To use Extender, what are my server OS options?

[facesnorth]

I've been reading the various subforums and threads, and I'm not 100% clear on something:

If I want to run an HD300 in extender mode, am I required that my NAS is running SageTV Media Center (either Windows 7/WHS, Linux or Mac)? So in other words, these are restrictions to the OS that my NAS must be running?

I am in the planning stages right now of trying to build a NAS / media server, and with Vail killing off the Drive Extender, I'm looking at the various options out there, including FreeBSD with ZFS. But if I go that route, I don't think I would be able to use an HD300 in extender mode, is this correct?

Thanks.

[gplasky]

You need a machine running either Windows, Linux or Mac and running the SageTV Media Center software. (Call this your Sage server) It doesn't have to run on your NAS. Many people also have a NAS that holds some of their media which Sage can use. But to use the HD300 in extender mode it needs to be able to connect to a SageTV Media Center software installed on a PC.

Gerry

[facesnorth]

Originally Posted by gplasky

You need a machine running either Windows, Linux or Mac and running the SageTV Media Center software. (Call this your Sage server) It doesn't have to run on your NAS. Many people also have a NAS that holds some of their media which Sage can use. But to use the HD300 in extender mode it needs to be able to connect to a SageTV Media Center software installed on a PC.

Gerry

I see, so for example I could have a FreeBSD system which would be my NAS, then a Win 7 desktop PC running SageTV Media Center, and would be able to run an HD300 in extender mode and play all the content on my NAS? That's not a terrible solution, except that the desktop PC would have to be running any time I want to do this. But it does provide me with some options.

[gplasky]

Originally Posted by facesnorth

I see, so for example I could have a FreeBSD system which would be my NAS, then a Win 7 desktop PC running SageTV Media Center, and would be able to run an HD300 in extender mode and play all the content on my NAS? That's not a terrible solution, except that the desktop PC would have to be running any time I want to do this. But it does provide me with some options.

That's why for my system I'm using WHS that has about 4 TB of storage on it. One box for everything-Sage and media. Plus it backs up all the PCs/laptops in the house. (see my sig for the layout.)

Gerry

[facesnorth]

Originally Posted by gplasky

That's why for my system I'm using WHS that has about 4 TB of storage on it. One box for everything-Sage and media. Plus it backs up all the PCs/laptops in the house. (see my sig for the layout.)

Nice. I'd been planning to do the same, but I'm not so sure about WHS anymore without drive extender (some say it's a non-issue). I'm leaning towards ZFS because it has much stronger data redundancy/protection, and FreeBSD is generally a much more robust OS than Windows. Now at least I don't feel that the decision will have as much impact as I thought it would - since I'm sure I will have a Windows box somewhere that I can simply load the Media Center on to.

[mguebert]

Originally Posted by facesnorth

Nice. I'd been planning to do the same, but I'm not so sure about WHS anymore without drive extender (some say it's a non-issue). I'm leaning towards ZFS because it has much stronger data redundancy/protection, and FreeBSD is generally a much more robust OS than Windows. Now at least I don't feel that the decision will have as much impact as I thought it would - since I'm sure I will have a Windows box somewhere that I can simply load the Media Center on to.

I am using WHS also to run SageTV and comskip with my extenders. I use WHS duplication for music and photos and I use a third party freeware product call flexraid for protection of my bluray and dvd rips. It works very well for my needs.

[PhilH]

I would also have to +1 on the WHS box. I've had good luck with mine. I've got a little over 18 Terabytes in it. It works great...

[calypsocowboy]

I'm planning an UnRaid box for storage, Windows 7 for my server, and extenders. It is 2 pcs up and running but UnRaid spins down the drives when not in use. I had WHS but with Microsoft saying support will run out in 2013, I didn't want to mess with another OS upgrade for a while so I'm not going to use WHS and will jump to Windows 7.

[ayjax]

I am currently using freenas (an old CPU/ MB & 3 x 500MB drives I had left over) along with and additional XP machine running sage. I am running ZFS on the freenas box and sage connects to it without issue for all my ripped media (movies, music, pictures, etc) all the items i would hate to loose if a drive died.

[mayamaniac]

Umm, I read from people on the forum complaining about WHS not being able to back up the OS itself, did they ever fix the problem? What if the WHS OS drive fails, is it a pain to get everything back up and running?

[calypsocowboy]

Vail/Fail does allow the server to back itself up. No word on when/if it will be out. MS is removing the drive extender functionality from WHS so you are seeing people enmass bolting from WHS.

[mguebert]

Originally Posted by calypsocowboy

Vail/Fail does allow the server to back itself up. No word on when/if it will be out. MS is removing the drive extender functionality from WHS so you are seeing people enmass bolting from WHS.

I will probably keep using WHS V1 until support ends for it. Then I will switch to Vail and mantain DE functionality using the Flexraid product I mentioned which also has a function called view which pools drives in a consolidated view.

The only real function I would be giving up is the duplication feature. I will get around that by using Hamachi to setup a vpn to a friends system and then use allway sync to keep offsite backups of my critical data.

[madtrader]

I'm running FreeBSD with ZFS. I have SageTV running on FreeBSD and use 2 HD200s in extender mode (1 more planned/purchased, just don't have the network run to that room yet). You can read more about my setup in the discussion here:

http://forums.sagetv.com/forums/showthread.php?t=43830

I've updated a little bit since the bit of discussion there, but basically I'm now on FreeBSD 8.2-RC1 w/ the Linux version of SageTV 6.6.something. And ZFS has saved my butt on data. Over the last 2 years I've lost 3 2TB drives, 2 1TB drives, and even a controller card in my pool (not all at once) and haven't lost a bit of data.

