Show "Hoarders", how much space did you use?

[IVB]

oh thanks. Is that how its always been? Granted I haven't tried to move sage recordings since (V4? years), but I recall it being a royal PITA and I decided to never try it again. This seems pretty simple though.

Thanks to all for handholding me through this, greatly appreciated. I think i'll order 4x4TB for 12TB of space now, attempt tRaid but *not* directly record to it, use one of my existing 5x1TB as hugen says (that was me on G+ btw, IVB means "I am Vivek Bhatia". I'll look into creating a windows scheduled task to copy it over once per week in the wee hours so it'll still be set&forget.

I'm also curious to see if my power usage drops, right now the 5x1TB on the RocketRaid are always on, I wonder if tRaid will make a noticeable difference since it'll let disks spin down.

[BobPhoenix]

Originally Posted by IVB

oh thanks. Is that how its always been? Granted I haven't tried to move sage recordings since (V4? years), but I recall it being a royal PITA and I decided to never try it again. This seems pretty simple though.

Thanks to all for handholding me through this, greatly appreciated. I think i'll order 4x4TB for 12TB of space now, attempt tRaid but *not* directly record to it, use one of my existing 5x1TB as hugen says (that was me on G+ btw, IVB means "I am Vivek Bhatia". I'll look into creating a windows scheduled task to copy it over once per week in the wee hours so it'll still be set&forget.

I'm also curious to see if my power usage drops, right now the 5x1TB on the RocketRaid are always on, I wonder if tRaid will make a noticeable difference since it'll let disks spin down.

With earlier versions of SageTV there WERE problems when you moved recordings. AiringIDs would get reset for versions of SageTV before one of the 6.?? versions changed the reset point - sorry don't remember the version. That was supposed to have fixed the problems with the airing IDs changing after moving a file.

I don't think it did however. I still get recordings with airingIDs that have changed when I move them with v7.1.9. Because SageTV v7 stores the metadata in the file (or in properties files) they don't end up in imported media any more so I've just learned to live with it.

You can tell if the airingID doesn't match after moving a recording by seeing if the channel the recording was made on goes missing. For instance I have some "Castle" episodes that no longer have a channel listed in the recording info from last season (2012-2013) after moving them. One annoying thing that has never updated when a file is moved (at least for me) is: The tuner the recording was made on disappears even when the airingID remains the same after the move.

I check the airing ID out by using nielms web server. I look up the airingID for the recording in "past airings". The one with no associated media file any more. But was on the same time and channel the recording was made from. I check that airingID with the airingID that is in the file name of the media file. The "...123456789-0.mpg" in the file name.

[Skirge01]

Originally Posted by IVB

If I recall, you need to modify your WizBin if you change the drive letter something is recorded on, is that correct? What other steps do you need to do during that move?

While I'm working through my tRAID recording issue, I'm currently doing exactly as Fuzzy described. I'm not even manually running the re-scan as it's set to happen automatically every so often and it works just fine. Every few days, I'm manually copying them over to tRAID and then deleting them from the recording drive. Honestly, on the off chance the recording issue can't be resolved in tRAID, I'll probably just set up a batch file to copy the recordings over every few days. Since the array is used for computer backups, music, photos, and everything else we want access to, it's much easier to have a single network location to go to than playing file tetris across 10 drives.

[jerryt]

Originally Posted by Skirge01

While I'm working through my tRAID recording issue,

What was your recording issue?

Playback while the show was recording?

I am using WMC and TRAID

[Skirge01]

Originally Posted by jerryt

What was your recording issue?

Playback while the show was recording?

I am using WMC and TRAID

I'm guessing you figured it out since you posted in the tRAID forums. But, for others following the thread, yes, I currently cannot record to the array. I think I tested both live streaming, as well as watching something after it recorded, but both had the same issue. I have another tRAID release to test, but haven't gotten around to it yet.

[drvnbysound]

First, IVB - sorry for the thread jack Hopefully some of my questions may help you as well...

