[mythtv-users] current setup critique

[Kevin Kuphal]

On Mon, Apr 7, 2008 at 9:59 AM, Peter Abplanalp <pta-myth at psaconsultants.com>
wrote:

> hi all,
>
> i've been running myth for about 3 years now and with the advent of .21,
> specifically storage groups, i'm wondering if it is time to re-architect my
> setup.  i started my myth adventure as many do by buying a capture card and
> putting it in an existing machine to try it out.  i found, as many do, that
> myth was great and started buying more hardware.  the way i did this was by
> adding fe/be setups with a tuner card each time.  what i have now is 3 fe/be
> setups, each with a tuner card and varying amounts of disk space.
> specifics:
>
> fe/be 1 (master):
> * amd x64 3700
> * pvr 150
> * /video1: 300g
> * /video2: 320g
>
> fe/be 2:
> * intel p3
> * pvr 150
> * /video: 150g
>
> fe/be 3 (original box):
> * intel p2
> * pvr 150
> * /video: 36g
>
> i also have another box (amd x64 x2 ~300g) on order that i may add to the
> group.  i may be getting an hdhr in the near future.  i have some questions
> on how best to use this hardware.  the first question has to do with how the
> capture cards are set up.  is the way they are ok or would i be better off
> putting all the cards in one box?  i have it set up this way so that
> commercial marking and transcoding can be shared across the machines and
> also because i added cards at the same time as i added machines and this
> didn't require messing with existing setups.
>
> my second question has to do with storage.  i don't currently use nfs but
> now with storage groups, i'm wondering whether a setup where each machine
> shares it's video drive(s) and each machine mounts them all and has a
> storage group for each would be better (assuming i leave the card setup as
> is).  i could get a situation where each machine is recording and pushing
> the stream onto the network via nfs.  would 4 sd streams saturate my 10/100
> network?  how many concurrent streams can a 10/100 network support?  or
> perhaps a better question is what is the throughput needed for an sd stream
> (pvr 150), hd stream (hdhr) and what is the throughput that nfs supports?
> is this a good idea?  how does a future hdhr affect this?  can i set up
> priorities with storage groups such that i could configure a particular
> fe/be to save to local storage if it could before it sent things out via
> nfs?
>
> my last question is do you all have any other (presumably better :-) ideas
> on how i can best use my hardware?


Personally, if you have the slots, put them all in the master backend.  That
things has more than enough CPU to chew throught *many* SD commflag jobs.
To contrast with my system:

AMD Athlon XP 2000
PVR-500
AverMedia A180 HD x2

With this I can record 4 (now 6) shows at a time (2 HD, 2 SD) with 2
commflag jobs running and streaming another HD program to a remote frontend
without any issues on a 10/100 network.

Having everything in one place simplifies adding storage, managing files,
etc etc.  You'll be glad you did.

Kevin
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