Recommended Setup for a Server and Network

[tanquef]

Hey guys, i'm looking for your experience advice...

I'm looking to setup a server with WHS for the following Sage setup:
on the server there will be around 15tb HDD on the pool with mostly DVDs and Bluray ISOS, also there will be 2 Analog tuners with regular Cable, 1 Analog tuner with Digital Cable (Motorola DCT-700 with USB-UIRT) and 1 Digital ISDB-T HD USB Tuner.

This will be hooked to 3 HD300 extenders, and one of them will be hooked to a SlingCatcher.

So my questions are:
What do you recommend as a hardware setup, lets say that at some time the 3 extenders will be running, maybe the 3 with HD sources (either Bluray or HDTV)?
What networking system do you recommend? will i need a gigabit switch?
i will have a DSL modem with a D-Link D-600 router, in that same room, there is a PS3, and a 42" LCD TV with one HD300 (with the slingcatcher), so this HD300 will be hooked to the Router and not the switch.
The server will be on another room with the switch, and the other 2 HD300's will been hooked to that switch along with the server.

Hope you can help me clear my ideas!

[jptheripper]

I would highly recommend gig for all ethernet, the cost difference is minimal. Look for a switch that has good reviews handling jumbo frames

Will you be comskip'ing? If so you need faster hardware, if not you can get by with less.

Assuming native format streaming, you wont be doing much transcoding, so cpu load (other than comskipping) will be minimal.

[tanquef]

Originally Posted by jptheripper

I would highly recommend gig for all ethernet, the cost difference is minimal. Look for a switch that has good reviews handling jumbo frames

how this one look like?
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16833122141
I assume that i will need a nic card with JUMBO FRAMES as well for the server, right?

Originally Posted by jptheripper

Will you be comskip'ing? If so you need faster hardware, if not you can get by with less.

comskiping not for now, cause its not supported here in Argentina...

Originally Posted by jptheripper

Assuming native format streaming, you wont be doing much transcoding, so cpu load (other than comskipping) will be minimal.

What i have now is an AMD Athlon 1.8ghz with 1GB DDR and 500gb HDD with 64mb Video Card (its a piece of junk i know, but i used it for testing the SageTV and his capabilities) with XP pro.

What do you recommend, in case i need to do comskiping and everything (so i will need to buy everything at once)

[tanquef]

also another question that i have is how do the pool work on the WHS?

because the motherboard normally has 4 SATA connectors, how do you reach 15tb of HDD space with only 4 connectors? also what PSU is needed to hold that amount of energy?

[jptheripper]

MY current WHS is 15 tb (of drives at least)

My motherboard has 5 sata ports, plus i have an add-on card with 4 more ports

sata ports 1-2 OS RAID 1tb each
sata ports 3-5 Storage Pool (1x1.5tb + 2x2tb)
sata ports 6-9 Storage Pool (4x2tb)

ide port 1 500gb outside IDE pool
ide 2-3 DVD drives

I would have more drives if i wasnt out of slots.

[KeithAbbott]

Originally Posted by jptheripper

I would highly recommend gig for all ethernet, the cost difference is minimal. Look for a switch that has good reviews handling jumbo frames

I would agree that you should set up a gigabit network (hey, why not?). However, I don't see that the jumbo frames is really required in this setup. Since the HD300s are only fast ethernet, they wouldn't be able to support jumbo frames anyhow. The only reason I could see a need for jumbo frames is maybe for future expansion capabilities. Plus, setting up jumbo frames can be tricky if you have a mixture of equipment that supports or doesn't support jumbo frames.

Originally Posted by tanquef

how this one look like?
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16833122141

I've used the NETGEAR GS605 5-port switch, and although I like the switch (and Netgear in general), the switch does run hot. I've pretty much moved to Trendnet gigabit switches, they perform well and run much cooler, and the ones that I use have a nice metal case.

