Thinking of updating my Sage Box

[m1abrams]

Originally Posted by SpiffyRex

B/s the worst enemy of disk drives is the temperature fluctuation that they go thru when spinning down, cooling off to the cold room temperature, then warming up when they spin back on. If you must put a server in a basement, or any other cold environment, keep it running 24x7 and make sure the drives don't spin down. That's why they do on the few datacenters I have seen in the past. They keep the room cool to make sure disk drives an other electronics don't overheat but they keep the drives working all the time. Just my experience, I have heard about other datacenters that spin down the drives as much as possible to save electricity. The company I work for has one of it's datacenters in the floor below my office. A buddy of mine is one of the admins and in the summer he lets me in for a few minutes to cool down after coming back from lunch. It feels sooooo good. Oh, and you are right, the admins keep a rack for jackets.


Right, but they are all rather cold. So they are good for storage but not to run delicate mechanical devices like disk drives.

Like to know what datacenter you have been to that requires the drives to spin down? I have never been in requested to have a server spin its drives down. The same would be true for a sage server, my sage box is constantly doing something that I can not put it in standby. But besides that while temp changes are not good for the machines, the temp of the basement is never below ~62F or above ~68F. These are not frigid numbers and are in fact ideal for any machine.

[MattHelm]

Originally Posted by gilded07

Success with powerline adapters has far more to do with the way the home is wired than it does the adapters....

I have a REAL good example of that. I bought a pair of these when the local Radio Shack sold out, installed them in my dad's house, and couldn't get 56K out of them! A few months later, I tried wireless at another house, and nothing, so remembering these, I tried them, and boom, perfect connection.

[SpiffyRex]

Like to know what datacenter you have been to that requires the drives to spin down?

Many datacenters use MAID technology (massive array of idle disks) in an effort to reduce power consumption and prolong the lives of the drives. Although this does conserve energy, it compromises drive longevity if the arrays are stored in a cold room. Not using the drives when not needed is good, but not if they have to go thru a big temperature swing to achieve operational temperature.

The same would be true for a sage server, my sage box is constantly doing something that I can not put it in standby. But besides that while temp changes are not good for the machines, the temp of the basement is never below ~62F or above ~68F. These are not frigid numbers and are in fact ideal for any machine.

So that means that the drive(s) will go thru a 16c to 39c range every time the system hibernates. A lot more if the system spins the drives down while running, since the case fans will keep cooling the drives even further. My Sage server some times hibernates (after idling for a while) between 4am and 2pm (except in winter when I force it to run 24x7). In my case (and that of many people in this forum) I wouldn't put it in a basement but since your server runs 24x7 all the time it shouldn't be a problem.

[autoboy]

As a baseline,

I ran a wireless HD system using special 802.11G hardware that used the Atheros Gen 3 ( i think that was the name) chipset. Specifically, i used the Netgear Rangemax 240 router as a access point and the Linksys SRX400 PCI wireless card. The distance was about 30 feet though a landing and through 2 doors if both were closed. I rarely if ever had a problem with the wireless that I could actually track to the wireless as the problem. Sometimes stutters happened, maybe once every few months but I was never able to say for sure it was the wireless. I was quite happy with the system except that I was limited to systems with PCI slots so I couldn't pull out the computer and use a extender.

After a bit of a flood in my house I recently used that repair work to also run cat5 to all the bedrooms and I couldn't be happier with the flexibility and peace of mind that it gives. Even though my system worked, now I can do anything I want because I now have Cat5. The installers screwed up and put more holes in the walls where there was no flood damage, but I had to paint most walls anyways. The satisfaction of supreme flexibility and an install done right lingers long after the sourness of paying out of your a** fades away.

If you want to upgrade your box for better 1080i performance, I would just do a 45W AthlonX2 in a cheapo mATX board with the same chipset as your current build (so you don't need a windows reinstall) and a ATI 3450 video card. That will take care of your 1080i problems for less than $200. Who needs supreme speed in a HTPC anyways? I rarely feel the need for more speed. Even doing transcoding it takes long enough that I can't wait around for it to finish so a few minutes longer is not going to hurt a thing.