I've been waffling with the thought of virtualizing my STV setup for quite some time. The issue in the past is that I didn't have a compelling reason to do so - I had the hardware to dedicate to it and didn't really have anything else that I needed to run. Last week, some things changed... I'm now trying to implement some additional network security and it may be in my best interest (hardware wise) to setup an ESXi server and virtualize some a few of these applications. The STV server is using a Core2Quad 3.0GHz processor and currently has 8GB of DDR3 RAM. From what I've seen from a little bit of hardware monitoring it's VERY underutilized now as a dedicated STV server, which has me thinking about putting ESXi on it and virtualizing.

Having said that, I'm looking for a suggestion or a recommendation from those who have a lot more knowledge than I do and see if this make sense... first let me discuss a little about my system and 'requirements'. I have (2) HDHR tuners and (2) HD-PVRs, so technically I can record up to 6 channels at any given time. Regarding HDDs: I've got (2) 2TB drives (~80% free total) which I've 'dedicated' to movie rips (mainly DVDs and a hand full of BluRays). I also have (2) 500GB drives that I've 'dedicated' to DVR usage. I'm not all that concerned with the hoarding... while I like that I've not yet started to delete shows, we usually watch them the night they air or the day/night after, and I don't think we've re-watched any episode to date. Keeping them would likely be for historical use far from now. My main concern though is the movie library... currently it's not even RAIDed so a failure would lose me ~150+ movies (and a LOT of time that I spent).

My initial thoughts were to virtualize STV and build a separate unRAID box for storage of everything else. I'm glad I found this thread! It seems that recording to unRAID or similar network storage is pretty much out of the question. So, I'm now thinking about just using the unRAID (or similar) system solely for movie archive. Thoughts?

Regarding the virtualization of STV... I've read SOME about RDM. I'm not all that familiar, but could you guys comment on the current state and needs for doing this? All of the thread I could find about virtualizing STV were dated around 2010. Let's assume that I want to keep the 'DVR' files on the same machine as the ESXi host. 1) Does that make sense? Is it a good/bad idea? 2) Do the 'DVR' drives need to be RMD'd for STV use only?

The last question I had was about the rebuild of a STV server. I actually did this fairly recently when I changed OS's from Windows 7 Home to W7 Professional so that I could utilize RDP (as my plan is to move the STV server to my utility room)... when I re-installed, I believe it was just the WIZ.bin file that I copied over... it ended up 'finding' all of the DVR recordings, but they were all marked as 'Archived' and also no longer marked as 'Watched'. Is there any way to avoid this when doing a rebuild? Ideally, everything would be identical as it is now

Sorry for such a long post, but I'd rather try and provide all information in a single post rather than not provide the whole story or enough information where you aren't able to answer at all. I'd rather give too much information, rather than not enough. Thanks in advance for the responses! I'm glad that the forum has continued to be so active after the Google purchase (when I jumped on board).

TLDR: I've got some questions about virtualization / unRAID setup / STV rebuild... provided system details in hopes that the optimum recommendation(s) are given. Thanks!

[IVB]

hey man, forgot you even were a Sage'r, used to getting other advice from you :-)

Dumb question: I'm not clueing in, why would you bother virtualizing it, what network security are you looking for? Or are you setting up VMWare anyhow for your other apps network security and its the "might as well". I run Sage, CQC, Dropbox, Google Drive, Plex, and probably 5 other "server" type apps on a single quadcore box.

[Fuzzy]

I started off an attempt to virtualize my server, in an effort to run a pfSense router/firewall for my home network. Thing is, though, the router/firewall is the one thing I don't ever want to be down for any period of time, and as I'm often finding a reason to take down my sage server (hardware/drive changes, etc), I changed my mind. I've got pfSense now running on an atom 330 based board (D945GCLF2) with a cheap SSD, and dual intel network card. Works like a champ, draws virtually no power, and is essentially appliance like.

