[mythtv-users] Storage Groups for Videos - does each host have to have mythbackend?

[Francesco Peeters]

On 5/12/10 09:14 , Nick Rout wrote:
> On Wed, May 12, 2010 at 5:12 PM, Christopher Kerr <mythtv at theseekerr.com> wrote:
>   
>> On Wed, May 12, 2010 at 3:05 PM, Nick Rout <nick.rout at gmail.com> wrote:
>>     
>>> I currently have random collected video files on three machines. One
>>> only (media) is the master (and only) backend on my network. The
>>> others (storage and elrond) are simple servers running linux and
>>> freebsd respectively. I am running mythbuntu 10.04 with myth 2.3-fixes
>>> on the backend and two frontends.
>>>
>>> Currently under the old video system the files had to appear at the
>>> same place in the file structure on backend and each frontend. So what
>>> I ended up doing was mounting everything via cifs, viz;
>>>
>>> media (MBE)'s videos are in /var/lib/mythtv/videos/local
>>> media also mounts storage and elrond's video directories as
>>> /var/lib/mythtv/videos/storage and /var/lib/mythtv/videos/elrond
>>> respectively.
>>>
>>> The remote frontends mount media's videos directory under
>>> /var/lib/mythtv/videos/local and the two servers as
>>> /var/lib/mythtv/videos/storage and /var/lib/mythtv/videos/elrond.
>>> Therefore any frontend pulling a video from storage will be pulling it
>>> over the network straight from storage to the frontend via cifs.
>>>
>>> If I want to move to storage groups I guess I can point a storage
>>> group on media to /var/lib/mythtv/videos, but that will mean something
>>> from storage going to a frontend will get from storage to media via
>>> cifs, and then from media to the frontend via myth protocol, using
>>> twice the network bandwidth.
>>>
>>> Alternatively I could make storage and elrond into SBE's with their
>>> own storage groups but that is a major mission as they are old boxes I
>>> haven't upgraded in years (they have no exposure to the intarweb).
>>>
>>> Any other suggestions? (I just re-read this email and while it is
>>> clear enough to me, I just pray it is to others).
>>>       
>> Your email is perfectly clear ;)
>>
>>  Solution 3: just move all the video onto a drive on the master
>> backend. That way your video is always available on any frontend, it
>> only has to be streamed once, etc, etc.
>>     
> Yes but I'll have to see what other drives I can fit in there. It
> would no doubt save some power.  I must look at how many headers are
> left on the motherboard. It already has two sata and two ide drives in
> there (one IDE is a dvd drive). I know there are no more sata ports.
> There is a spare PCIe slot which I assume could house a sata card.
>
> If I wasn't such a magpie with media files I might have enough room....
>   
You could look at a sata port multiplexer, possibly one in an external
sata cabinet. That allows you to connect 4-5 SATA drives on to a single
(e)sata port. Ofcourse total throughput remains limited to that of the
sata port, but at least your total stotrage capacity will go up
considerably...
-- 
Francesco