Min Spec

BT said its all automated so nothing they can do, so just got to wait for infinity.

is it worth having a graphics card in a server, as it doesnt really do a lot, or will this take some pressure off my G620?
 
paradisiac said:
BT said its all automated so nothing they can do, so just got to wait for infinity.

is it worth having a graphics card in a server, as it doesnt really do a lot, or will this take some pressure off my G620?
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What are your current specs ?. Initially you posted about an E3400 and now you mention a G620.

There is a big difference between sharing (basic) and streaming. With sharing you are generally making a file available to other clients on a network and they then just 'download' that file. A lot of clients are able to play the file as they download it but they are taking the information in the file and converting it in to the sound and video you see. With Streaming, the server is taking the file and transcoding it on the fly to a format the client can display. The processing is mainly done on the server side and this is why your were seeing high CPU usage when a file was being streamed.

The upgrade suggested by JamesFreddie is ok but you are unlikely to get any big jump from an i3-2100 and I would be more inclined to use an i3-2120T as it is low power. My own WHS-2011 box uses an i3-2120T and my HTPC uses an i3-2100. I have no problems playing anything I have thrown at it but I share rather than stream as I prefer the native format and quality. I chose an i3-2100 for the player as I knew it would handle full 45GB Bluray ISO files streaming over my home lan and I could not get confirmation that any lower processor would be able to at the time.

Streaming over the internet is restricted by your upload speed and contention at the time. Bluray movies have a max AV bitrate of 48Mb/s (source) which is 6MB/s so you would need upto a 6MB/s upload link to stream full Bluray movies in original quality. Other codecs require much smaller bitrates but this gives you a worst case example. It all really comes down to what WHS-2011 is transcoding your media to and that codecs requirements.

RB
 
RimBlock said:
What are your current specs ?. Initially you posted about an E3400 and now you mention a G620.
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i ditched the E3400 server and am letting a mate use that.

Pentium G620
H61M-US3
8GB Zepplin RAM
60GB SSD
2 x 1TB WD Black
1 x 500GB Samsung

at the moment im using the default WHS 2011 remote web connection for streaming, but am looking at other routes as i would like each user to have their own libraries.
 
paradisiac said:
i ditched the E3400 server and am letting a mate use that.

Pentium G620
H61M-US3
8GB Zepplin RAM
60GB SSD
2 x 1TB WD Black
1 x 500GB Samsung

at the moment im using the default WHS 2011 remote web connection for streaming, but am looking at other routes as i would like each user to have their own libraries.
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For streaming I am afraid I am not of much help as I do not use it for the reasons stated above.

What I do for individual users is create the shared folders as group shares and mount them on a users Windows 7 profile when they login (library -> my pictures links to /whs-2011/pictures for example) so they can edit pictures on any machine they have an account on and get them on any other machine (pretty standard stuff) but I also create hidden personal shares which I set individual permissions on and mount on their 'My Documents" so they have their own private area as well that do not show up when just browsing the WHS-2011 server. Of course for hidden shares you need to work outside of the dashboard supplied with WHS 2011

RB.
 
I suspect at the end of the day, even with your improved hardware, your main stumbling block is always going to be your upload speed.

Even when you switch to inifinity and a higher package, you'll still be limited or capped to a ratio of your stated upload speed. certainly for large file uploads. I'm not sure if this effects streaming as I have not tried it so far to a remote location.

Virgin, kindly, sent me a copy of the fair useage policy when I rang to find out why my upload speed had suddenly dropped way down. Turns out that my sustained upload speed is 10% of my current 4.75 - 5 Mbs ... ie about 500Kbps! :( That's max.. no matter what :( and they can cap it down to less than half for up to 6 - 8 hours at a time.
 
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Essexraptor said:
I suspect at the end of the day, even with your improved hardware, your main stumbling block is always going to be your upload speed.

Even when you switch to inifinity and a higher package, you'll still be limited or capped to a ratio of your stated upload speed. certainly for large file uploads. I'm not sure if this effects streaming as I have not tried it so far to a remote location.