[drvnbysound]

The main intent wasn't to virtualize STV 'just because'... but rather to run other enterprise-like applications for network security type things. For example, I'm probably going to setup an application that will capture all of my inbound and outbound traffic so I can get a better understanding of my network traffic. Additionally, I also want to setup a local proxy server and possibly expand to other things from there. On their own, these applications can run on very minimal hardware. The issues for me isn't necessarily hardware in the sense of having it or obtaining it, but rather having a place to put it. Add in that the STV hardware is very underutilized and it just seems to make sense for me to virtualize the hardware and run all of these things on a single box.

I've had STV running for almost a year and I've only turned it off once for 'maintenance' which was to swap the OS.

I'm not even compressing movies and I've got ~70% free space (4TB total) even after ~150+ movies have been added. I've got about the same amount free on my 'DVR' drives that total 1TB. In in the HDD respect, I've got a ways to go before I really need to start swapping them out due to space limitations. I really just want some redundancy on the Movie side of the house.

Also worth mentioning is that I only watch STV via extenders.

[drvnbysound]

One of my biggest concerns with the virtualization is that it would be planned to be installed on the hardware which is currently dedicated for STV... so I really want to make sure (as best as possible ) that it's the best choice, because after I start the STV machine will be nuked with ESXi software and it won't be easy to just switch back.

[Skirge01]

Originally Posted by drvnbysound

One of my biggest concerns with the virtualization is that it would be planned to be installed on the hardware which is currently dedicated for STV... so I really want to make sure (as best as possible ) that it's the best choice, because after I start the STV machine will be nuked with ESXi software and it won't be easy to just switch back.

Not if you don't want it to be "nuked". Disconnect your existing OS drive and then install ESXi onto a flash drive and boot from that. Perform all the "playing" (as my wife used to call it) you want and when you're finished, unplug the flash drive, disconnect any ESXi storage drives, reconnect the old OS drive and you're back up and running. Keep doing that until you get ESXi working or you get tired of switching back and forth. I did this for about 2 months.

I'm currently running pfSense, SageTV (under XP), Windows 7 Premium, WHS 2011, and have a couple of other VMs to mess around with.

To answer a few of your other questions, you do not need to RDM and I'd suggest avoiding it since it's an unsupported feature which means it could cause other issues as you progress or upgrade. Do keep in mind that ESXi still cannot create a VMDK larger than 2TB, so you cannot add 3+TB drives as storage under ESXi. This is usually why people consider the RDM route. However, if you attach them via a supported RAID card (the IBM M1015 is probably the most popular one for this), you can use PCI passthrough and provide the VM with direct access to all the drives attached to that card.

Also, you could very well be able to record directly to unRAID/tRAID/etc. Just because I'm having an issue with tRAID doesn't mean you will. I also haven't given up hope that the developer of tRAID will be able to find and fix the issue (he may have already with the latest RC for all I know). I don't think it's prudent to say it's impossible simply because one person is having an issue; consider that jerryt is using WMC and recording directly to tRAID.

[drvnbysound]

Originally Posted by Skirge01

Not if you don't want it to be "nuked". Disconnect your existing OS drive and then install ESXi onto a flash drive and boot from that. Perform all the "playing" (as my wife used to call it) you want and when you're finished, unplug the flash drive, disconnect any ESXi storage drives, reconnect the old OS drive and you're back up and running. Keep doing that until you get ESXi working or you get tired of switching back and forth. I did this for about 2 months.

Sure. I did a bad job of 'explaining' there, but the short of it is that I don't have much time to 'tinker' now, so it would likely end up being a weekend dedicated project. With a 4mo old it's difficult to dedicate any reasonable amount of time to 'projects' anymore... hence trying to make sure it's the best decision before attempting to do it. The issue isn't so much if it can be done, but how much work and time will it take... it's exponentially harder to be installing software to get STV working when a baby is screaming

To answer a few of your other questions, you do not need to RDM and I'd suggest avoiding it since it's an unsupported feature which means it could cause other issues as you progress or upgrade. Do keep in mind that ESXi still cannot create a VMDK larger than 2TB, so you cannot add 3+TB drives as storage under ESXi. This is usually why people consider the RDM route. However, if you attach them via a supported RAID card (the IBM M1015 is probably the most popular one for this), you can use PCI passthrough and provide the VM with direct access to all the drives attached to that card.

