IO for Home Server, how much?

[mikeh501]

I'm putting together some ideas for a new setup in my house which revolves around the concept of being able to record/play/stream any content (movies,tv,pics,music) to any TV in my house via the network. The crux of it is to bring together all my content, into any room and to rip out SkyHD and go with a no-sub setup. With this, I should be able to record something in one room and playback in another etc.

The one item which isnt obvious off the shelf is what kind of server system I should be speccing for this setup. Heres the requirements...

* Up to 4-5 PC's (acer revos running Win7MC) will be streaming TV (SD/HD) content or SD/HD files (MKVs/AVI's) from the server. TV is streamed to the MC machines via IP on a virtual TV tuner (DVBLink) from the server
* The server will be doing download duties, circa 500-750kbps
* The server will contain at least 4, possibly 8 TV tuners (some cards have 2 tuners, some even 4), all capable of HD either in terrestial or digital flavours.
* The tuners could be simultaneously recording SD/HD content to the disk subsystem.
* The server needs at least 2tb, and for a little future proofing maybe 4tb. I might revise this upwards if I rip all my DVD's to it possibly.
* The server needs to be as small as possible. I dont want a huge tower case.
* The server needs to be low power and quiet.

Now what gives me significant pause for thought it the potential IO requirements i'm generating here and how can I provision it.

Some thoughts...

* Do I get a dedicated NAS box (poss with iSCSI) for the storage and provision a normal desktop type PC for TV tuner duties? Am I asking for trouble with IO doing this?
* Do I just get one machine which does it all, but getting one which has enough PCI slots, enough SATA ports and is still small/quiet is going to be challenging.
* Do I need a decent hardware RAID card? I'm thinking of chucking in as many SATA disks (dont have to be huge) and then configing RAID10 on it for good IO. How much does a card like this cost? What can be done in Win2k8?

Any help gratefully received

Should be an interesting project.

 

[mikeh501]

Thanks for the (only) reply

My suspicion is also that it could be quite a lot of IO, but I guess i'm looking for a steer on just how much, and how it could be provisioned in a small case.

What about RAID cards? i'd like to have some kind of RAID if only to ensure data is spread across many spindles, but i've no idea what is a good one at the home user end of the market. Maybe just go with software raid in win2k8?

The fractal case does look good...

 

[mikeh501]

Thanks for the really valuable feedback guys, especially the fag packet IOPS thinking this is illuminating.

Regarding the case, then yes its a bit of a punt to see if its possible; and i'm fully aware I may have to give up this requirement I do have somewhere to stick it etc.

So where we have got to is that were talking about a single box, not splitting up the tuner duties from the storage duties. This means it cannot be atom based because I need lots of PCI slots and it means a larger chassis given the number of drives. It also means a NAS is out just on the basis of likely IO issues. I think i'd have to spend lots of cash to get something half decent 4 bay ++.

Next question....

I need a hardware RAID card and some SATA drives provisioned into RAID.

* What RAID card? SATA; yes. 4 ports a minimum i'd suspect. Do any do funky drobo raid type stuff? (I have a FW drobo and like it etc)

* What RAID configuration? i've read that some 4 port cards (Adaptec 2410SA) do R10 but surely that isnt enough drives? Working on the basis of min 2tb, mor likely 4tb+. Also read that the Adaptec 2410SA has a 2tb limit! Thats not cool!

 

[mikeh501]

Firstly what OS are you thinking of running for your server. If it is WHS then forget any talk of RAID, it doesn't sit well with WHS.

I'm thinking Windows 2008 Server Standard R2 and set it up with AD etc. One of the questions i've got is driver compatability with the tuner cards but thats just a google for another day.

Secondly with the demands of that system, I seriously doubt you are going to get anything particularly low powered.

yeah, i think i've come to that realization.

Thirdly I would have a trawl of both The Green Button (Media Center Edition) and We Got Served (Windows Home Server) websites. There are plenty of people on those forums that have similar setups, that you describe running day in day out and have gone through all of the pain making them work reliably. Most of them are US based and running ATSC tuners, but the concepts and most of the hardware are identical.

Good idea

Fortunately something like http://shop.blackgold.tv/epages/BT3159.sf/en_GB/?ObjectPath=/Shops/BT3159/Products/BGT3595 when they become available to retail should be ideal for your requirements.

The BG3595 is definately top of my list, but I still need to do more research. Wonder if the drivers work in WinSvr08....

I think W7 MCE supports upto 4 tuners of each kind, so using those black gold cards, you could actually have say 4 dvb-t and 4dvb-s tuners, running 4 cards. A word of warning though, although they do not draw a huge amount of power, they do get hot so you better have plenty of cooling in whatever case you choose.

I want to run all the tuners in a single box and then have them shared over IP with the DVBLink software. This apparently allows "virtual" TV tuners to appear in the Atom based Acer Revo running win7 MC without them actually having to be present in hardware and can be run remotely to the server. Therefore the server does all the hard work, and importantly I can record in one room and playback in another which is one of my requirements.

Also from the experiences of other forum members, your 2 TB of storage will not last you very long, especially if you are recording a lot of HD streams.

Indeed.... hence why I want a decent IO subsystem with plenty of ports; just finding one is expensive!

One solution could be to build a relatively low power MCE 7 machine using an atom motherboard and one of those black gold tuners for satelite, use something like a pair of of DVB Link (Homerun) network tuners for dvb-t and use a QNAP box as a HD subsystem running on a gigabit network.

That way the tuners and the NAS could be hidden away and all you would have is a small MCE box on display, with 2 satellite cables going into it.

If your going to the trouble of implementing the server and DVBlink then why not put the satellite feed into the server too?

 

[mikeh501]

What I am more interested in is the fact that you could actually find something decent worth recording on 1 tuner, never mind 8!

remember that the tuners are shared between maybe 4-5 rooms/tv's. Just watching tv in each room is 4 tuners alone never mind recording.

 

[mikeh501]

I was thinking 2 SSDs for the recording, since battering large drives with high IO just increases the chances they fail and some people here are suggesting numbers of drives raided that will put the costs above the cost of a couple of SSDs

Seems a bit backwards aiming for high performance on bulk storage, this guys needs are still for home usage

I'm not entirely sure splitting the array is going to work just on the pathing issue of having to point the apps at various places. I'm assuming I'll have only a single option of where to point MC for recorded content, and if it's two arrays then this may be a problem. Needs a little more research

 

[mikeh501]

Kinda surprised most seem to be advocating the 'all your eggs in one basket' approach.

Personally I would use a machine for capture and another for archiving / playback. The capture machine could have a suitabily fast disk subsystem to handle the 8 streams and the archive server can have the volume on a slower disk subsystem either backed up, on a fault torrerant raid array or pref both.

You loose your capture server then you still have all your archived material available. The archive server could just be a NAS box or two.

It really depends on what impact downtime has on you and loss of all the recorded content.

RB

As per the multi server post above; one of the things i'm not sure about is whether media centre can have multiple paths setup for record and playback. I kinda doubt it.

Also your option means I will have two servers permanently on, which I'd like to avoid unless one of them can be very quiet/small. I guess the playback server could be a NAS, but the cost of having two systems for little benefit doesnt stack up imho.

Also, in terms of data loss i'll be backing up those items which I wouldnt want to lose (pictures/music) but anything else like recorded TV I couldnt care less if goes.