2 sagetv servers is it possible?

[wbarber69]

I was wondering if I could set up to sagetv servers in my house and be able to view the content from each of them from each of them

[Opus4]

If they are separate servers, then each one will see the other's recordings as imported videos. You might be better off using a single server plus client(s) so that all the recordings appear as regular SageTV recordings on all systems. If you need to have encoders on other systems, you could set up network encoders that the server would control.

- Andy

[korben_dallas]

I was considering this a little while ago. I think it would only work if both servers were run in service mode.

The biggest problem would be keeping the wiz.bin database in sync on both servers. If both servers were very active, then by the end of the day, they would be quite out of sync per watched shows and deleted files. Next, you have to deal with which server wins the synchronization. Then, you have to schedule a service stop of SageTV on both servers so you can copy the wiz.bin from the winner server to the loser server. Lastly, schedule the services to start again.

Another problem is the video directories. It's theoretically possible you could use 2 video directories, one on each box, and setup your .properties files so that the local folder on server 1 is writeable and the remote folder on server 2 is only readable, and then vice versa the setup on server 2. This would keep each SageTV server from trying to record over the network. Or, use only 1 video folder for all recordings, but then you are recording over the network for at least one of the servers.

I wish I had the hardware to attempt this, it does sound intriguing.

P.S. I have no idea how to handle the SageTV archived files folder(s) in a dual server setup.

[nielm]

Korben: Wiz.bin syncing is not possible... The recordings made on the 'losing' server would be lost because the internal IDs (in the filename) are internal to the wiz.bin. [EDIT] actually, if the EPG is never updated on the 'loser', and it gets it's EPG updated by syncing the wiz.bin from the master, this will not be true... But you would get both servers trying to record the same shows, and the master would not know about shows watched on the slave.

The ony way to get it to work would be like Opus4 said:
Either have 1 server and 1 network encoder (if there is a problem with the number of tuners that fit in a box)

Or have 2 independant servers, with each one having it's own video directory, and reading [Edit: was weeing?!] the other's video directory as an import library.
..
This would mean that the recordings on one server would show up (with wierd filenames) on the others video library, each server would not know what you have seen on the other, and there would be no automatic conflict resolution between the 2 servers... In short, a mess

Basically, you would be better off with 1 server and a client (and a network encoder (slaved SageTV or Sage Recorder instance) if required)

[mayamaniac]

if your computers are networked, I'm curious on what scenario would you need to setup and run two servers? I just can't come up of a situation where that is needed when the computers are networked.

[Cayars]

I actually working on something similar to this at present but for import of lost shows (corrupt wiz.bin). What I see as the main proplems (after import) that can go wrong are favorite related.

If all the SageTV machines can see the same libraries (non imported) then they will all be able to delete the shows. If all machines aren't setup with the same favorites then the delete algorithm on each machine will want to delete things in a different order causing a problem.

Of course if you have all the favorites set up on each machine then they will all try and record the same shows which isn't a good thing.

So there are other issues besides just loading the "other" system's files.

[Cayars]

mayamaniac, here are a few reason you could want to do this:
1) Room mate has a SageTV system and you wish to share shows.
2) You have many tuners and would prefer to run a full SageTV server instead of using SageRecorder.
3) You have multiple clients in use a lot and want to have a "connection" server and a "recording" server to help distribute the load.
4) Similar to #3 you want to build out a distributed environment where you could have near unlimited amount of recorders and clients.
5) You have a couple of lower end machines that aren't quite fast enough to handle the load properly of your environment. Splitting up things would help you scale the environment.
6) Multiple client connect points
7) Redundancy

ETC, ETC, ETC.

[mdmint]

Originally Posted by Cayars

mayamaniac, here are a few reason you could want to do this:

Some of the challenges or issues I see:

1) Room mate has a SageTV system and you wish to share shows.

Easily done (without EPG data info) simply by making each other's Video dir opposite Library dir.