[tanquef]

Originally Posted by jptheripper

MY current WHS is 15 tb (of drives at least)

My motherboard has 5 sata ports, plus i have an add-on card with 4 more ports

sata ports 1-2 OS RAID 1tb each
sata ports 3-5 Storage Pool (1x1.5tb + 2x2tb)
sata ports 6-9 Storage Pool (4x2tb)

ide port 1 500gb outside IDE pool
ide 2-3 DVD drives

I would have more drives if i wasnt out of slots.

and how much watts is your power supply? because they normally have 3 or 4 connectors...

[jptheripper]

Its a rosewill 650 watt power supply with (lots) of molex to dual sata connectors. Even 12 drives doesnt pull that much power.

[tanquef]

so, what system settings do you recommend?

[KeithAbbott]

Wow, this is a broad question. You're probably going to need to narrow it down a bit more to get meaningful responses. Most of the background that you've given us so far is hardware related. Are you looking for hardware settings, network settings, windows settings, SageTV settings? What plug-ins are you thinking about using?

One of the most popular settings to change is to increase your server's java heap size, the default value is pretty low. There are many threads in this forum that discuss this, a search should locate them pretty quickly.

[tanquef]

Originally Posted by KeithAbbott

Wow, this is a broad question. You're probably going to need to narrow it down a bit more to get meaningful responses. Most of the background that you've given us so far is hardware related. Are you looking for hardware settings, network settings, windows settings, SageTV settings? What plug-ins are you thinking about using?

One of the most popular settings to change is to increase your server's java heap size, the default value is pretty low. There are many threads in this forum that discuss this, a search should locate them pretty quickly.

like my main post says, i was talking about hardware settings for the required setup also posted on the main post. the thing is that post after post we change the purpose of the main question on the post, thats why i was getting back to my primary question...

[razrsharpe]

I highly recommend the HP switches... like this one. They make their own chipsets and dont use some realtek or other pos as their chipset. I also would connect ALL wired clients through the switch (and not the router). Routers make notoriously crappy switches so anything you can do to not use them as such is a good thing (even if it means doubling up your wiring....)

[tanquef]

Originally Posted by razrsharpe

I highly recommend the HP switches... like this one. They make there own chipsets and dont use some realtek or other pos as their chipset. I also would connect ALL wired clients through the switch (and not the router). Routers make notoriously crappy switches so anything you can do to not use them as such is a good thing (even if it means doubling up your wiring....)

can you tell me what's your hardware setup?

[razrsharpe]

Originally Posted by tanquef

can you tell me what's your hardware setup?

Network
-Motorola 6120 Cable modem
-Dlink DIR-615 DHCP Server, Router and WAP
-HP 1400 unmanaged switch gigabit
-CAT5e wiring
-Topology - Modem -> Router/WAP -> Switch -> All networked clients

Server
-Intel Core 2 Quad Q6600, Quad core, 2.66GHz
-Supermicro MBD-C2SBX motherboard, Intel x38 chipset
-4gb corsair ram
-Intel NIC
-3ware raid controller with 3 Raid 5 volumes, 15 total disks, ~12TB storage... Samsung and Hitachi drives
-win2003 32 bit, dedicated sage server
-2x HDHR for OTA (4 streams)
-1x HDPVR via Moto DCH3200 STB, firewire channel changing

Network Clients
-HD300
-HD200
-HD100 (Remote placeshifter)
-Sage7 Client (Win7 64bit) - Mainly used for testing, stvi development
-misc other computers, devices

My server hardly ever has any issues.. i can record 5 streams, comskip 4 of them, and playback hd content in 2 places and it hums along like nothing is going on....

So my recommendations
-Intel NICs (no built in realtek or broadcom chipsets)
-Intel CPUs with Intel Chipsets
-Corsair or Crucial RAM
-Supermicro (using intel chipsets) or Intel motherboards
-HP Switches

If i had to do it again i would use a NAS storage solution to store all my permanent media and have a smaller more energy efficient simpler server. I would not record to the NAS, just DVD/BD/Docs/Pictures/etc. I think it would be easier to maintain, easier to upgrade, and less resource hungry (mainly because i would have it sleep when not being accessed).

If you are not doing comskipping, transcoding, or placeshifting sagetv runs on very minimal setups. Personally i would not use WHS because i can't stand the pool and from what I've read/heard doing an OS restore of WHS from backup when stuff screws up is not simple.