[mythtv-users] Server Setup

[Brian Wood]

On Sunday 17 January 2010 07:22:40 am robert Larson wrote:
> Hello.
> 
> I am pretty new to this group and with tinkering with mythtv. My Current
> setup is  frontend/backend combo setup running on a Dell sc420. Integrated
> Intel Graphics(pia) 4 gigs of ram and 1.4tb of external disk.
> 
> My xmas present was a HP DL580G2 4 gigs of ram, 2x36gb internal disk (scsi)
> (not 64x). Yes. a 4U server.This thing is bigger then my kitchen table. But
> I figure that I should be able to host the backend on this thing without a
> problem seeing that my sc420 is able to do front and back.
> 
> So with that being said, I was wondering how some of you would build this
>  if you had this beast in your kitchen and your wife was yelling at you to
>  get it up and going... =)

I'd first send the wife out of town for a week or two.

The first question in my mind: What is your capture hardware?

Do you want to run a backend on the bare iron, or perhaps in a virtual 
machine? I'm not familiar with that particular server, but if it has hardware 
virtualization in the CPUs, you could run a VM with PCI passthrough so you 
could use PCI capture hardware.

This depends on what other functions you need the machine to perform, and what 
capture (and other) hardware you are using or plan to use.

Probably the first thing I'd do is set up a good UPS.

If running in a VM, you will first need to choose a host OS, and a 
virtualization solution. If you want to run a B/E on the bare iron, it's a 
pretty straightforward installation, I would think.

The server is probably a bit noisy, you'll likely want to place it in a garage 
or basement, so running the needed network and RF cables will be an early 
task. Leaving it in the kitchen is asking for WAF problems.