[mythtv-users] current setup critique

[Peter Abplanalp]

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?

thanks!

-- 
Peter Abplanalp
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