I probably need to read that a few more times, but it sounds like this would probably be what I'd want to do for DVR storage. I'll admit that I've only briefly played with VMs (with VMware Server) and won't claim to know much... so I should ask, do the HDDs attached to that RAID card also need to be added to the VMDK/datastore before being associated with the VM? I'm sure the setup isn't actually all that difficult, it's just a matter of trying to understand the setup for implementation, rather than beating my head on the keyboard while it's not working during setup

Also, you could very well be able to record directly to unRAID/tRAID/etc. Just because I'm having an issue with tRAID doesn't mean you will. I also haven't given up hope that the developer of tRAID will be able to find and fix the issue (he may have already with the latest RC for all I know). I don't think it's prudent to say it's impossible simply because one person is having an issue; consider that jerryt is using WMC and recording directly to tRAID.

Very true. I might actually try to setup the unRAID/tRAID system first, and see if I can record to it from my current STV setup before trying to virtualize STV (since I was planning to put them on separate hardware anyway). Is there any particular reason not to do this (separate hardware for unRAID/tRAID)? My idea for doing so, was really so that the unRAID/tRAID system had the most physical space available for HDDs to be added... rather than trying to virtualize it as well and having to share HDD space with the datastore.

My concern was more with regard to (WRT) recording to unRAID/tRAID was potential bottleneck(s). I mentioned earlier that I've got 6 tuners... I have no idea what sort of network bandwidth that equates to, but I read where the limitation is the write process to the parity drive, which was somewhere around 30-50MB/s IIRC. Also, part of my concern goes back to what I was mentioning early about not necessarily having a LOT of time to tinker with it and play with science projects. Then again, I don't necessarily need it setup tomorrow either... so I don't have to rush into re-building anything either.

One virtualization approach that I may try is to use the VMware Converter to capture my current setup and see how well it transfers to a VM... my only concern there is with how well the HD-PVR tuners will transition since they are USB devices.

[BobPhoenix]

I have 3 virtualized SageTV servers - will just document 1 here.

CPU Xeon E3-1230v1 Sandy Bridge MB works with Ivy Bridge
MB SuperMicro X9SCM-F (2 PCIe x8 - x8 electrical and 2 PCIe x8 - x4 electrical)
Memory 16GB
MB Sata used 1 drive for ESXi datastore 300GB Raptor
PCIe x8 IBM M1015 to Intel SAS expander RES2SV240 for unRAID to 16 WD Red 3TB HDDs
PCIe x8 IBM M1015 to 5x3 drive cage for SageTV recording drives 5 x 3TB Seagate ST3000DM001
PCIe x4 Kotech PCIe USB 3.0 card for 2 x HD-PVRs
PCIe x4 Hauppauge HVR-2250 for OTA
MB USB One of two MB USB controllers passed through for HVR-950Q
Network tuner HDHRv1 for QAM basic lineup (locals and WGN/Religious/CSPAN)

VMs
unRAID 3GB memory, 1 vCore, passed through M1015 and USB 5.0 pro key can support 24 drives with expander
SageTV Win7 x64, 6GB memory, 3 vCore, passed through M1015, Kotech USB card connected to 2 HD-PVRs & HVR-2250
Online VM that I do all my browsing from. Win7 x86, 2GB memory, 1 vCore nothing passed through so that I can do snapshots.
Miscellaneous other VMs Win7s, WinXPs 1GB memory, 1 vCore each nothing passed through only running when needed.

Originally Posted by drvnbysound

First, IVB - sorry for the thread jack Hopefully some of my questions may help you as well...

I've been waffling with the thought of virtualizing my STV setup for quite some time. The issue in the past is that I didn't have a compelling reason to do so - I had the hardware to dedicate to it and didn't really have anything else that I needed to run. Last week, some things changed... I'm now trying to implement some additional network security and it may be in my best interest (hardware wise) to setup an ESXi server and virtualize some a few of these applications. The STV server is using a Core2Quad 3.0GHz processor and currently has 8GB of DDR3 RAM. From what I've seen from a little bit of hardware monitoring it's VERY underutilized now as a dedicated STV server, which has me thinking about putting ESXi on it and virtualizing.

