Raid5 backup server/media server/TV-recorder/HD-player

[crazyDAJT]

hi all

I'm just finishing up my new build at the moment, and I'm wanting to start researching my next project.

this isn't a spec check as im not looking to move on this for probably 6 months

what i'm looking to do is have one box that could act as a backup server, stream media to other PC around the house (currently there are 4) this is included potentially decoding the HD stuff (as two of them are laptops). TV-recorder, i like the idea of having two duel channel tvcards so we can record 4 programs at once. and of course I would like to hook it up to my 42" Toshiba HD TV.

now, I've bean thinking, is this atualy possible or am i just mad.

now ideally, I would go for a media PC and a NAS server, but at the moment I'm renting a flat with my girlfriend, so lots of PC lying around the house is just not practical (I already have 2 desktops and 1 laptop) , also there is nowhere to hide them. Also due to this I have no real method of laying down any really good infrastructure for the NAS and the media PC to communicate (i.e. no Gigabit LAN).

this is why I'm looking at the idea of doing it all in one box.

im also thinking this might be a virtual machine jobby. i.e. linux or Windows Home Server to run the NAS side of things and the media server side, whilst maybe vista or XP to be nice and usable for TV side of things.

I'm assuming the spec would have to be reasonably high end. it looking at 1.1K inc vat at the moment.

4-8GB of ram
fast duo core processor or maybe a Q6600 if they get much cheaper, (also give me a chance to see if i get a better clocker.
will start with 2 750GB drives in raid 1 then migrate to 4 in raid 5 over time.
silent HD 2600
and the lovely LG GGW-H20L Blu-Ray Rewriter & HD-DVD ROM

I was also thinking of the Zalman HD160+ Aluminium HTPC Case as it has 5 HDD bays

comments would be grate.

 

[crazyDAJT]

If you want to encode 4 programs at once whilse simultaneously decoding video for clients you'll probably want as much CPU as you can get. A quad would be nice.

By what method would you decode video at the server and send it to the client? Is your network up to this? If I had to guess I'd say that uncompressed video streams at full quality would overwhelm a 100 mbit network, let alone dealing with the connectivity problems associated with high-bandwidth use of wireless networking.

I was thinking a hefty CPU would help, I have a q6600 in my rig at the moment, so if I upgrade to a 45nm chip it might be a good idea to use my q6600 I have.

when I said decoding, I probably mean decoding and compressing, something like divx on the fly. would this be possible/legal.

also is virtual machine the way to go??

 

[crazyDAJT]

thanks for the help so far, the HD streaming won't be used that much, as its an open plan flat, and if we want to watch a HD move then we will sit in front of the TV and watch it, so this can wait till we get a house, and then i can install a Gigabit LAN.

as for what to actually do with HD files in the future, I don't really know, is it better to stream the raw disk (i.e 25GB for blueray, 4MB/s based on a 2hr move) and let the client decode it, how does this work.

my idea behind using VM is that I can have a nice user-friendly media centre windows or Linux so its easy to brows photos, moves, music etc, and then have a hardcore back end (that would be actually running the VM) to do all the hardcore stuff, like serve files and act as back up.

I would like to go windows based, as I know what i am doing, but i understand there is a 2GB file limit, as I would like to have uncompressed DVD's on my server this would be a problem, and i know that Linux is the way to go for doing all the proper stuff. I do have a lot of friends that can help me with the Linux side of things, but they struggle when it comes to windows, and what I'm trying hear is a best of both world solution.

As I said, very new to HD streaming, so i have no idea what is the best way to go with this.

EDIT: At this stage Im not set on any media centre, have played around with the LinuxMCE a but dint get far as i had big driver issues.

 

[crazyDAJT]

had a look at MythTV, and it looks actually quite good.

most of the Features i really like, it will do all my pictures, music (including OGG!!) and rip DVD's it also apparently can save 4GB files, which is grate if I want to make a a close to lossless copy of a DVD. which I don't think windows will actually do.

I take it it dosn't have HD support, I didn't see anything mentioned about it. I have bean thinking about HD streaming and dont see much point it it, why would I want to watch a HD Film on my laptop, not much point really! might as well convert it to something like DVD.

as for the use of Linux, would I be able to run my raid5 set-up. I'm not that bothered about the hit on performance's motherbord raid5 gets, as i wont be writing that much, only during ripping and backups. Are there any HD drivers for Linux, these are things i just don't know. anybody running this sort of set-up?

 

[crazyDAJT]

Intel RAID is software RAID anyway, so yes, you can use that RAID level under Linux. Ubuntu is a very popular distribution and its "alternate" installer gives you this option.

