New server suggestions for 8 HDDs and 4 extenders

[chrishallowell]

I'm looking at buying a new server just for SageTV. It will have XP Pro 32 bit on it. It will not be used as a client. I do not plan on using Comskip. I have 8 SATA HDDs that I would like to connect to it. I do not plan on using any type of RAID setup (At least not until I have one fail and I have to spend days reburning )

Any suggestions would be appreciative. My goal is to get something as cheap as possible while avoiding stuttering, missed recordings due to tuner problems, etc.

Clients: None
Extenders: 4 HD200
Tuners: HVR-1600, HDHR, HVR-950, and OnAir GT USB

[rsteele]

Originally Posted by chrishallowell

I'm looking at buying a new server just for SageTV. It will have XP Pro 32 bit on it. It will not be used as a client. I do not plan on using Comskip. I have 8 SATA HDDs that I would like to connect to it. I do not plan on using any type of RAID setup (At least not until I have one fail and I have to spend days reburning )

Any suggestions would be appreciative. My goal is to get something as cheap as possible while avoiding stuttering, missed recordings due to tuner problems, etc.

Clients: None
Extenders: 4 HD200
Tuners: HVR-1600, HDHR, HVR-950, and OnAir GT USB

I have been very happy with my Asus P7P55D-E motherboard. I mostly bought it because it has two PCI slots for my two PVR-500 analog tuners, but I also like the 6 SATA II ports from the Intel P55 chipset, plus one more from a JMicron controller, plus two SATA III ports from a Marvel chip. It's not bleeding edge anymore, so you should be able to get decent deals on it.

Rich

[davephan]

What's the reason for the SageTV upgrade? A fast dual core would work if you don't plan to do comskip. A fast quad would be the choice if you run comskip.

How much total disk space will you have? Are all 8 drives the same size? If so, you could use RAID if the system board has built in RAID, without the expense of a RAID card. The more drives you have, the more likely it is that you will see a failure.

I run 12 drives in my SageTV computer. Most of them are RAID 1, which isn't very efficient. In the past 5 years, I've had a couple drives fail.

You should also consider imaging the C drive, so you can easily recover your system back to a point in time, if you have trouble.

Dave

[kingwr]

8 HDDs? Seriously dude, unless you are running a system for serving porn to 48 hotel rooms, I would chuck those drives and invest in a couple of 7500 RPM 2TB Caviar Greens. Put your OS (which should be 64-bit Windows 7) on a SSD that supports TRIM (like an 80GB Intel X25-M).

[MattHelm]

I think any modern CPU/MB will work. If it doesn't have 8 Sata ports, a PCIe x4 controller that can turn off the raid function (some are raid only) would work fine. As far as a CPU, if you are just recording and remote playback, I'd just the cheapest dual core (just because windoze works better with dual cores) as these are handled but the DMA controller for 99% of the work, not the CPU.

Now if you planning on doing ANYTHING else, you should plan for enough CPU. That's why I have a quad core on MY system, and a dual on the others I support.

[tmiranda]

Originally Posted by kingwr

8 HDDs? Seriously dude, unless you are running a system for serving porn to 48 hotel rooms, I would chuck those drives and invest in a couple of 7500 RPM 2TB Caviar Greens. Put your OS (which should be 64-bit Windows 7) on a SSD that supports TRIM (like an 80GB Intel X25-M).

I'm not sure I agree with this. I used to have a server with 6 drives and converted to a server with two. Now I occasionally get stuttering if I have several recordings happening at once and am watching something on an extender. If I had to do it again I would use more drives.

Maybe the solution is to get 8 2TB drives

[paulbeers]

Originally Posted by tmiranda

I'm not sure I agree with this. I used to have a server with 6 drives and converted to a server with two. Now I occasionally get stuttering if I have several recordings happening at once and am watching something on an extender. If I had to do it again I would use more drives.

Maybe the solution is to get 8 2TB drives

I agree. Most small hard drives, would be better than 1 or 2 big green drives. I use green drives for my RAID storage, but for my recordings I use 2 - 7200 RPM hard drives, I might even add a 3rd eventually.

[Spectrum]

Originally Posted by MattHelm

...I'd just the cheapest dual core (just because windoze works better with dual cores)...

What makes you think this? In some cases a dual core may have a higher clock speed, but that doesn't make Windows work "better," just faster on single threaded apps.

[MattHelm]

Originally Posted by Spectrum

What makes you think this? In some cases a dual core may have a higher clock speed, but that doesn't make Windows work "better," just faster on single threaded apps.