Having said that, I'm looking for a suggestion or a recommendation from those who have a lot more knowledge than I do and see if this make sense... first let me discuss a little about my system and 'requirements'. I have (2) HDHR tuners and (2) HD-PVRs, so technically I can record up to 6 channels at any given time. Regarding HDDs: I've got (2) 2TB drives (~80% free total) which I've 'dedicated' to movie rips (mainly DVDs and a hand full of BluRays). I also have (2) 500GB drives that I've 'dedicated' to DVR usage. I'm not all that concerned with the hoarding... while I like that I've not yet started to delete shows, we usually watch them the night they air or the day/night after, and I don't think we've re-watched any episode to date. Keeping them would likely be for historical use far from now. My main concern though is the movie library... currently it's not even RAIDed so a failure would lose me ~150+ movies (and a LOT of time that I spent).

My initial thoughts were to virtualize STV and build a separate unRAID box for storage of everything else. I'm glad I found this thread! It seems that recording to unRAID or similar network storage is pretty much out of the question. So, I'm now thinking about just using the unRAID (or similar) system solely for movie archive. Thoughts?

That is how I use my unRAID box. I archive from my recording drives connected to the SageTV VM to the unRAID VM. Originally I had a separate box with unRAID on it that I archived to but I ran out of space (20 2TB drives were > 75% full) so I split my unRAID server into 2 instances. I virtualized it at the same time. I've since split the one above again so that it ONLY contains recorded files. All my BluRays and DVDs as well as my archived recordings from my other SageTV servers are on other unRAID VMs now.

Regarding the virtualization of STV... I've read SOME about RDM. I'm not all that familiar, but could you guys comment on the current state and needs for doing this? All of the thread I could find about virtualizing STV were dated around 2010. Let's assume that I want to keep the 'DVR' files on the same machine as the ESXi host. 1) Does that make sense? Is it a good/bad idea? 2) Do the 'DVR' drives need to be RMD'd for STV use only?

An RDM'd drive can be used for anything it could be used in unRAID too. It normally isn't used with unRAID because spin down and drive temperatures don't work (at least for me anyway). I could have RDM'd the recording drives for SageTV from the MB ports since there are 6 ports on the MB and I was only using 1 for my datastore drive. I didn't because before I changed from 21 2TB HDDs in unRAID to 16 3TB HDDs I needed the 5x3 cage for unRAID and used an external enclosure for the recording drives. Also using a separate controller like the M1015 gives me more options to use in SageTV.

The last question I had was about the rebuild of a STV server. I actually did this fairly recently when I changed OS's from Windows 7 Home to W7 Professional so that I could utilize RDP (as my plan is to move the STV server to my utility room)... when I re-installed, I believe it was just the WIZ.bin file that I copied over... it ended up 'finding' all of the DVR recordings, but they were all marked as 'Archived' and also no longer marked as 'Watched'. Is there any way to avoid this when doing a rebuild? Ideally, everything would be identical as it is now

Sounds like you had different recording paths old to new. I use UNC paths so I have to make sure the computers have the same names and shares defined when I went from separate box SageTV to VM SageTV. But once I did that I don't get them in archived. The only time that happens is when I move them to my unRAID VM which naturally has a different name and share name.

[drvnbysound]

Bob, you mention that you have (3) virtualized STV servers. Is that just for testing purposes, or are you actually using all of them regularly? I guess I'm just not following the 'why' part of having 3 STV servers... other than testing, I don't follow the 'value added' aspect.

Is there a benefit to having unRAID virtualized on the same physical machine as opposed to having a dedicated machine for unRAID? I see that you said your initial unRAID system ran out of space.... so you virtualized a second one. My thoughts for having a dedicated machine for unRAID/tRAID was to have the most physical space available for HDDs... rather than having to share physical space with the datastore drives.

