RAID, Quad cpu, or ? for improved server performance??

[Lucas]

Originally Posted by megamojo

You won't find any drive faster than 100 MB/s, and most will be around 70 MB/s or slower.

I agree with this comment. I would even go as far as saying that the average is about 50 to 60 MBytes/s and this is pretty good.

I think that dmiraclejr should break down the problem to see what can be improved. The issue, as others have mentioned, is most likely related to the harddrive seeks associated with the concurrent recording and playback of 3+3 streams plus the heavy disk activity associated with com skipping. In most likelihood this all happening on one disk at a time and the disk can't keep up. Most probably SageTV is recording the 3 streams on one disk and by definition this leads to heavy fragmentation.

For one thing you could aim to force each capture device to record to a particular disk. This would break the load and result in less disk activity per disk. Also if defrag each drive on a weekly basis say, you disk heads would be less busy....

[kevine]

I agree as well and like it has been said, the cheapest way to tell if this is a problem is to defrag and see.

I also think that a more customizable way to choose where you want your recordings to happen is needed. We have preferring a drive but I would like the ability to pick/force drives for the next recording base upon many parameters such as disk activity, space avail, tuners currently recording to each drive and whether it is HD or SD recording.

[sandor]

Originally Posted by megamojo

If you really want good performance from your NAS box, I would highly recommend using a different linux filesystem. Ext3 is a good general purpose filesystem, but does pretty badly with very large files, which is pretty much all you'll be using with Sage. XFS was specifically designed to work well with large files and it's been great for me. And for cryin' out loud, why are you paying $20 or $30 for that NAS software?! Grow up and make your own linux box, or at least user ReadyNAS (google it), which pretty much does everything NASLite does but it's free.

Edit: I meant freenas, not readynas, my mistake.

1) NASLite @ $30 is far more stable than FreeNAS - almost two years ago when i made the NASLite choice, and was doing all my testing, this is what i determined (much in the same way that i picked paying for SageTV over a free myth)

2)NASLite has never had any problem fully saturating my gigabit connection. I can achieve 120+ MB/s with no problem. ext3 has worked splendidly for the time i have been using it.

3)for $30 and a free computer i have a kick ass NAS that hasn't been restarted since i first set it up. *THAT* is what a storage appliance is all about.

[sandor]

Originally Posted by BFisher

not to hijack the thread... but what is the advantage of NAS devices versus adding more drives to the PC itself? Seems like you could run into network issues easier... (I'm assuming NAS device sits on the network, not directly connected to the PC)

my reason for going with a NAS is because i use it for far more than SageTV. My family is all laptops (apart from Sage) so i have dedicated hard drives in the NAS box for wireless nightly automated backups. i also have the NAS setup in a closet, while the SageTV serer runs my main television, not having excess drives makes the server quiet, and i am able to use a smaller HTPC case by the tv.

[CollinR]

It makes little sence if you have a dedicated headless server, it can do both and you don't get the network issues. However you must design the server to support many HDDs, a client box under the TV is usually too small. Our 4U rackmounts may support 10-12 even 15 drives and at multiples of the access speeds compared to a NAS solution. The motherboard or daughter cards need to support many drives, the power supply needs to be able to spin them all at once.

Anyone thinking about this I would suggest a headless server that will perform NAS duties additionally rather then a consumer NAS add-on device but the cost of the server is substantially more.

[sandor]

Originally Posted by CollinR

It makes little sence if you have a dedicated headless server, it can do both and you don't get the network issues.

But you get to ditch NTFS and Windows networking - two of the biggest problems i have had in my home environment.

[gplasky]

Originally Posted by sandor

1) NASLite @ $30 is far more stable than FreeNAS - almost two years ago when i made the NASLite choice, and was doing all my testing, this is what i determined (much in the same way that i picked paying for SageTV over a free myth)

2)NASLite has never had any problem fully saturating my gigabit connection. I can achieve 120+ MB/s with no problem. ext3 has worked splendidly for the time i have been using it.

3)for $30 and a free computer i have a kick ass NAS that hasn't been restarted since i first set it up. *THAT* is what a storage appliance is all about.

Another vote for Freenas. Not doing RAID or anything fancy but have used this with Sage for over tow years. Never have shutoff the PC. The only down time id the 5 minutes it takes to upgrade it's software and reboot. It just works and is always available. Records 2 HD chcnnels and watch 2 HD channels from its drive with no issues.

Gerry

[autoboy]

My apologies if this has been asked before. The only time I have ever had stutters with 4 HD tuners and 2 SD tuners and 3 HD clients is when I had a drive dieing. Do some performance and stability checks on those drives. Make sure you have Native Command Queuing enabled. If you do performance checks and you see the speed fluctuate all over the place, it is time to replace that drive. In the 3 years I have run SageTV, I have had this happen twice.