I don't quite know what you mean by HD drivers. I'll assume you mean video drivers. While support has been traditionally dodgy, many HTPC-centric mATX board manufacturers are sure to maintain good Linux compatibility since Linux is a (relatively) popular platform for HTPCs. You'll want to install the proprietary drivers for whatever card/integrated chipset you get. These are available at the mobo vendor's web site or the web site of the video vendor, be it ATi or nVidia. Intel has fantastic Linux support so if you are using Intel graphics you won't need to install any drivers whatsoever.

Since it's all free there's no monetary disincentive for trying it out at least.
Plenty of support is available online for this sort of thing but you should read up and have a decent idea of what you're doing before starting. The Linux forum on OcUK is usually very helpful.
This was very helpful for me: http://www.mythtv.org/wiki/index.php/Ubuntu_Dapper_Installation

I was under the impression that motherbord raid was hardware, but used the CPU for Parity calculations. kind of a half way house. anyway, as long as it will work I'm fine.

I have used Ubuntu a bit so i have no worry about going down this root, and the all Linux environment does mean i wont have to do VM.

I have bean looking around the UMythTV site, and it does appear it can do HD stuff, and have found 64bit liunix drivers for a HD 2600 PRO I take it, it should run one of these "LG GGW-H20L Blu-Ray Rewriter & HD-DVD ROM" and then it shouldn't be to hard to get it display at default at 1080P on my TV.

also Ubuntus mutable desktops should help with running a system that is both file server and HD box.

so all looking good

last question, how does it go about streaming to windows box's as Myth don't work on windows, is it just a matter of browsing though the file server for the files you want, or is there a more slick front end you can use. would it synchronise with windows media player? I know its a horrible program.

 

[crazyDAJT]

Condescendingly, it's frequently referred to as Fake RAID. Bedtime reading: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RAID#Software-based

I've never tested or read much about HD-DVD/Blu-Ray under Linux. Presumably it's not driver-dependent but you should definitely be sure before you shell out a bunch of money on a drive. I suspect the only potential niggle is implementing/defeating the innate DRM common to newfangled media storage media.

For Windows clients there is WinMyth under development http://winmyth.sourceforge.net/
I hear it's a bit rough around the edges but I haven't tested it enough to vote it up or down.

I take it as it rips to music to MP3 and DVD's to MPEG-4, I could just map the raid 5 storage array, i can tell windows media player to monitor the appropriate folders, which would make it really easy for me to implement. just use the thing as a bog standard file .

as for watching live TV I take it I would have to use the WinMyth.

as for DRM, would I have to circumvent this to get it just to play on my TV, or is it only and issue with ripping the HD moves?

I also really like the sky TV changer, as I have a botched SKY+ install, so this would be useful. as they ave removed the Autochange changed facility in sky+

thanks for the help.

 

[crazyDAJT]

I had a media pc based on a Intel 975 with dual 12 way sata pci-x hardware raid 5 cards, with 12 x 500Gb hdds and 6 x 750 Gb hdds based on Vista Ultimate, it had a Nvidia dual analogue tuner to support Sky and stream it to media extenders etc. To tell the truth it was not the best solution, and have now replaced it with a smaller HP dual core xeon (sub £200) server running WHS for the storage, and an Asus 690G based SFF for the media side of things.

Raid 5 is great until you run out of storage space, adding extra can mean that you need to migrate all of your data to another storage medium before you can recreate a larger raid set. Also there is the constant worry of losing more than one drive, and consequently all of your data. With a 12 drive array this is not as unlikely as you would think. Smaller arrays are not the answer as you lose more drives to parity, and you may not wish to have your data split across drives/folders, for example I have folder called TV shows which is over 2TB and would not wish to split into TV Shows A-M and M-Z. so for me the solution was WHS with it's drive extender software, where data is not striped across drives, but stored in standard ntfs folders that can be read on an external pc should there be problems with multiple drive failures.

I would consider splitting the tasks up into a WHS box and a seperate media PC, or look at the thermaltake case that provides for a standard atx board and micro atx in the same case.

Fist off, that is a huge amount of storage you have there, I yes I understand probability, 12 drive raid 5 is asking for trouble, I'm only looking at doing 4 drives max.

also thought you could migrate raid levels, I believe nvidia/Intel raid supports this.

as for the using the Thermaltake VE1000SWA Mozart, it would be ok if I was making a home cinema, but I'm not, i want this to fit under my TV and not look silly, don't think i would get girlfriend approval on that one!