Recommendations for new build...

[jbuszkie]

I'm looking to upgrade my unraid box in the near future.  I currently have a a core2 duo @2.4G with 6G memory.

I also have a win 7 PC that I use for running SageTV.  I want to combine the 2 and run Sage in a 

docker/VM (haven't looked into any of that yet).

 

I'm looking to spend about $1000-$1200 for a new MB, CPU and Memory.  I believe my Power supply and case are fine.  I'd like to be a little power conscious.. 

 

Might I need a dual CPU system with some supermicro MB?  Intel or AMD RYZEN?  I used to be well versed in the latest CPUs but now I'm way behind!

So I would appreciate any recommendations.  I know some of you guys just love to spec systems out! :-)

 

Thanks in advance!

 

Jim

[ashman70]

What are you future plans? Do you plan to run any VM's or any more dockers? Why do you think you might need a dual CPU system, what would all the horsepower be for?

 How many drives do you currently have, do you plan to add more? Are there any motherboard features you want or would like to have?

[tdallen]

I'd start with researching Sage TV options.  The system requirements to run as a Docker are typically less than as a VM.

[jbuszkie]

2 hours ago, ashman70 said:

What are you future plans? Do you plan to run any VM's or any more dockers? Why do you think you might need a dual CPU system, what would all the horsepower be for?

 How many drives do you currently have, do you plan to add more? Are there any motherboard features you want or would like to have?

 

I have no Idea what my future plans are.  Probably just the Sage TV VM.  I don't want to starve Sage while it trying to record 6 shows at once while Unraid is doing a parity check!

I have 9 + parity + 2 cache drives.  I don't need any specific MB features except maybe dual Gig Ethernet that can be teamed (does unraid support that yet?)

 

This will run mostly headless.

 

Edited May 4, 2017 by jbuszkie

[tdallen]

VMs under unRAID seem to run best with pinned cores.  Generalizations follow - your case may be different.  

 

Dual core CPUs won't work well for VMs, neither will dual core with hyperthreading.  A quad core CPU can work but doesn't give you much room to work with.  Quad core CPUs with hyperthreading (E3, Core i7) are where you really start to get some performance and flexibility and generally have the horsepower to run a serious VM.  6+ cores are what you want for multiple serious performance sensitive VMs.

 

Keep in mind the hardware requirements for IOMMU (aka VT-d on Intel) if you need to support a TV tuner card.

[jbuszkie]

24 minutes ago, tdallen said:

VMs under unRAID seem to run best with pinned cores.  Generalizations follow - your case may be different.  

 

Dual core CPUs won't work well for VMs, neither will dual core with hyperthreading.  A quad core CPU can work but doesn't give you much room to work with.  Quad core CPUs with hyperthreading (E3, Core i7) are where you really start to get some performance and flexibility and generally have the horsepower to run a serious VM.  6+ cores are what you want for multiple serious performance sensitive VMs.

 

Keep in mind the hardware requirements for IOMMU (aka VT-d on Intel) if you need to support a TV tuner card.

Thanks for the info...  My tuners are all network based..  

So do I then need a dual-multi core cpu system??  Or a singe 6 core would handle Unraid and my Sage needs?

[CraziFuzzy]

SageTV doesn't typically require much CPU use at all.  It takes very little power to grab streams from the tuners and write them to disk, and pull streams from disk and send it to clients.  What DOES take cpu usage for sage, is comskip (but a single core per tuner should be enough to keep comskip running and analyzing while a show is being recorded), or transcoding (which is only used for things you choose to convert, or using placeshifter remotely).

Also, if you are using network based tuners, then I would avoid using a VM for sage - you gain nothing in doing so, and the linux build of sage is patently better in that it supports a larger memory footprint, by running in a 64-bit JVM.  Just grab the sagetv app from the Community Applications plugin, and you'll immediately have a working sagetv server that you can then configure as you like.

[CraziFuzzy]

For reference, I am running on a somewhat overkill i7-6700, but it allows me to transcode the streams from my HDHR-2US and HDHR-Prime on the fly as they are being recorded (I'm using openDCT to interface Sage to the HDHR's, which adds some features, like the transcoding).  I'm using the ultrafast720p30fps transcode_profile.