And one more thing, while I have never had a problem with stutters on my HD extender, its 1080i deinterlacing cannot touch a the motion adaptive algorithms of a 3450, 3650, or 8600GT / GTS. I use a Onkyo 875 receiver with a REON deinterlacing chip and the 1080i performance is much improved over the stock HD extender. It pretty much only matters if you have a sharp eye and a big TV though. In the bedroom with the 40 it doesn't make any visual difference. On a 60 10feet away it can.

[m1abrams]

MAID is really only useful for data archiving as a replacement for tapes. You will not see that in datacenters that serve up pretty much any website or active database application. Those types of applications require massive IO, my current system uses a SAN to provide the data storage for a 4 node oracle cluster. It consists of 11 15Krpm drives in a RAID 1+0 with a standby. Never a point in time that any drive could spin down.

[m1abrams]

Originally Posted by autoboy

As a baseline,

I ran a wireless HD system using special 802.11G hardware that used the Atheros Gen 3 ( i think that was the name) chipset. Specifically, i used the Netgear Rangemax 240 router as a access point and the Linksys SRX400 PCI wireless card. The distance was about 30 feet though a landing and through 2 doors if both were closed. I rarely if ever had a problem with the wireless that I could actually track to the wireless as the problem. Sometimes stutters happened, maybe once every few months but I was never able to say for sure it was the wireless. I was quite happy with the system except that I was limited to systems with PCI slots so I couldn't pull out the computer and use a extender.

After a bit of a flood in my house I recently used that repair work to also run cat5 to all the bedrooms and I couldn't be happier with the flexibility and peace of mind that it gives. Even though my system worked, now I can do anything I want because I now have Cat5. The installers screwed up and put more holes in the walls where there was no flood damage, but I had to paint most walls anyways. The satisfaction of supreme flexibility and an install done right lingers long after the sourness of paying out of your a** fades away.

If you want to upgrade your box for better 1080i performance, I would just do a 45W AthlonX2 in a cheapo mATX board with the same chipset as your current build (so you don't need a windows reinstall) and a ATI 3450 video card. That will take care of your 1080i problems for less than $200. Who needs supreme speed in a HTPC anyways? I rarely feel the need for more speed. Even doing transcoding it takes long enough that I can't wait around for it to finish so a few minutes longer is not going to hurt a thing.

Well already built the machine, and actually could not be happier with it. No issues so far with both broadcast HD and even the few Bluray discs I have played back. However I am looking more and more at cutting some drywall to run some cat6 because it would open up more possibilities for me. Maybe I can talked the wife into redecorating a few rooms .

[autoboy]

Sorry, i got bored and didn't read all the posts Glad everything is going well.

[SpiffyRex]

MAID is really only useful for data archiving as a replacement for tapes. You will not see that in datacenters that serve up pretty much any website or active database application.

I guess we are going to have to disagree on what a datacenter is. MAID is not used for retail websites as you mentioned but is used for B2B.

I ran a wireless HD system using special 802.11G hardware that used the Atheros Gen 3 ( i think that was the name) chipset. Specifically, i used the Netgear Rangemax 240 router as a access point and the Linksys SRX400 PCI wireless card.

Yes, I had equally good results with Dlink hardware using Atheros chips. However this is only good for one connection streaming HD content at a time.

However I am looking more and more at cutting some drywall to run some cat6 because it would open up more possibilities for me. Maybe I can talked the wife into redecorating a few rooms

A friend of mine got away with it by installing crown molding. That will hide the cables for the horizontal runs and then he drilled holes on the top of the wall for the vertical down-runs. Since everything is covered by the crown molding his wife was very happy with the results. Kinda of expensive and time consuming solution but if you can time it with an anniversary or any other special occasion it will be a great gift for both of you.

[m1abrams]

Well I have worked in many datacenters including the USPS datacenter, a few DoD centers, and currently have a client that resides in Equinix.

FYI- They keep Equinix extremely cold.