Virgin, kindly, sent me a copy of the fair useage policy when I rang to find out why my upload speed had suddenly dropped way down. Turns out that my sustained upload speed is 10% of my current 4.75 - 5 Mbs ... ie about 500Kbps! :( That's max.. no matter what :( and they can cap it down to less than half for up to 6 - 8 hours at a time.
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so far streaming seems to be pretty good, and that with a 120KBps upload speed. videos are blocky on fast motion though, but still, if i could up that to the 500KBps you said you get, thats still about 5x what i have now, so the blockyness should be a lot less frequent.
Hamachi seems to of got around my problem (pc side, still gotta look into phone streaming) of users and libraries, but now i need something that will buffer the video files, this would mean i could pause the vid for 5 mins and then it should be seamless (albeit blocky) on playback like it is through remote web connect.
 
ok, so kind of going back to my first question, what does the server actually do (i mean in terms of processing power etc)? for my needs i want to stream video and music and share files. so what power would the pc need to be as i believe it is doing very little (i dont think the server itself does any transcoding on the fly) other than sharing files and folder. and i cant forsee any more than 3 machines accessing it at one time.
the reason i ask is, im looking at doing a Llano build, and wondered if a A6-3670 setup would be better than my G620 or E3400 machines, or whether it would be completly wasted.
 
jamesfreddie said:
Are you thing about using the A6-3870 in the server?

You could look for another program that uses a graphics card for decosing.
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im not sure, this is the thing. im not 100% sure what the server is actual responsible for and how powerful it would need to be.

i will be getting an FM1 setup as i have everything bar the cpu already. i will either use it to replace the G620 machine as either the server (which it now is) or the HTPC (which it was before i made it a server)
 
paradisiac said:
im not sure, this is the thing. im not 100% sure what the server is actual responsible for and how powerful it would need to be.

i will be getting an FM1 setup as i have everything bar the cpu already. i will either use it to replace the G620 machine as either the server (which it now is) or the HTPC (which it was before i made it a server)
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First thing to do would be to run performance monitor to get measurements of resource usage especially when streaming. Technet article about using it here. Once you have some stats you will be able to make a more informed decision based on your hardware and usage.

I am still a bit unclear as to what you are trying to achieve. Are you trying to stream to a HTPC in the same location as the server, Stream from the server to another location that has a HTPC (i.e. a Server in the UK, a HTPC in the US) or both ?.

For a HTPC in the same location then I would just share the files, use the AMD as the HTPC and rather than streaming, let it decode from shares using something like XBMC. You could still have streaming turned on for remote locations at the same time.

RB
 
RimBlock said:
I am still a bit unclear as to what you are trying to achieve. Are you trying to stream to a HTPC in the same location as the server, Stream from the server to another location that has a HTPC (i.e. a Server in the UK, a HTPC in the US) or both ?.
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basically i have my server at home which has my files/documents, music, video and pictures on.
this then has its shares as mapped drives on 2 pcs at home so i can access them using XBMC, WMP, WMC, VLC......
i would then also like to be able to access the server on my laptop at work to use the files/documents and a pc for the media (so i can listen to music or watch a film whilst working)
then at a third location (my dads, still in uk, just 80 miles away) access to his files/documents, music, video and pictures on the server at my house. dad has 3 pcs, 2 laptops and a netbook that atleast 2 of them would want to have access to the server.
and then finally, if possible, i would like to be able to stream the media to my iphone, a windows phone and an android phone.

i know, seems like a lot to ask for a standard pc and broadband connection. but so far using remote web connect the music side has been fine.

i have recently installed and setup himachi, which means i can have my shares mapped as drives, which has made it possible to use XBMC, WMP....at work to play media, but unfortunatly, as they believe the files are on the pc not the server, they do not buffer, so i do get a bit of issues.
 
Hi paradisiac.

First up with WHS2011 you don't need a graphics card, other than for initial setup. Use something cheap and cheerful, and if possible remove it once setup. It's only generating heat and drawing power.

I'm not sure what you're doing now; but using Hamachi client PC's will be able to access your shares, very little CPU power is needed and is going to be almost solely dependent on the speed of the connection. If it's a local client, then disk speed may also play a part, but that won't be an issue over the net.