Because of the way Windows tries to multi-task on a home computer (not a server). If any one task needs a lot of the CPU, the whole OS bogs down. With dual cores, if 1 task bogs a core down, the OS can use the other core. So yes, Windows works "better", but 1 task does not.

Except for a few older games, I'd always pick a slower dual core of a single core for Windows. If I'm going to be running (running, not loaded) a lot of programs, or have any multi-core aware programs, I'd go with as many core as I could.

[chrishallowell]

Right now I have a: ABIT IP35 Pro, Core 2 Quad Q6600 CPU(2.4GHz) with 2GB memory
I use that to do everything, SageTV, video transcoding, graphic/video editing, etc.

I recently developed stuttering while watching HD OTA with the HDHR. It works for the first 10-15 minutes and the starts stuttering so bad we can't watch HD.

So I would like 2 systems. 1 for SageTV and 1 for everything else.

I'm leaning towards this PC for around $500:
ASUS P7P55D-E LGA 1156 Intel P55 SATA 6Gb/s USB 3.0 ATX Intel Motherboard
Intel® Core™ i3-530 Processor (4M Cache, 2.93 GHz)
2GB mem, heat sink, cheap video card, and case (Already have a monitor, XPPro32bit, and HDD)

[davephan]

I used to have an ABIT IP-35 for an older SageTV computer. I had a fast dual-core and 2 gigs RAM. My first SageTV with an old Althon XP 1800 with 512 meg RAM, which I also used for everything else too. A separate, dedicated computer for SageTV is the only way to go.

Check your RAM consumption and network when it is stuttering. I used to recommend 64k blocks, but that requirement is supposed to be dropped in recent SageTV versions.

You should get a fast quad if you can afford it. You can offload the Comskip and transcoding to another computer. Make sure that the transcoding and Comskip are running at "Low" priority. It makes a big difference for other things running on the same computer.

Some system boards do have built-in RAID, but usually those are a bit higher in cost. Setting up RAID is easy. All the drives should be the same size in each RAID set.

Eight drives isn't that many. I have 12 drives in my current SageTV computer. Most are running in RAID 1 pairs. You don't need to have OS drive running in RAID if you take periodic images of the OS drive. If you start growing SageTV too large, you may need to put most of your storage on another computer. I am currently building up an unRAID server to hold most of my archived files.

Dave

[drewg]

Originally Posted by tmiranda

I'm not sure I agree with this. I used to have a server with 6 drives and converted to a server with two. Now I occasionally get stuttering if I have several recordings happening at once and am watching something on an extender. If I had to do it again I would use more drives.

Maybe the solution is to get 8 2TB drives

At least for the linux version of sage, the solution is for sagetv to increase the default tuner buffer size from 1.8MB to 10MB or 20MB. I used to hack the linux DVB driver core to do that, now I just run an LD_PRELOAD intercept library to watch for sage opening the tuner & increase the buffer size behind its back.

I wonder if a larger buffer would help you. But I have no idea how to force that behind sage's back on Windows.

Drew

[bcjenkins]

Originally Posted by drewg

At least for the linux version of sage, the solution is for sagetv to increase the default tuner buffer size from 1.8MB to 10MB or 20MB. I used to hack the linux DVB driver core to do that, now I just run an LD_PRELOAD intercept library to watch for sage opening the tuner & increase the buffer size behind its back.

I wonder if a larger buffer would help you. But I have no idea how to force that behind sage's back on Windows.

Drew

Could you pm this info to me? Please

[drewg]

Originally Posted by bcjenkins

Could you pm this info to me? Please

I sent it to your email..

Drew

[chrishallowell]

Ok, well I finally bought a new PC. My "old" ABIT IP35 Pro, Core 2 Quad Q6600 CPU(2.4GHz) with 2GB memory is going to be my SageTV machine. My new PC is for everything else (Video editing, transcoding, comskip duties, etc). I went way over my budget so I guess my kids aren't going to college.

New PC Specs ($1550):
ASUS P6X58D-E
Intel Core i7-950
Scythe SCMG-2100 Sleeve CPU Cooler
G.SKILL Ripjaws Series 12GB (3 x 4GB) DDR3 1600
COOLER MASTER HAF 932 case
Corsair CMPSU-850TX PSU
GeForce GTX 470 (Fermi) SuperClocked
SAMSUNG Spinpoint F3
Windows 7 (64 bit)