Virtualizing SageTV Server

[acousticiris]

Has anyone attempted/experimented with virtualizing a SageTV Server (using VMWare, Hyper-V or anything else)?

I have been profiling my SageTV box and comparing it with previous hardware configurations I've had over the years and discovered that it may be a good candidate for combining with another server I have on my network ... adding it as a guest, virtual machine.

As of recently, I use extenders for all of my viewing (which is limited to two extenders and usually only one operating at one time ... very rarely are two playing back media). My MAX CPU usage (when recording as I do not use the SageTV server to playback video directly to my television) is around 60% (100% on one core, 20% on the second of a Phenom II dual core system). But I'm usually well below 20%. Memory usage is well under 3GB.

My plan is to consolidate one server that runs a Domain Controller, DNS, SSH, DHCP between a virtual windows host and a virtual SuSE linux host and my second computer that runs a SageTV server with an OTA HD tuner and an HD-PVR (this is the device I expect the most trouble with as it has been a lot of trouble in an ideal configuration to date).

My target server will be an AMD Phenom II X6 1100T, 16GB DDR3, Promise (caching) RAID controller with several directly attached SATA 3.0 drives.

I can't see any bottlenecks on the hardware front. What I'm curious about is: Has anyone tried this? What OS for guest/Hypervisor did you use? What issues did you run into that were exclusive to the virtual environment?

Much thanks!

(**EDIT: wording was lousy)

[taylormadearmy]

I've been running Sage on a win7 client on ESXI for about 6 months now with no particular issues. I've used USB DVB-T tuners with no issue (until i tried to use more that 3 - USB passthrough speed issues with ESXI) but now am using hdhomerun network tuners so I can have them connected to an arial point in a different room (the server is now under the stairs where there is no arial socket).

I have it on a server with 5 other clients:
1xWHS for backup
1xwin7 for general server duty
2xvpn servers
1x ubuntu

This is running on a Lenovo TS20O with a core i7 875 and 8gig of Ram.

I suspect the main challenge as you say with be how well your tuners work on the virtualised client. Everything else should be just fine.

Good luck!

[acousticiris]

I've been running Sage on a win7 client on ESXI for about 6 months

Thanks for the reply. I dug around a lot today and yesterday and it looks like ESXi is the only viable option if I want to have the server as a guest in my virtual environment. Unfortunately, part of my motivation was a very temporary testing of RemoteFX for an unrelated project.

It turns out that Hyper-V does not support USB Pass-through so that's out. Unfortunately, I have to go Hyper-V for a week or two for testing something totally unrelated, so I'm thinking of doing the awful ... making the Hyper Visor run more than just Hyper-V. I have the capacity, but I have no idea how well that's going to play out due to the way the OS will prioritize resources. Either way, it'll be temporary and worth the test if for no other reason than to see how it all works together.

It sounds like ESXi will be a great solution, ultimately. I'm on two USB tuners and all internal storage. Though I haven't looked into licensing costs for ESXi, and that'll be a huge factor. I'm not going to pay to run something in a virtual if it'll cost less to leave it on bare metal, despite the advantages.

[stanger89]

Originally Posted by acousticiris

I've been running Sage on a win7 client on ESXI for about 6 months

Thanks for the reply. I dug around a lot today and yesterday and it looks like ESXi is the only viable option if I want to have the server as a guest in my virtual environment. Unfortunately, part of my motivation was a very temporary testing of RemoteFX for an unrelated project.

It turns out that Hyper-V does not support USB Pass-through so that's out. Unfortunately, I have to go Hyper-V for a week or two for testing something totally unrelated, so I'm thinking of doing the awful ... making the Hyper Visor run more than just Hyper-V. I have the capacity, but I have no idea how well that's going to play out due to the way the OS will prioritize resources. Either way, it'll be temporary and worth the test if for no other reason than to see how it all works together.

If it's got PCI passthrough, you could pass through the whole USB controller.

