Planning New WHS2011 Sage Server Build - Please comment

[WellThen]

Thanks guys. I just watched a video that was a gentle introduction to ESXi (from youtube, "Eli the computer guy") and I think I'm going to have to give this a try.

One thing I realized, if I am going to run ESXi, it won't really be practical to have this machine act as a Sage client/display in a pinch, right? It's really kind of headless, and I need to retain the client I was thinking about retiring in the basement where the server will live.

[BobPhoenix]

Originally Posted by WellThen

Thanks guys. I just watched a video that was a gentle introduction to ESXi (from youtube, "Eli the computer guy") and I think I'm going to have to give this a try.

One thing I realized, if I am going to run ESXi, it won't really be practical to have this machine act as a Sage client/display in a pinch, right? It's really kind of headless, and I need to retain the client I was thinking about retiring in the basement where the server will live.

Unless you install a video card that is able to pass through then NO. It would have to be a headless server. So far passing through the built in video of a CPU is not an option. At least in ESXi don't know if it is possible in other products for sure. But suspect it doesn't work yet in the others either.

When I bought my i7 3770S I was planning on setting up a 4th ESXi server and passing through the built in Video to a VM. It wasn't until after I bought the parts that I learned pass through works with a limited number of video cards and not built in video on the CPU. My board is a micro ATX and I needed all the PCIe slots for HDD controller and tuners. No room for a video card and even if I did have room it would be waisting the built in video that works great for playback. So on that box I am using Virtual Box on Windows for a couple of VMs.

[Skirge01]

Originally Posted by BobPhoenix

I have three instances of ESXi running 3 SageTV servers. All are 5.0 ESXi. I didn't want to upgrade because I was using PCI pass through and the first release of 5.1 broke that along with USB pass through. As far as I know the only thing that might still be broken in 5.1 is USB pass through.

I was passing through a PCI based USB 2.0 controller for my HDPVRs on one ESXi instance and an nVidia Dual TV card (for SVideo SDTV recordings) on another ESXi instance. PCIe cards had no problems with pass through in 5.1 ESXi - from what I've read anyway.

Ha... did you write about that in another thread? I'm thinking that's how I heard about those issues initially.

@WellThen: BobPhoenix pretty much nailed it regarding video. I'll just +1 that.

[WellThen]

Thanks to both BobPhoenix and Skirge01 for the info.

Hmm, I see what you mean about wasting a perfectly good video adapter on the processor, but I'm tempted. If I understand correctly, if I install a video card that could passthrough with ESXi, and attach that card to my projector, my experience with the projector would be that I was connected to the VM (let's say Win7 or 8) that the Sage Service and Client are running on. I guess I would also need to get some RF Keyboard and Mouse to passthrough to that VM, and I would be good to go. I saw in the video I watched the idea of assigning the CD drive to the VM so you can load the O/S, I'm guessing the passthroughs are similar? Tempting...

[Skirge01]

My pleasure and you're understanding perfectly. I would definitely do some research on GPU passthrough to see what others have experienced. That's the type of thing I was talking about where people wind up getting frustrated. USB 2.0 passthrough works quite well and you don't need to worry about whether or not the device is supported (yes, similar to the CD drive). It's the PCI/e passthrough where the device would need to be supported in order for it to work. I believe there's SOME support for USB 3.0 passthrough, but I'd stick to 2.0 devices to be on the safe side.

[WellThen]

So, now that I'm planning on trying out ESXi, that 16gb of memory I've ordered is looking a little paltry. The 1.35v memory I had planned was going to save me 4 watts (as estimated by pcpartpicker.com) as opposed to 1.5v memory. But I can find 1.5v memory, at 1866, cheaper than the 1.35v. So, I'm thinking of replacing the 16GB of 1.35 at 1866 with 32GB of 1.5 at 1866.

Another thought. I picked a 250GB SSD because both WHS2011 and WS2012SE require a minimum of 160GB. Now that I'm hoping for ESXi as the bare metal O/S, do I still need to 250GB? Will I improve performance of ESXI if the VMs are actually stored on the SSD? Maybe I could give the WS2012SE VM 160GB for it's boot drive, and give the Win7/Sage VM 60GB? (If I create any more experimental VMs, they have to go onto one of the mechanical drives.) Does that make sense?

[WellThen]

A little more reading about ESXi, and I've seen the idea of booting ESXi from a USB drive, and using an SSD as a cache that ESXI can use when it runs short of RAM.