[drvnbysound]

Originally Posted by BobPhoenix

Sounds like you had different recording paths old to new. I use UNC paths so I have to make sure the computers have the same names and shares defined when I went from separate box SageTV to VM SageTV. But once I did that I don't get them in archived. The only time that happens is when I move them to my unRAID VM which naturally has a different name and share name.

I actually left all of the data in the exact same location; the data was untouched on the dedicated HDDs, and I've named the HDDs with their drive 'letter' as part of the drive name, so I would always know what drive letter to assign them to.

So my dedicated DVR space is:
Drive name (Drive letter)
DVR1 - G (G: )
DVR2 - H (H: )

I initially had them setup this was when I first configured STV. When I re-installed W7 Professional the drive letters were changed (e.g. DVR1 - G (D) so I changed them all back to their previous configuration, to keep the path the same was it was before. That said, maybe I did something wrong in terms of the re-installation of STV...

I just moved the Wiz.bin file over, but upon first running STV I did have to go through the setup process again; which required me to add the various drives to the STV import directories. Should these have some how already been there?

Nonetheless, all of the recordings were 'found' by STV, and when we would go to 'Recordings' everything would show up, and all played fine, so it was obviously finding the right files on the HDDs, but as mentioned, all of them were now marked as 'Archived' and no longer marked as 'Watched'. I never bothered reporting or making a post about this because I just assumed that maybe it was just part of the process and that it would happen if a re-install was done. :-\

[BobPhoenix]

Originally Posted by drvnbysound

Bob, you mention that you have (3) virtualized STV servers. Is that just for testing purposes, or are you actually using all of them regularly? I guess I'm just not following the 'why' part of having 3 STV servers... other than testing, I don't follow the 'value added' aspect.

Is there a benefit to having unRAID virtualized on the same physical machine as opposed to having a dedicated machine for unRAID? I see that you said your initial unRAID system ran out of space.... so you virtualized a second one. My thoughts for having a dedicated machine for unRAID/tRAID was to have the most physical space available for HDDs... rather than having to share physical space with the datastore drives.

If I had separate boxes for my SageTV servers and unRAID boxes I would have 7 computers running in my basement all the time instead of the 4 I currently do. That is why I virtualized them cut down on running PCs. I could have used FlexRaid's T-RAID and just had a bare metal windows instance with the same computer count (4) - if it had been available 3 years ago. I didn't like what was available (FlexRaid's RAID-F) and the way it worked so I went the unRAID route. As to why I have so many servers: Each SageTV server serves a separate purpose (primarily). One is Locals only where I record all the main channels and sub channels. Two (post above) is where I record HD satellite channels and also HD main locals. Three is where I record SD satellite channels and main locals. Four is living room client as well as server and records HD satellite channels on Colossus thru HDMI (better signal that HD-PVRs in my opinion) as well as main locals. I record the locals on so many boxes because this way I usually always have a good recording off of one of them to archive. The copies I delete once I determine which is the best copy. I use my cable company for internet and they are providing my locals and WGN/Religious/CSPAN via QAM so I use them because most (but not all) have better reception then OTA. Too much multi path and idiot Antenna installers (being on roof/ladder to roof is NOT for me).

If I was doing it now I would probably go T-RAID and no virtualization and archive to the T-RAID pool drive.

[BobPhoenix]

Originally Posted by drvnbysound

I actually left all of the data in the exact same location; the data was untouched on the dedicated HDDs, and I've named the HDDs with their drive 'letter' as part of the drive name, so I would always know what drive letter to assign them to.

So my dedicated DVR space is:
Drive name (Drive letter)
DVR1 - G (G: )
DVR2 - H (H: )

I initially had them setup this was when I first configured STV. When I re-installed W7 Professional the drive letters were changed (e.g. DVR1 - G (D) so I changed them all back to their previous configuration, to keep the path the same was it was before. That said, maybe I did something wrong in terms of the re-installation of STV...

I just moved the Wiz.bin file over, but upon first running STV I did have to go through the setup process again; which required me to add the various drives to the STV import directories. Should these have some how already been there?