For your phones etc, I'm going to assume you're still using the WHS2011 Media Sharing. Again this is going to be limited by the available bandwidth. BUT, this is where WHS2011 will encode based on the speed of the connection, and will use CPU power. This is where you probably need to do some testing to see what sorts of files, filesizes, performance, quality works for you/family and how much CPU is being used.

Obviously if you have say a lot of HD content over a slow connection, then it's going to have to do a lot of re-encoding to stream it to the remote devices, having a faster CPU may help here.

I seem to recall from WHS beta that an i3 would really be the minimum for regular transcoding, and i5 for more heavy use at a higher quality. As said, personally I'd save the Llano for a HTPC and get yourself a cheap socket 775 quad. Like a Q8300 or Q8400 as these run relatively cool.

The other option would be to re-encode your files off line and share these, it would mean duplicated media in different formats, but you'd then only be limited by the speed of your network/ISP and the CPU wouldn't really have to do any hard work.
 
thanks ChileanLlama.
yeh i used the OBV for the install.
video/music streaming over the home network is good, but over the internet video is blocky (i only have 120KBps upload so i would say this is the problem) but music (via remote web connect) is perfect.
Hamachi is good, and ideal for the files/pics etc, and does get around my issue with users having their own media libraries. but as its a mapped share, the pc will not buffer the files like the silverlight player with remote web connect, therefore with music i get lag now.
is there a way to make the pc buffer?

looking on a popular auction site, Q8300/Q8400 are still going for £80+ which is the same price as a Llano quad core, which i assume will be slightly more power efficient being newer technology.
 
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I'd tend to agree, I think you'll be mainly limited by your upload speed - if you recall that's why I also suggested putting your second server with your father and then having the scripts sync each server in quiet periods.

Have a look at the software being used for playback, and see if you can adjust the buffers and/or connection speed there.

Don't forget as well that if you have all your family requesting media at the same time, it's going to make it worse still.
 
ChileanLlama said:
I'd tend to agree, I think you'll be mainly limited by your upload speed - if you recall that's why I also suggested putting your second server with your father and then having the scripts sync each server in quiet periods.

Have a look at the software being used for playback, and see if you can adjust the buffers and/or connection speed there.

Don't forget as well that if you have all your family requesting media at the same time, it's going to make it worse still.
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yeh i have tested music running on 4 machines and its been ok with RWC. the thing with the buffering, WMP will buffer up to 60second on a network playback, but does mapping a share not stop WMP seeing the files as network playback and assume they are all local?
 
I don't think so it's still networked even though it's mapped. I always UNC's and don't bother with mapping so can't confirm.

Have you also changed "detect connection speed" and moved it down to something like "ISDN 64Kbs"? That may help.
 
ChileanLlama said:
I don't think so it's still networked even though it's mapped. I always UNC's and don't bother with mapping so can't confirm.

Have you also changed "detect connection speed" and moved it down to something like "ISDN 64Kbs"? That may help.
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ah right, yeh i upped buffer from 5seconds to 60seconds and its now playing a lot better :) the speed is still on auto, shall i leave it or play with that too?

also, going back to the re-encoding it all (space isnt a problem for have duplicate media) what would be the best to have video and music ripped to?
 
ok, seamless playback in WMP over the internet. but.......................i cant now access the internet from the pc, it just times out. everything else here will connect fine, just not the one streaming :confused:

EDIT : restarted pc and everything is working fine :)
 
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Glad you got it working :) Keep an eye on that though if the changes are affecting local v remote buffering.

You're not having a problem with .mp3's so leave them as is. I doubt they will be transcoded on the fly.

Videos - a bit more thought and testing needs to go into it. You want to get it to the smallest size you can so you can stream it, yet not sacrifice too much quality. You also need to think about what formats can the clients (probably not too big a problem) and your phones play back.
 
ChileanLlama said:
Glad you got it working :) Keep an eye on that though if the changes are affecting local v remote buffering.

You're not having a problem with .mp3's so leave them as is. I doubt they will be transcoded on the fly.

Videos - a bit more thought and testing needs to go into it. You want to get it to the smallest size you can so you can stream it, yet not sacrifice too much quality. You also need to think about what formats can the clients (probably not too big a problem) and your phones play back.
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so what does the work when playing the video back, the server or the client? this is where i get confused. does the server just send it as a file and the client then sorts the rest out?
 
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