2) You have many tuners and would prefer to run a full SageTV server instead of using SageRecorder.

With most mobo's you have 5 PCI slots. Assuming one slot for RAID controller that leaves 4 for encoders. Since wanting many tuners you'd use PVR500MCE giving you 8 tuners. Beyond 8 yes you'd have to go networked mode encoder via SageRecorder. Which works just fine BTW. Could use a second low end PC networked encoder only server, no internal storage volume, with 5 PVR500MCE adding 10 more encoders for total of 18 encoders without having to rely on a Client be turned on. Haven't thought about it beyond that.

3) You have multiple clients in use a lot and want to have a "connection" server and a "recording" server to help distribute the load.

The fallacy here is what specific load you're trying to distribute. If using the same Video directory, which of course mean using same storage subsystem, you have not eliminated or distributed the #1 bottleneck. NIC isn't the bottleneck, Gigabit NIC cable of dozens of Mpeg2 Max Q streams no problem. The cpu isn't the bottleneck because encoding down on cards.

4) Similar to #3 you want to build out a distributed environment where you could have near unlimited amount of recorders and clients.

Again same as #3. The storage subsystem is the #1 bottleneck with Sage's R/W demands. Currently the most I can and have tested is 5 simultaneous Mpeg2 Max Q recordings with 3 playback of previously recorded to Clients. With my main storage of 7xSATA HD RAID5 with RAID controller Write Back Cache enabled it keeps up, with RAID controller Write Back Cache disabled will get intermittent playback stutters. Until Sage is redesigned to enable distributed concurrent storage use, assigning shows to particular volume, not just using one volume at a time for recordings until full and going to the next, the storage subsystem will be the limiting factor in number of records and playback at one time possible.

5) You have a couple of lower end machines that aren't quite fast enough to handle the load properly of your environment. Splitting up things would help you scale the environment.

By design everything but the actual viewing of playback in Sage does not require much horsepower. Not the playback stream but the actual viewing.

6) Multiple client connect points

One Server with multiple NICS can achieve this.

7) Redundancy

Not really I don't think, especially if using same Video storage directory. To achieve redundancy any single point of failure is eliminated (duplicated). The first level of redundancy in Servers is on the individual Server. Redundant HD subsystem, redundant power supply, redundant NICs easily achieved for example (I'm doing it). The redundancy of the Server itself seems you'd be getting into Clustering or similar, where two or more Servers seamlessly interfaced together either sharing load or on standby to take over if one fails. I don't know of anyone with Sage setup that extreme scenario!

ETC, ETC, ETC.

Then there's site level redundancy mirroring the entire setup at another location in case primary site gets nuked or something...

[stanger89]

I'd have to agree with mdmint on this one

Originally Posted by Cayars

mayamaniac, here are a few reason you could want to do this:
1) Room mate has a SageTV system and you wish to share shows.

Either import each others recordings a librarys, or work out an arangement where you have one server and a client or two.

2) You have many tuners and would prefer to run a full SageTV server instead of using SageRecorder.

You can already do this, you can use an instance of SageTV as an encoding server. Basically as a network encoder but you use SageTV instead of SR. Note that there's no intelligence in the encoding server, it's just slaved like SR.

3) You have multiple clients in use a lot and want to have a "connection" server and a "recording" server to help distribute the load.

Again, the network wont be a bottleneck, people seem to greatly overestimate the bandwidth required for recordings. Also, streaming and recoridng in Sage is not CPU intensive, so that would not be a bottleneck either.

4) Similar to #3 you want to build out a distributed environment where you could have near unlimited amount of recorders and clients.

You can already do that.

5) You have a couple of lower end machines that aren't quite fast enough to handle the load properly of your environment. Splitting up things would help you scale the environment.

You'd run into network problems long before you run into CPU problems on a server I imagine.