Nonetheless, all of the recordings were 'found' by STV, and when we would go to 'Recordings' everything would show up, and all played fine, so it was obviously finding the right files on the HDDs, but as mentioned, all of them were now marked as 'Archived' and no longer marked as 'Watched'. I never bothered reporting or making a post about this because I just assumed that maybe it was just part of the process and that it would happen if a re-install was done. :-\

That sounds like it should have worked. But as you say maybe you didn't get the paths correct BEFORE you copied in the Wiz.Bin. I always setup from scratch first and make sure everything is setup in SageTV the way I want with recording drives and import drives (the only thing I copy from my old properties file) as well as tuners and channel lineups. Once I've confirmed everything is setup I stop SageTV and drop in the Wiz.Bin file and restart. Wait until the schedule shows upcoming recordings and then go in and check my recordings folder. Any time I have had archived recordings it has always been because I've messed up the recording drive setup so the database(wiz.bin) is point to one location and SageTV finds them in another. That is why I copy the recordings folders and import folders from the old properties files rather than set that up from scratch. I tried to just copy the whole properties file once but then the tuners were jacked up and didn't work right so I had to remove them anyway. So now I just back up first to get certain properties lines from the old file and the old wiz.bin file.

[drvnbysound]

Originally Posted by BobPhoenix

If I had separate boxes for my SageTV servers and unRAID boxes I would have 7 computers running in my basement all the time instead of the 4 I currently do. That is why I virtualized them cut down on running PCs. I could have used FlexRaid's T-RAID and just had a bare metal windows instance with the same computer count (4) - if it had been available 3 years ago. I didn't like what was available (FlexRaid's RAID-F) and the way it worked so I went the unRAID route. As to why I have so many servers: Each SageTV server serves a separate purpose (primarily). One is Locals only where I record all the main channels and sub channels. Two (post above) is where I record HD satellite channels and also HD main locals. Three is where I record SD satellite channels and main locals. Four is living room client as well as server and records HD satellite channels on Colossus thru HDMI (better signal that HD-PVRs in my opinion) as well as main locals. I record the locals on so many boxes because this way I usually always have a good recording off of one of them to archive. The copies I delete once I determine which is the best copy. I use my cable company for internet and they are providing my locals and WGN/Religious/CSPAN via QAM so I use them because most (but not all) have better reception then OTA. Too much multi path and idiot Antenna installers (being on roof/ladder to roof is NOT for me).

If I was doing it now I would probably go T-RAID and no virtualization and archive to the T-RAID pool drive.

Gotcha. So that sounds like considerably a LOT more recording than I plan to be doing. I've got the (2) HDHRs which are setup for ABC, NBC, CBS, and Fox, and (2) HD-PVRs which would record any 'premium' channels. I ONLY have HD channels listed in our channel lineup. To date, I don't think all 6 tuners have ever been used at once.... so I don't see any reason that I would need to run multiple STV servers myself.

Which goes back to... the only reason that I'm looking to virtualize STV would be to eliminate an extra machine that would run some low power network security and similar tools.

It sounds (to me) like I'm on the right train of thought for now...

[Skirge01]

Originally Posted by drvnbysound

I probably need to read that a few more times, but it sounds like this would probably be what I'd want to do for DVR storage. I'll admit that I've only briefly played with VMs (with VMware Server) and won't claim to know much... so I should ask, do the HDDs attached to that RAID card also need to be added to the VMDK/datastore before being associated with the VM? I'm sure the setup isn't actually all that difficult, it's just a matter of trying to understand the setup for implementation, rather than beating my head on the keyboard while it's not working during setup

I had never done a thing with virtualization before installing ESXi and the learning curve wasn't all that bad.

The HDs attached to the card actually CAN'T be used as a datastore once you put the card in passthrough mode.

Very true. I might actually try to setup the unRAID/tRAID system first, and see if I can record to it from my current STV setup before trying to virtualize STV (since I was planning to put them on separate hardware anyway). Is there any particular reason not to do this (separate hardware for unRAID/tRAID)? My idea for doing so, was really so that the unRAID/tRAID system had the most physical space available for HDDs to be added... rather than trying to virtualize it as well and having to share HDD space with the datastore.

