Paging Skybolt - Windows MCE / HyperV and extenders

[ThePaladinTech]

Skybolt-

Thanks for offering to help. My setup is currently as follows:

Tyan S3992 MB 64GB Ram - Server 2012 DataCenter
Adaptec 5805 controller (os on two drives Raid1, six more drives Raid10 - VMs)
Ceton InfiniTV

The S3992 has three builtin nics - two broadcom GB and one intel 100mb.

I have the ceton bridged to the intel nic
Broadcom nic one has a static IP
Broadcom nic two is dedicated to VMs (and I've disabled it sharing the management as you suggested.)

My Windows7 VM I've given 4GB and 4 virtual cpus - at the moment the drives are VHDs on the Raid10 (i'm hoping that will not be an issue - It's not with SageTV)

I am using the HP x280n as the extender.

Still getting stuttering at the 3minute mark.

when you say a dedicated Virtual network... does your media center machine have two virtual nics? Right now my home and my virtual machines are all on the same network. but there is little traffic if any while we watch TV other than TV.

I'm also unclear regarding the checksum control - would I change that on the VM or the Host nic? my broadcom card does not have something called checksum control??? nor does it have 'flow control' (something I read in another post)

I should have another Intel NIC in a couple of days to try out.

[Skybolt]

Sounds like a sound setup. I use an SSD for the OS drive, and acronis to back it up after big changes. I recently just upgradded my MB and CPU as I have had great success with Hyper-V, but on 2008R2. MY current MB is SuperMicro MBD-X9DRL-3F-O with an E5-2620, only one for now and 32 gb ram. But I was able to achive great results with a desktop MB and a dual core i5 -650

One main differance is I have never used the Ceton infiniti tv setup, hopefully there is no difference in the end. I use the HDHR Prime because it is network based.

I also have the HP extender, I bought one used on Amazon. It was is a great bench mark for other extenders. I currenly use the 4gb slim xbox 360's as extender though. unfortunelty there is nothing better out there at this point.

I only use intel pro 1000 cards at this point. There fantastic at work and home. And for a server based NIC, quite afordable. Do not use a less NIC. The elcheapo's seam to cause more trouble then they are worth when it comes to A/V use. JMO.

Ok, so what I mean by a dedicated virtual network is this. Take one of your NIC's and dedicate it to Hyper-V. In the HV manager, under manage virtual networks. Select that card and create a new external network with some meaningful name and un-check the manage os with this connection box (It's named something like that). In the settings for the 7MC vm assign that newly created network as the virtual network to be used by that vm and don't use it for any other VM's.

The other thing I found to be a real life saver is in the HW properties of the NIC under Advanced tab (where no one should really go), there should be individual properies for flow control and checksum and the like. Some are very simple some are really complex. Each card list, names and uses these settings differantly, so theres sem guess work involved here, be carefull. But for intel there in the middle. Flow control, offloading, IPv4 etc. should all be set for Rx only, or Rx checksum offloading only. This is the thing that resolved all of my stuttering.

The next thing that makes the difference is, and maybe as much as the Rx stuff is to dedicate a phyisical hard drive to the vm. To do this it is simple. Add a blank HD to the main OS and tag it as offline. Then in the settings of the VM add a new HD as a D: drive and select the offline drive which should be in the list. after the VM booted,move the recording dir to the D: drive and delete the old one from C:\Users\Public\Recorded TV\TempRec. This can be done from within the MCE interface. Deleting the actual dir can be done after the moving.

I also have Sage running the same way, using an HD-PVR being passed in with "USB Redirector" works real well for that.

[ThePaladinTech]

Well I have installed an intel gigabit server class nic and still getting the stuttering. Could you compare my settings to yours?

Physical nic on Host
Adaptive Inter-Frame Spacing - enabled
Flow Control - RX enabled (was RX and TX enabled)
Interrupt Moderation - enabled
interrupt Moderation Rate - adaptive
IPv4 Checksum offload - RX Enabled (was RX and TX Enabled)
Jumbo Packet - Disabled
Large send Offload (IPv4) - Enabled
Link speed & Duplex - Auto Negotiation
Locally Administered Address - not present
Number of Coalesce Buffers - 128
Priority & VLAN - Priority & VLAN enabled
Recieve Buffers - 256
TCP Checksum Offload (IPv4) - RX Enabled (was RX and TX enabled)
Transmit Buffers - 512
UDP Checksum Offload (IPv4) - RX Enabled (Was RX and TX enabled)

Nic in VM
IPSec Offload - auth Header and ESP enabled
IPv4 Checksum Offload - RX and TX Enabled
Jumbo Packet - disabled
Large Send Offload Version 2 (IPv4) - Enabled
Large Send Offload Version 2 (IPv6) - Enabled
Network Address - Not Present
Receive Buffer Size - 2mb
Send Buffer size - 1mb
TCP Checksum offload (IPv4) - RX and TX enabled
TCP Checksum offload (IPv6) - RX and TX enabled
UDP Checksum offload (IPv4) - RX enabled
UDP Checksum offload (IPv6) - RX enabled

I have *not* yet moved it to a dedicated HD. But I am getting messages of "network congestion" on the display, and wouldn't think the HD would cause that? (I'm going to move it to a dedicated HD, just don't have one at the moment.)

thanks

[Skybolt]

They are close, I disabled all IP6 entries, I also disabled IP6 in my router, managed switches etc. At this point I am not ready to support IP6 until ALL device I use/have support it.

I have also set all checsum/flow control to Rx only. Nothing Tx has been enabled, I also have jumbo packet disabled as you do. This is for both the os NIC and the VM one.

Adding the dedicated HD to the VM was a big change. Your stuttering may be a combination of things.

Mine is creamy smooth, and I only have 2 cpus to the VM, you might also try bumping the ram a bit to see it that changes anything. One thing I have been doing with the VM OS's is turning off the paging file. Not sure if thats needed, but in a VM it will slow down all of your VM's file access speeds.

Another thing I didn't really think about is I have my VM's on a dedicated RAID 1+0 15K drive(s) only for Hyper-V. But I am running atleast 5-6 VM's at a time (wifes bis. as well in VM's). You might want to test this with only the 7MC VM running as well.

I also have Sage setup that same way, only running on XP, using an HD-PVR for a source. It's my way of getting around DRM. I have Sage record all of the Premium channels etc.

Let me know how you make out. It did take me a while to iron everything out.

[Skybolt]

I forgot one thing that made a huge difference before I switched to managed switches. I ised an el-cheapo 8 port switch and hooked 7MC, HDHR Prime, and all xboxes to it. That helped a lot.

I believe the there are multiple issues when it comes to stuttering, there doesn't seem to be a catch all fix, from what I can see.

Currently I am running two DGS-1210-24P managed switches with VLAN setup. That really helped alot, web server, kids gamming/streaming and IPTV.

Let me know how you made out.

[ThePaladinTech]

Will do going to be a bit before I can get a dedicated HD. And I have the same switch as you DGS-1210-24

[Skybolt]

Originally Posted by ThePaladinTech

Will do going to be a bit before I can get a dedicated HD. And I have the same switch as you DGS-1210-24

Cool, make sure you setup the vlan for 7MC/Prime use. Works very well.