[mayamaniac]

As mdmint and stanger89 pointed out, with current Server and Client configurations, you can achieve many possibilities without the need to run multiple servers. Don't get me wrong, I'm all for giving the users options, but in this case, I still fail to see the benefit.

[Cayars]

Hey guy, I didn't say some of this stuff can't be done now via work arounds. The question was why someone "may" want to do it.

I'm also disapointed in some of the answers.

1) Using library import directories on one machine to point to another machine is a bandaid. You won't have any show information. No watched, don't like status, no deletion based on...
PVR500s arenn't a good choice for many people like myself who REQUIRE CC. So that means no USB2s (4 of these sitting on the shelf) either, but only 250/350s which require one slot per card.

2) 5 PCI slot motherboards aren't very common these days. Typical machines have 3 slots these days. I agree you can BUILD a high end machine but it would ALSO be nice to have 3 or 4 sub-par machines acting as a server too.

SageRecord/SageTV (as a recorder) - I got about a dozen tuners myself and have had close to that number of tuners here for building machines for people. I had close to 20 tuners trying to record at the same time and it just doesn't work very well in it's current form. In the current implementation 8 is about optimal. SageTV just became to sluggish and the 2 or 3 clients were not usable.

Using SageTV as a glorified SageRecorder isn't really what I'd like to see long term. It's a good start but still isn't the best approach IMHO. All the smarts are still based on one machine being the server and controlling things.

3) Actualy not a great reason as breaking up recording and client servers isn't that big a deal and can be done now anyway with a little trick with the wiz.bin file.

As far as the bottleneck statements. I'm going to assume neither of you guys have ever tried more then 8 tuners/clients or you wouldn't say this.
SageTV gets taxed. This wasn't as much an issue in 2.0 but 2.1 (and later) just doesn't scale no where as well!

4) I agree about the storage subsystem being the bottle neck at some point. This is why multiple servers would alleviate this. Each server could have it's own subsystem(s) if needed.
Not entirely true. SageTV itself is more of a bottle neck then the subsystem. Take a somewhat simple system with 3 hard drives in it. If SageTV were smart it could "know" it's doing 3 recordings and distribute the load accordingly so each drive is receiving one recording. As it is now, it's quite possible/likely, that one drive will be recieving multiple shows while another is free. This of course isn't a big deal with only a couple tuners BUT it does start making a difference as more and more tuners/clients are added to the system. You yourself bring up this short coming too.

stanger89, no you can't do this already.

5) True, but as the tuners/clients add up the little ineffeciencies in SageTV DO start to mount up big time.

6) Again, this depends on how many tuners and clients you're talking about.

7) Redundancy, not in the way you were thinking. I was thinking more on the lines that an Intelligent system would be able to shift shows for recording. Say for example if machine 1 was supposed to record CSI but the machine was offline for some reason. Machine 2 or 3 would record CSI. This type of thing was what I was talking about.

I'd love to be able to take a machine down and have another pick up the slack. It would make updates a whole lot easier to do. As it is now I have to wait until the wee hours of the morning to not interrupt recording schedules.

OVERALL: the main issue I see for massive build-out is that SageTV isn't built to work in a distributed environment. I know you can have recorders in other machines but this is more "off-loaded" and not "distributed". Don't get me wrong, it's very good at what it does, but I'm a "pusher" and would like to see it evolve even further.

[Menehune]

I wanted to build a video server system at the college where I work, which would eliminate the need for us to record ~175hrs of classes/week and send the VHS tapes to the library.

Unfortunately the system was not approved by the bean counters, but I wanted to use sage, four tuners (A/V inputs), some kind of semester long schedule that I would write myself, and a bunch of (10-12) MVPs. I think I would have needed a minimum of 500gb storage to have two week retention of classes.

I originally wanted to have one server and all the MVPs connect from the Library to the TV studio building, but I was deciding upon a remote server in the library which would hold the archived classes and just use the server to encode classes. The only problem is I would need to manually move the files from the encoder to the mvp server. If sage could move the files internally, I think it would be beneficial in this specific instance.