Based on all this, I drew a picture of my concept of the setup. Does this make sense?
https://picasaweb.google.com/lh/phot...eat=directlink

Is this setup likely to be effective with a Sage VM? Sage is the only thing on this box where I'm really concerned about performance. The other VM with WS2012SE is really just a file server and backup machine, so performance there is low priority.

[phelme]

Originally Posted by WellThen

Hey Phelme,

Which motherboard and BIOS are you running with your A10-6800? Perhaps you can lead the way!

Thanks.

MSI FM2-A75MA-E35

I'm on BIOS v2.0. There have been some glitches mentioned with the latest, 2.1, so I've steered clear.

The weird thing I'm having is it's not seeing more than 3 GB or RAM (I'm on 32 bit XP still). I got a a half gig more out of my old Gigabyte board. Not sure what's up with that yet.

[gplasky]

It's 32bit. You won't ever see more than 3.75 GB on 32 bit no matter how much memory you add.

Gerry

[Skirge01]

Originally Posted by WellThen

So, now that I'm planning on trying out ESXi, that 16gb of memory I've ordered is looking a little paltry. The 1.35v memory I had planned was going to save me 4 watts (as estimated by pcpartpicker.com) as opposed to 1.5v memory. But I can find 1.5v memory, at 1866, cheaper than the 1.35v. So, I'm thinking of replacing the 16GB of 1.35 at 1866 with 32GB of 1.5 at 1866.

Another thought. I picked a 250GB SSD because both WHS2011 and WS2012SE require a minimum of 160GB. Now that I'm hoping for ESXi as the bare metal O/S, do I still need to 250GB? Will I improve performance of ESXI if the VMs are actually stored on the SSD? Maybe I could give the WS2012SE VM 160GB for it's boot drive, and give the Win7/Sage VM 60GB? (If I create any more experimental VMs, they have to go onto one of the mechanical drives.) Does that make sense?

I'd go with the lower priced memory, since most people wouldn't be saving much money on their electric bill by dropping 4W. Where I chose to save power was with a more expensive, but lower TDP CPU. The i3770K is rated for 77W max, while the i3770T is rated for 45W. I felt that drop in power warranted the additional cost.

For the HDs, keep two things in mind. First, ESXi doesn't currently support TRIM. However, you most likely won't notice any degradation over time, but you should still see a speed improvement with the SSD over an HDD. I use 2 SSDs in my own server, as well as mechanical HDDs. Second, if you have a VM which will see heavy I/O usage, you may want to consider putting them on separate drives, so you don't find them competing with one another.

[WellThen]

Originally Posted by phelme

MSI FM2-A75MA-E35

I'm on BIOS v2.0. There have been some glitches mentioned with the latest, 2.1, so I've steered clear.

The weird thing I'm having is it's not seeing more than 3 GB or RAM (I'm on 32 bit XP still). I got a a half gig more out of my old Gigabyte board. Not sure what's up with that yet.

Thanks, Phelme. My Gigabyte GA-F2A85X-UP4 motherboard has arrived, just waiting for the CPU. Thanks for the heads up about BIOS versions, I'll keep that in mind.

[phelme]

Originally Posted by gplasky

It's 32bit. You won't ever see more than 3.75 GB on 32 bit no matter how much memory you add.

Gerry

Yep, that I know. But something in this MSI BIOS is hiding about 512 GB from what I had on the old Gigabyte board that was running on the same XP install. (what I'm basically seeing is 512 MB for video and 2.5 GB left for Windows; so only 3 GB)

MSI BIOS' are rather minimalist in their settings, so I can't tell if it's something to do with the AMD Fusion chipset or what.

Luckily it doesn't matter much as the SageTV server doesn't need a whole lot. I'll tackle this further when I make the jump from XP to that touch screen version.

[WellThen]

Originally Posted by Skirge01

I'd go with the lower priced memory, since most people wouldn't be saving much money on their electric bill by dropping 4W. Where I chose to save power was with a more expensive, but lower TDP CPU. The i3770K is rated for 77W max, while the i3770T is rated for 45W. I felt that drop in power warranted the additional cost.

For the HDs, keep two things in mind. First, ESXi doesn't currently support TRIM. However, you most likely won't notice any degradation over time, but you should still see a speed improvement with the SSD over an HDD. I use 2 SSDs in my own server, as well as mechanical HDDs. Second, if you have a VM which will see heavy I/O usage, you may want to consider putting them on separate drives, so you don't find them competing with one another.