If you have the space and don't mind the added noise, failure point, and power usage of a second physical computer, go for it. For me, I wanted everything under one roof. Obviously, if that one computer has a hardware failure, and ESXi can't run, none of the VMs can run until that gets fixed. That's not a big deal to me.

My concern was more with regard to (WRT) recording to unRAID/tRAID was potential bottleneck(s). I mentioned earlier that I've got 6 tuners... I have no idea what sort of network bandwidth that equates to, but I read where the limitation is the write process to the parity drive, which was somewhere around 30-50MB/s IIRC. Also, part of my concern goes back to what I was mentioning early about not necessarily having a LOT of time to tinker with it and play with science projects. Then again, I don't necessarily need it setup tomorrow either... so I don't have to rush into re-building anything either.

I know the thread you're talking about WRT the possible parity bottleneck. Again, just because one person has that issue or simply believes that will be an issue, doesn't make it true for everyone. I'll can pretty much guarantee you that no one around here has the exact same hardware and software setup, so it's comparing apples to oranges. A number of people could never get their HD-PVRs to record reliably, yet others (myself included) use them every day.

In all seriousness, if time truly is the enemy, then an HTPC probably isn't the right solution for your household and I'd go with the solution available from your TV provider. However, if you like to tinker (and will somehow find the time) in order to get things exactly how you want them, stick around.

One virtualization approach that I may try is to use the VMware Converter to capture my current setup and see how well it transfers to a VM... my only concern there is with how well the HD-PVR tuners will transition since they are USB devices.

I tried that converter for a couple of things and it never worked all that well, so let me know if you find success going that route. I'd be curious to know what you converted and any issues you experienced. I do suspect that you're going to need to do some form of set up with those HD-PVRs again, no matter what you do, but I could be wrong.

[BobPhoenix]

Originally Posted by drvnbysound

Gotcha. So that sounds like considerably a LOT more recording than I plan to be doing. I've got the (2) HDHRs which are setup for ABC, NBC, CBS, and Fox, and (2) HD-PVRs which would record any 'premium' channels. I ONLY have HD channels listed in our channel lineup. To date, I don't think all 6 tuners have ever been used at once.... so I don't see any reason that I would need to run multiple STV servers myself.

Yes don't think many have close to my setup. I have between 6-9 tuners showing in parallel schedule on each box. Thursday night is currently the most active as with padding I can have 9 tuners going at once on SageTV server one (locals and subchannel server). The hour and half hour where I have about 4 minutes of overlap due to padding is why I have so many tuners. I don't like to watch the start of one show at the end of another or the end of one show at the start of another so I always have used padding on my favorites and manuals and planed on at least twice as many tuners as I need to record channel wise.

Which goes back to... the only reason that I'm looking to virtualize STV would be to eliminate an extra machine that would run some low power network security and similar tools.

It sounds (to me) like I'm on the right train of thought for now...

It was the right decision for me at the time. It does add cost (more powerful hardware and server grade) but I disliked the standard desktop MBs I was buying anyway so that part of the cost was already expected (my previous SageTV standalone servers were already server grade MBs). The newer CPUs were faster and cooler than the Q6600s I was using previously so cooling in the summer should be less while still giving me a similar SageTV function. I actually used my old SuperMicro X7SBE SageTV MB with ESXi (and Q9550S CPU) and SageTV and unRAID VMs for a while. But ESXi really didn't run well on the X7SBE with a Windows VM. My unRAID VM never had any problems but the Windows VM would lockup periodically (every couple of weeks) and I started loosing recordings. That is when I upgraded to the X9SCM-F MB and eliminated those lockups. The X9SCM class MBs and Xeon processors have been very reliable for me. Note I got Tyan S5512GM2NR MBs for the other two ESXi servers because they had more slots for PCIe/PCI cards for tuners but same Xeon E3-1230 CPUs.