[korben_dallas]

The more I think about this, the more I am suspecting that you would be breaking "fair use" laws by sharing video between two or more servers.

For instance, it wouldn't be too difficult to setup a wireless network with your neighbors. If they have satellite and you have digital cable, then you are in a whole mess of legal trouble by the two SageTV server synchronizing, because the residences would be receiving the other's programming "free".

[Cayars]

Umm, you can pretty much give access to your storage drives now via the LAN over a wireless network to your neighbors so I'm not sure what this would have to do with anything.

[korben_dallas]

By sharing files, you are just sharing files. But two independent SageTV servers sync'ing with each other would be sharing EPG data. Big no no!

[dagar]

Getting around the file locking on the database would be an interesting challenge to 'sharing servers'.

I, like a few of you, see the value in seperate (1 or more) tuner controller systems. Though I don't see the value in syncing will other complete systems. But that's my bias

[wbarber69]

Nice answerws guys I haven't been online for a while and i just got around to reading the replies to my post. Sorry about the mix up I was only asking because 1: I am on the betatesters list and wasn't going to get the beta system because I would have to servers and was wondering what could be done with the 2 of them. And 2: I totally forgot about the network encoder setup, its been a while since I even heard of anyone using the net encoder in sage

[mayamaniac]

Ok Cayars, I got to agree with you. But like many other members, the idea of running 8 to 12 tuners at the same time never ocurred to me. But if you are in a situation, let say a large housewhole or somehow with a lot of people watching TV, then yeah, you would need to find an alternative solution to make SageTV handle such heavy tasks. And running two servers or more and having them talk to each other is a possible solution.

But something happened today that made me realized there's another legitimate reason to run two servers, which is to run a second server as a backup. My SageTV machine froze tonight for unkown reason, my guess is it's PVR-350 related. But it also corrupted the wiz.bin, although Jeff/Narflex said that 2.2x versions shouldn't have wiz.bin corruptions anymore. Well, he's dead wrong. And there's nothing more terrifying then launching SageTV and looking at your SageTV Recordings and discovered its completely emptied.

But luckily I replaced the wiz.bin with a backup (Read second link in my sig for backup instructions). A few of my favorite shows were not recorded because I was away from home when SageTV froze. Now if I had a second SageTV server as backup, and it realized that the primary server is not responding, it could kick in and record what was scheduled. I think that would put my mind at ease knowing that I will never miss a show due to computer lock ups.

[korben_dallas]

What is the maximum number of tuners it is feasible to run on one PC? For a normal PC, I would think the hard drive read/write would be the limiting factor. But if a person setup a monster SageTV server with 6 or more tuners, he'd probably have a RAID set for storage. What's the maximum number of PCI slots? I don't think I've ever seen more than 5 or 6 in any computer. Add to that USB 2.0 tuners. How many external tuners would it take to max out the USB 2.0 bandwidth?

Seems like (this is just a guess) that around 10 PCI+USB tuners simultaneously recording would be pushing the PCI bus.

I think it'd be a pretty special setup, cause with that many tuners, you'd have a whole bunch of set top boxes requiring channel changes, and I haven't heard of anyone getting channel changing working on more than 5 set top boxes.

[mayamaniac]

Originally Posted by korben_dallas

I think it'd be a pretty special setup, cause with that many tuners, you'd have a whole bunch of set top boxes requiring channel changes, and I haven't heard of anyone getting channel changing working on more than 5 set top boxes.

that's why when I first read this thread, I questioned why people wanted to run two servers. I didn't understand the purpose because I never considered anyone wanting to install that many tuners. But as you pointed out, to run it in one server you would need a really kick-@ss computer to do so, to handle that kind of work load. You definitely need a fast processor, lots of memory, RAID, gigabit network, good motherboard with lots of PCI lots, etc.