Thanks for the advice, Skirge01. How are you using the SSDs in your server? As cache for ESXi, or as regular drives? Do you run the Sage VM from an SSD?

[BobPhoenix]

Originally Posted by phelme

Yep, that I know. But something in this MSI BIOS is hiding about 512 GB from what I had on the old Gigabyte board that was running on the same XP install. (what I'm basically seeing is 512 MB for video and 2.5 GB left for Windows; so only 3 GB)

MSI BIOS' are rather minimalist in their settings, so I can't tell if it's something to do with the AMD Fusion chipset or what.

Luckily it doesn't matter much as the SageTV server doesn't need a whole lot. I'll tackle this further when I make the jump from XP to that touch screen version.

Different boards allocate memory for IO devices differently which will affect how windows shows free memory. Your new board is allocating more space for IO devices on board. You could potentially turn off some of the onboard devices (parallel ports, serial ports, etc...) and get back some memory. Also if you have onboard graphics that doesn't have it's own memory you could try reducing it and get some back for windows. The easiest way to get it back however is to switch to a 64 bit os.

[Skirge01]

Originally Posted by WellThen

Thanks for the advice, Skirge01. How are you using the SSDs in your server? As cache for ESXi, or as regular drives? Do you run the Sage VM from an SSD?

I have one SSD as a cache drive, another SSD for SageTV, yet another SSD for Windows 7, and a single mechanical drive for both pfSense (firewall) & WHS2011. I also use the mechanical drive for any additional VMs I create and play around with. I have to say that I've run both with and without the cache drive, but have never noticed a difference. A newer, faster model SSD might change things, but I don't currently see a reason to test that theory, especially given the expense.

[BobPhoenix]

Originally Posted by Skirge01

I have one SSD as a cache drive, another SSD for SageTV, yet another SSD for Windows 7, and a single mechanical drive for both pfSense (firewall) & WHS2011. I also use the mechanical drive for any additional VMs I create and play around with. I have to say that I've run both with and without the cache drive, but have never noticed a difference. A newer, faster model SSD might change things, but I don't currently see a reason to test that theory, especially given the expense.

Since ESXi doesn't have trim I played it safe and went with WD Raptors for my datastores. A SATAIII SSD would be much faster and if I got one big enough with improved built in garbage collection I would switch to SSD. I prefer to spend my money on HDDs for my unRAID VMs instead.

[phelme]

Originally Posted by BobPhoenix

Also if you have onboard graphics that doesn't have it's own memory you could try reducing it and get some back for windows. The easiest way to get it back however is to switch to a 64 bit os.

Already have done that for video; it defaults to 740 MB and I've dropped it to 512 MB which helps a bit. I'm looking to moving to Win 8 64 Pro and an SSD for the server's boot drive.

[gminnick]

Originally Posted by maninblack_30

Just to throw some other thoughts in, I'm running 2 HP N54L Microservers, One running server 2008R2, with SageTV on it, and another running 2 virtual servers (SBS2011 and WHS 2011 plus 3 or 4 other VM's that I fire up and use for testing) these little boxes are amazing! Really, really quiet, low power, and compact. oh, and cheap too!
As long as you aren't doing real-time transcoding, they don't miss a beat.
I too got burned twice with the WHSv1 system drive failure on my old SageTV machine!

Fraser

How does it handle recording 2 shows while watching one previously recorded? How about recording 2 shows and watching an mkv with h.264 encoding? I just bought an N54L and testing Server 2012 R2 Essentials preview as a replacement WHS and I was wondering about buying a 2nd for SageTV just because they take up so little space. Of course I will need to be looking for a SageTV replacement at some point and would hope it would also do well with another program like XBMC or MediaPortal.

[sic0048]

For those of you that have multiple virtual machines - are you sharing NICs or do you add a NIC for each machine? Just curious to hear what others are doing.

Thanks!

[Skirge01]

I share the NICs for most of the VMs, however, pfSense has its own NICs for each connection type. I have additional NICs to use, but I haven't noticed any bottlenecks due... actually, considering that I do have the spinning circle at times in Sage, I wonder if I do have a bottleneck there. I think it's time to test that theory out and give each VM its own NIC. Thanks for the idea!