you putting on there? My OS sizes are around 25GB for Windows 7, and less than 15GB for XP.




The SSD will mainly help with boot up, but it will help all programs across the board, some. I really like the new SSDs.

It helps comskip processing too.

[bbig119]

Originally Posted by MattHelm

Wow, what are you putting on there? My OS sizes are around 25GB for Windows 7, and less than 15GB for XP.




The SSD will mainly help with boot up, but it will help all programs across the board, some. I really like the new SSDs.

Yeah, I'm not sure why its so high. Right now its around 50 GB. I don't have much installed: acronis true image, disk director, sage, browers..nothing huge. I should probably look more closely at this.

I ordered two 180 gb intel 330 SSDs today @ $100 each. One will go into a box I'm building for my inlaws, and the other could either be for my laptop or the server.

[BobPhoenix]

Originally Posted by bbig119

Yeah, I'm not sure why its so high. Right now its around 50 GB. I don't have much installed: acronis true image, disk director, sage, browers..nothing huge. I should probably look more closely at this.

I ordered two 180 gb intel 330 SSDs today @ $100 each. One will go into a box I'm building for my inlaws, and the other could either be for my laptop or the server.

Where are you storing your images and or temp files for acronis? If you have it set to go to the C drive then there is your 25GB over normal size.

[Fuzzy]

Originally Posted by panteragstk

It helps comskip processing too.

Only if your recordings are ON the SSD - which would not be wise. either way, with 16GB of RAM, I'm not sure an SSD would perform any better once booted up than a good HDD and large disc cache. But, since he's already purchased the SSD's, might as well use them. You can still cache the recording drives, which WILL speed up comskip considerably if it is run live. The last 512MB or so of a recording still residing in the cache will make comskipping not require additional drive accesses.

[panteragstk]

Originally Posted by Fuzzy

Only if your recordings are ON the SSD - which would not be wise. either way, with 16GB of RAM, I'm not sure an SSD would perform any better once booted up than a good HDD and large disc cache. But, since he's already purchased the SSD's, might as well use them. You can still cache the recording drives, which WILL speed up comskip considerably if it is run live. The last 512MB or so of a recording still residing in the cache will make comskipping not require additional drive accesses.

From my experience comskip still uses quite a few I/O's on the primary hard disk as well as the recording drives. When I had 4+ processes running it would make my server run pretty slow. Put in the SSD and didn't change anything else and haven't had the problem since.