[mythtv-users] Yet another question about data storage

[Greg Oliver]

On 11/24/2010 04:41 AM, Johan wrote:
> I need to create some (>1.5 TB) extra space for storing my DVD colection.
> I store the majority of those in .mkv or .iso format. (turned
> out the best way to retain menu's, subtitles and all AC3 streams)
>
> What is considered the best solution, from a Mythtv perspective?
> Add a lot of storage to the backend, using either USB, SATA or eSATA?
> (very cheap)
> Add a NAS to the setup for storage of all data, except the DB?
>
> The backend motherboard supports hardware RAID.
>
> I was looking at NAS boxes on the internet, and it seems they are all
> SMB/CIFS based, but they are cheap in comparison to building my own
> dedicated NFS based fileserver.
>
> So in order of cost:
> 1. local storage at the BE (SATA, eSata or USB)
> 2. of the shelf NAS with just SMB/CIFS
> 3. build my own NAS
>
> The only disadvantage of local storage I can see is the backend
> doing all the disk I/O and CPU activity for up to 10 concurrent
> DVB-S recordings and commflagging. However disk I/O will will just
> be replaced by Ethernet I/O in case of a NAS.
>
>
> I've read some discussions about SMB/CIFS performance versus NFS, just not
> sure how this impacts on Myth.
>
> For reference, the system currently consists of a Master BE/FE, a slave BE,
> where I only mounted the recording folder over NFS on the BE recording
> folder,
> all its storage is in the BE storage groups. And a frontend,
> where no local folders are defined (so again using the BE for data
> storage/retrieval).
>
> Not sure if this gets impacted by the planned 0.25 move of mythvideo to
> the backend.

I use an external HW raid enclosure attached via esata to my master 
backend.  The next array I spend I will definitely spend the extra $150 
and get a unit with a configurable stripe size.  This one is set at an 
unconfigurable 256k.  While all of my media and virtual machine volume 
groups are configured with 4MB inode spacing, it could be quite a bit 
faster if I could tweak the array settings as well.  This unit also only 
allows (1) array to be configured.

All in all, I am pleased with the price/performance though.  With newegg 
having $70 2TB drives today, I may just get another early x-mas present  :)