[hoep]

Originally Posted by mayamaniac

Umm, I read from people on the forum complaining about WHS not being able to back up the OS itself, did they ever fix the problem? What if the WHS OS drive fails, is it a pain to get everything back up and running?

I back up my server primary drive (partition c and d) by running driveimage xml (free for personal use) once a week per scheduler (sunday early morning ). via robocopy script i backup these images on an external jbod array (8 tb) where i also backup all my computer backups, recordings and media files. i know that raid 5 would save me some space, but i prefer a complete backup which is available at any time on any computer in my house. of course you could do this procedure on a daily basis, but i only backup my data and media on a daily basis. i also did exchange my primary harddisk already twice with no issue - there are ways to get the backup back on whs with maintaining the functionality of the drive extender. i already posted a link in the hardware support forum once, where the procedure is described.

[PLUCKYHD]

Originally Posted by hoep

I back up my server primary drive (partition c and d) by running driveimage xml (free for personal use) once a week per scheduler (sunday early morning ). via robocopy script i backup these images on an external jbod array (8 tb) where i also backup all my computer backups, recordings and media files. i know that raid 5 would save me some space, but i prefer a complete backup which is available at any time on any computer in my house. of course you could do this procedure on a daily basis, but i only backup my data and media on a daily basis. i also did exchange my primary harddisk already twice with no issue - there are ways to get the backup back on whs with maintaining the functionality of the drive extender. i already posted a link in the hardware support forum once, where the procedure is described.

You do realize weekly backups of the c and d drive don't work with WHS because of the tombstones right? I am pretty sure that will not be restorable as the pool drives are always changing and moving their data around. The only solution for WHS is a hardware raid for the main drive and that is questionable even at best.

[drewg]

Originally Posted by facesnorth

FreeBSD with ZFS. But if I go that route, I don't think I would be able to use an HD300 in extender mode, is this correct?

Thanks.

The limit is what tuners you can use. FreeBSD doesn't natively support the tuning V4L or DVB tuning ABI used by the SageTV Linux server. That means that PCI{e} based tuners would not work. However, there are people running FreeBSD & using HDHR tuners. There is also a FreeBSD project to run the linux drivers for USB tuners which I'm currently playing with.

Drew

[jayman]

Although I toyed with virtualization (W7x64 and unraid in VM's), I ended up going with Win7x64 and Flex Raid on one machine. Note, I do not use the consolidated Flex Raid View, but I do run the WebUI as a service for ease of configuration.

Let me outline the storage strategy in the context of the overall server, which has been stable.

Here's the general layout of the system,
1. Gigabyte GA-P55-USB3 ATX Mobo with Core I7-870 and 8GB PC12800 DDR3
2. 2xHDHR QAM (4 tuners), 1xHDPVR on USB3.0 mobo port w DirecTV (native output, DD5.1 Paterson USB/serial channel changing, driver 1.57, 7 sec tuning delay in Sage properties)
3. Win7x64 on 2x60GB SSD RAID 0 (mobo ports) with system images after changes
4. Recording to 1x750GB HDD and 1x1TB HDD (mobo ports)
5. 2x500GB Raid 1 Mirror (on mobo) for photos, home videos, app installers, and system images
6. 4x2TB HDD's managed by FlexRaid (1 PPU and 3 DRU's) on Supermicro AOC-SASLP-MV8 PCiex4 card with weekly scheduled Parity Syncs for storing BD/DVD/CD rips. This leaves me with 4 sata (1SAS) ports for new HDD's
7. BD/DVD-RW combo drive on mobo's marvell port
8. 1x250GB HDD on other Marvell port as scratch drive (temp files and edits from ClownBD/AnyDVD, Photoshop/Premiere Elements)
9. All in a Lian Li PC-B70 with Corsair 850W PSU
10. 3xHD300's at viewing locations

I like FlexRaid a lot. I use it to provide some level of fault tolerance for media that is already backed up and is replacable. Essentially, the weekly parity sync is somewhat protecting my time investment for ripping media.

The Raid 1 mirror protects my irreplacable data. I also have that data backed up on a 500GB HDD that I store in a safe deposit box, and I sync that drive with my photos, personal videos, documents and apps folders once every 3-4 months, then return to the safe deposit box.

Note that there is no backup or fault tolerance for my recordings. This is by design and I'm OK with it.

I do not use the "server" for general playback at a regular viewing location. It's used for capturing Sage recordings, Comskipping, file storage, media ripping, and light photo and video editing. It's on 24/7 on a UPS along with the HD-PVR, but the HDD's spindown after 2 hours of inactivity (set in Windows 7 advanced power options).

A bit off topic, but I've only had 1 HD-PVR lockup since September, and I believe it was due to a directv stb update that started a couple of minutes before a late night recording was scheduled. I missed one other early morning recording.

To sum up, I use Flex Raid to protect the time investment of ripping media that is large, already backed up and is replaceable and I use Raid 1 in conjunction with offsite storage to protect data that is irreplaceable. This is all accomplished with one server and a small external HDD.

So if you want to run 1 box try Win 7 with Flex Raid for your server. This is free to to try if you already own Win 7 and have a sufficient number of SATA ports. If it will only be a server that also does light comskipping, use x86 with 4GM RAM. If you will do other things on it, like video and photoediting beyond comskip, go x64 so you can use >4GB RAM in conjunction with a 4-6 core CPU.

Jay