With a recording going, watching the processor load, comskip uses about 15-20% of a core, and the transcode uses about 90% of a core.

 

With 4 recordings going, overalll my unRAID server is at 65% total cpu load, with realtime transcoding and comskip of all recordings.  This is recording to a cache pool made up of 2 mid-tier M.2 128GB SSD's.

[jbuszkie]

16 minutes ago, CraziFuzzy said:

Also, if you are using network based tuners, then I would avoid using a VM for sage - you gain nothing in doing so, and the linux build of sage is patently better in that it supports a larger memory footprint, by running in a 64-bit JVM.  Just grab the sagetv app from the Community Applications plugin, and you'll immediately have a working sagetv server that you can then configure as you like.

 

Fuzzy!!  Is this the same fuzzy from the sage forums?

Now is this sage app the same as the linux build of sage?  I was planning on going linux (as the guide data is going away and I needed to upgrade anyway..)

I need to educate myself the difference between a docker and a VM.  I haven't looked into any of that yet.  But I assumed I would need a Linux VM for sage..  But if a docker will work, then great.

 

Will I be able to just copy over my wiz.bin and properties file and it will magically work?

[jbuszkie]

8 minutes ago, CraziFuzzy said:

For reference, I am running on a somewhat overkill i7-6700, but it allows me to transcode the streams from my HDHR-2US and HDHR-Prime on the fly as they are being recorded (I'm using openDCT to interface Sage to the HDHR's, which adds some features, like the transcoding).  I'm using the ultrafast720p30fps transcode_profile.

With a recording going, watching the processor load, comskip uses about 15-20% of a core, and the transcode uses about 90% of a core.

 

With 4 recordings going, overalll my unRAID server is at 65% total cpu load, with realtime transcoding and comskip of all recordings.  This is recording to a cache pool made up of 2 mid-tier M.2 128GB SSD's.

 

That's good to know.  I could have 6 stream recording at one time.  I'm glad you are here that I can, hopefully, pick your brain! :-)

[CraziFuzzy]

Well, I'm not here as often as I am on the sage forums.  The key differences between docker and vm is that the docker is essentially running ON the host OS, but in a compartmentalized environment, as opposed to a VM running it's own complete OS and accessing the hardware of the machine through virtualized hardware.  The docker is much simpler, but you can't run a cmpletely different archetecture in the docker from the OS, like you can with a VM (like running a Linux OS on a Windows Host).  

With sage, luckily, it runs great in a linux environment, and the docker is very easy to install.  The SageTV docker template actually includes the linux native build of comskip as well (though you'll still need to install the CommercialDetector sagetv plugin to trigger it).

Regarding transitioning your existing config over:  The Docker will create a few shared folders on your unraid server.  //SERVER/appdata/sagetv/server is essentially the same as your Program Files/SageTV/SageTV folder on your windows install, and in there is where you'll find your sage.properties file, wiz.bin, etc.  It also will set up shares for media:
//SERVER/media/videos       Video Imports

//SERVER/media/pictures    Picture Imports

//SERVER/media/music        Music Imports

//SERVER/media/tv               Recordings

 

The easiest transition is to copy your existing recordings, videos, etc into the respective shares on the unraid server, and then shut down the docker, and copy your old wiz.bin into the //SERVER/appdata/sagetv/server folder, and restart the container - it should find all your existing recordings.  Then it's just a matter of setting up all your sources and lineups and such, which is done in the same way you had done previously, only this time, using Schedules Direct as your EPG source (which is built into SageTV now).

[jbuszkie]

Fuzzy,

 

Dumb question..  With the sage docker template..  How do you get to the GUI?

 

Right now I have a Intel® Core™2 Duo CPU @ 2.4 GHz with 6G of ram running Unraid so I want to beef that up before I try a docker..

I was hoping to combine the sage server and the unraid server and it looks like I'll be able to! :-)

 

You're giving me hope that this will all work great!

 

Jim

[CraziFuzzy]

On a different client.  unRAID is designed to be headless, and that goes for the SageTV Docker as well.  Configure it using either an extender, placeshifter, client, etc.  I find for server-side configuration, I prefer a server-side UI, so no SageTVClient (though it does work for most thing).  Placeshfiter is super lightweight, and works great for this.