It sounds like ESXi will be a great solution, ultimately. I'm on two USB tuners and all internal storage. Though I haven't looked into licensing costs for ESXi, and that'll be a huge factor. I'm not going to pay to run something in a virtual if it'll cost less to leave it on bare metal, despite the advantages.

ESXi is free (at least for home use, they charge for support plans IIRC).

[Skybolt]

Originally Posted by acousticiris

Has anyone attempted/experimented with virtualizing a SageTV Server (using VMWare, Hyper-V or anything else)?

I have been profiling my SageTV box and comparing it with previous hardware configurations I've had over the years and discovered that it may be a good candidate for combining with another server I have on my network ... adding it as a guest, virtual machine.

As of recently, I use extenders for all of my viewing (which is limited to two extenders and usually only one operating at one time ... very rarely are two playing back media). My MAX CPU usage (when recording as I do not use the SageTV server to playback video directly to my television) is around 60% (100% on one core, 20% on the second of a Phenom II dual core system). But I'm usually well below 20%. Memory usage is well under 3GB.

My plan is to consolidate one server that runs a Domain Controller, DNS, SSH, DHCP between a virtual windows host and a virtual SuSE linux host and my second computer that runs a SageTV server with an OTA HD tuner and an HD-PVR (this is the device I expect the most trouble with as it has been a lot of trouble in an ideal configuration to date).

My target server will be an AMD Phenom II X6 1100T, 16GB DDR3, Promise (caching) RAID controller with several directly attached SATA 3.0 drives.

I can't see any bottlenecks on the hardware front. What I'm curious about is: Has anyone tried this? What OS for guest/Hypervisor did you use? What issues did you run into that were exclusive to the virtual environment?

Much thanks!

(**EDIT: wording was lousy)

I am running sage on 2008 R2 64bit on a quad core 2.66, also running hyper-v. I made an image of my 2003 R2 sever running sage before the upgrade. I couldn't get the capture cards working on 2008 at first. I had alot of trouble the BDA drivers working on 2008 R2 for my 1600's. I ended up finding a reg hack to allow them to run, but never could get the virtuals to work without crashing.

So now I am running Save 7 on the above server without any trouble. Let us know how it works out for you.
Good Luck,
Skybolt

[taylormadearmy]

Originally Posted by stanger89

ESXi is free (at least for home use, they charge for support plans IIRC).

Yup - I'm using the free version.

[Skybolt]

Now it supports 64bit, I had wanted to try this but it wouldn't run on my server. Looks like I should try it again.

[ChaOConnor]

OP, I am doing roughly what you were looking at, and it's been running great. I am using the 1090T and my MB supports IOMMU so I can pass through an eSATA card (to drive my external storage). I use unRAID for the storage side and Win 7 for SageTV. So far it's been great!

[UgaData]

I was looking at doing this as well, however the road block I ran into was firewire. I use firewire for video capture and found it wasn't supported very well. I know a lot of HD-PVR owners use firewire for channel changing which would also be a problem in the virtual environment.

[neurocis]

Anybody tried this under Proxmox (Xen/OpenVZ) or VirtualBox as I am just about to venture down that path with a SageTV Ubuntu VM.

[SageWizdom]

Originally Posted by neurocis

Anybody tried this under Proxmox (Xen/OpenVZ) or VirtualBox as I am just about to venture down that path with a SageTV Ubuntu VM.

Did you ever try this with Proxmox? I'm thinking of rebuilding my virtual host and was thinking of using Proxmox, especially with the new V9. Anyone else use Proxmox?

[Fuzzy]

Originally Posted by SageWizdom

Did you ever try this with Proxmox? I'm thinking of rebuilding my virtual host and was thinking of using Proxmox, especially with the new V9. Anyone else use Proxmox?

Considering he hasn't posted here since 2011, you may not get an answer.

[SageWizdom]

I figured it might be a dead thread, but ya never know. Lots of great folks here.