[mythtv-users] PCI-E Analog Card

[Brian Wood]

On Friday 22 January 2010 04:57:28 pm Mark wrote:
> Brian Wood wrote:
> > You'll want to make disk I/O doesn't become a bottleneck. Certainly don't
> > try to use USB-connected drives. USB may theoretically be able to handle
> > the speed required, but USB systems somehow never live up to their
> > performance claims.
> >
> > You'll want fast drives, and you may consider a RAID system that will
> > increase performance (RAID0 or a variant thereof that spreads the R/W
> > load over several drives).
> >
> > I'd go with a server class motherboard for a system like you describe, or
> > even multiple systems capturing 5 channels per machine.
> >
> > An older SCSI-based server might work for you, they can be had relatively
> > cheaply these days (at least compared to their original cost). SCSI
> > drives are also available cheaply, but large capacity SCSI drives are
> > expensive. You might look into SAS as well.
> >
> > Don't try to cheap out, a system like you want will have to perform very
> > well, and you generally have to pay for that. Disk I/O will be more
> > important than CPU power, and that's usually found in server machines.
> 
> Those are good points.  I'm guessing you'll want a sata or sas system
> with a pci-e or pci-x controller with as
> many ports as you can get.  There's some good threads on this over at
> AVSforums.  media servers.

Depending on how much total storage is needed, an older PCI-X type server with 
SCSI drives might be adequate, and would certainly be cheaper than a new SAS 
machine. Machines of that type are power hogs by today's standards, but that 
might not be a big factor if running in an institutional environment with 
demand billing.

I'm not suggesting these particular machines or the vendor, but this is an 
example of the prices on older SCSI servers:

http://www.geeks.com/details.asp?invtid=ML570-XEON20X2-1R&cat=SYS

http://www.geeks.com/details.asp?invtid=DL580G2-XEON30X2-R&cat=SYS

Going to 15K RPM drives would provide even faster I/O.

Older Sun machines are also available used these days.