[CraziFuzzy]

My current clients usages are an HD300 in my living room, an HD200 in my daughter's room, and a Mi Box (using the Android miniclient) in my bedroom.  Other daughter runs SageTVClient on her desktop, and I have both client and placeshifter installed on my desktop.

The Mi Box also goes on vacation with us for use in either the RV or a hotel room.

Edited May 16, 2017 by CraziFuzzy

[JonathanM]

Perhaps this should be redirected to the support topic for the sagetv docker, but since it's active here and now I'll ask.

 

On a fresh setup with no existing preferences or configured tuners, what would be the order of operations?

Install sagetv server docker on unraid.

Verify hdhomerun tuners are answering on the network.

Install placeshifter, extender or sagetvclient on endpoint machine.

Point client at server ip and run through channel and tuner preferences setup from there?

 

I have a couple hdhomeruns that I haven't used in a few years, so if it's just that easy I might give it a shot.

[jbuszkie]

There are 3 sageTV apps.  yours, and Java8 and 7..  Which one do I want?

 

[CraziFuzzy]

My docker is not for SageTV, it's for OpenDCT, which is a network encoder for the HDHR and InfiniTV tuners.  It communicates directly to those tuners, and presents the streams to SageTV.  It is not required unless you are using a CableCard tuner, which is not natively supported in SageTV.  It does, however, provide some added capabilities, such as the transcoding I discussed earlier, as well as being able to create custom channels from HTTP or PIPE sources (typically used for IP cameras and such).

 

You want to install Stuckless' Java 8 based docker.

Edited May 16, 2017 by CraziFuzzy

[jbuszkie]

1 minute ago, CraziFuzzy said:

My docker is not for SageTV, it's for OpenDCT, which is a network encoder for the HDHR and InfiniTV tuners.  It communicates directly to those tuners, and presents the streams to SageTV.  It is not required unless you are using a CableCard tuner, which is not natively supported in SageTV.  It does, however, provide some added capabilities, such as the transcoding I discussed earlier, as well as being able to create custom channels from HTTP or PIPE sources (typically used for IP cameras and such).

 

You want to install Stuckless' Java 8 based docker.

And then yours as well since I have the cable card tuners! right?

[CraziFuzzy]

43 minutes ago, jonathanm said:

Perhaps this should be redirected to the support topic for the sagetv docker, but since it's active here and now I'll ask.

 

On a fresh setup with no existing preferences or configured tuners, what would be the order of operations?

Install sagetv server docker on unraid.

Verify hdhomerun tuners are answering on the network.

Install placeshifter, extender or sagetvclient on endpoint machine.

Point client at server ip and run through channel and tuner preferences setup from there?

 

I have a couple hdhomeruns that I haven't used in a few years, so if it's just that easy I might give it a shot.

Pretty much it.  If you've got the HDHR's on the network, and connected to your antenna, than it's as easy as:

Install the SageTV Java8 docker.
Start up whatever client you want and select your server (it should find it on it's own if it's on the same subnet).

Go through the configuration wizard that will show up on first run, which will walk through setting up the sources, among other things.  To get any real use out of it, you'll need a source of EPG data - the best and most supported method being Schedule Direct (http://www.schedulesdirect.org), which is $25/year.

[CraziFuzzy]

2 minutes ago, jbuszkie said:

And then yours as well since I have the cable card tuners! right?

Yes, if you are using cablecard tuners, then you will need to have opendct running somewhere on your network (just makes sense to do that in a docker on the same machine).

[jbuszkie]

1 minute ago, CraziFuzzy said:

Yes, if you are using cablecard tuners, then you will need to have opendct running somewhere on your network (just makes sense to do that in a docker on the same machine).

 

Awesome!  Is there another post that's just about the sage docker?  I can't seem to create the sage docker and I have questions...  

This probably isn't the correct subforum! :-D

[CraziFuzzy]

Best location would be over on the Sage Forums, not really here.  There is a thread to the docker's support forum, that is linked in the docker's entry in the Community Applications screen.

[jbuszkie]

on my way!  Thanks, Fuzzy!