[mythtv-users] Master backend/storage, 1 or 2 machines?

[Brad Templeton]

On Wed, Aug 16, 2006 at 03:27:40PM -0400, Steven Adeff wrote:
> > > On 8/16/06, Jim Minihane <MythTV at minihane.tzo.com> wrote:
> > > > I'm building a system with 2 slave backends (2 PVR-500s each, 8 DirecTV
> > > > D10-100s), one master backend and currently 2 frontends. The master and
> > > > frontends have no decoders. I was going to use network storage via NFS
> > > to my
> > > > file server, but things have changed. The master is a 1.8GHz Compaq EVO.
> > > > Would it be sufficient to serve as storage as well if I add eSATA
> > > storage?
> > > > My network is 100Mbps. I also have a second EVO 1.8GHz machine that
> > > could be
> > > > used as NAS, but I'd like to avoid that if possible. What would it take
> > > for
> > > > a machine to serve as master backend AND storage for an 8 encoder
> > > system?
> > >
> > > confused...

Seems like an unusual design.   Since a typical system that's on all
the time consumes an average of about 100 watts, and that costs $110
per year in California, it quickly becomes a lot simpler to just buy
a nice large case and standard ATX 5-slot motherboard, and have just
one backend with the 4 tuner cards, and then add as many disks as
you like and a UPS (10 watts).

(Diskless computers, if that's what you plan, are less than 100 watts, but
the disks just move somewhere else.)

Backends with wintv-pvr cards have effectively no CPU load for recording.
Their only CPU load is niced commercial scanning or transcode.

I would have assumed the tunerless master backend is some other existing
system, but you talk about it being diskless so I am not sure I
understand.

I presume this is a system for a large dorm or commercial operation or
something?  Hard to imagine even the largest family needing 8 tuners.

It's true if you have the two backends, you can handle one of them
being down, which may be important here, but if the master goes down
you are still hosed, unfortunately.   (If you were really eager you
could recode MythTV to have redundant masters so any backend can switch
to becoming the master if the master is down, as long as the sql database
is still up, of course.)