Noob home sever questions?

[JQLeitch]

Okay so I'm in a need of some sort of NFS media server and I want to spend as little money as possible. I want to be able to play 1080p movies off this server and I'm wondering if this CPU will be viable, transcoding is obviously a no-no but what about direct-play/direct-stream?

CPU: http://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/...act_title_3?ie=UTF8&psc=1&smid=A3P5ROKL5A1OLE

Sorry if I make no sense, huge noob at this stuff.

Thanks.

 

[dave_the_nerd]

For just nfs? Sure, fine.

 

[smitbret]

Okay so I'm in a need of some sort of NFS media server and I want to spend as little money as possible. I want to be able to play 1080p movies off this server and I'm wondering if this CPU will be viable, transcoding is obviously a no-no but what about direct-play/direct-stream?

CPU: http://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/...act_title_3?ie=UTF8&psc=1&smid=A3P5ROKL5A1OLE

Sorry if I make no sense, huge noob at this stuff.

Thanks.

For network streaming, the playback device does all of the work. The server doesn't care if it is 1080p or 80p. It is just sending bits down the network.

If that is its sole purpose, then a single core Sempron will be enough if your OS doesn't require more. If you haven't decided on something, yet, this would be a great, low-powered option:

www.lime-technology.com

Runs off of a flash drive and many people have enough spare parts lying around in their garage to build a server.

 

[JQLeitch]

For network streaming, the playback device does all of the work. The server doesn't care if it is 1080p or 80p. It is just sending bits down the network.

If that is its sole purpose, then a single core Sempron will be enough if your OS doesn't require more. If you haven't decided on something, yet, this would be a great, low-powered option:

www.lime-technology.com

Runs off of a flash drive and many people have enough spare parts lying around in their garage to build a server.

Thanks for your answer. I'm just thinking of running a Linux Distro off my SD Card

 

[mfenn]

Okay so I'm in a need of some sort of NFS media server and I want to spend as little money as possible. I want to be able to play 1080p movies off this server and I'm wondering if this CPU will be viable, transcoding is obviously a no-no but what about direct-play/direct-stream?

CPU: http://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/...act_title_3?ie=UTF8&psc=1&smid=A3P5ROKL5A1OLE

Sorry if I make no sense, huge noob at this stuff.

Thanks.

For a low-throughput NFS server, that CPU should be totally fine. It'll choke if you decide to add any more tasks to the server though.

 

[JQLeitch]

For a low-throughput NFS server, that CPU should be totally fine. It'll choke if you decide to add any more tasks to the server though.

What do you define as "low-throughput"? I plan to just (when I do) play music and films off the server because I'm sick of keeping my main PC on to do that > my android phones and other PCs. Will it be fine for that?

 

[smitbret]

What do you define as "low-throughput"? I plan to just (when I do) play music and films off the server because I'm sick of keeping my main PC on to do that > my android phones and other PCs. Will it be fine for that?

Those are low throughput tasks.

 

[JQLeitch]

Those are low throughput tasks.

Thanks. What would be "high-throughput" like transferring large files or something.

 

[smitbret]

Thanks. What would be "high-throughput" like transferring large files or something.

Yep.

It's all just scale, Kbps, Mbps and MB/s.
8000Kbps = 8Mbps = 1MB/s

The best quality .mp3 files are 320Kbps.

A Digital SD Stream (DVD Quality) is less than 2Mbps

A Digital HD Stream is usually somewhere between 4-8Mbps (a raw DVD rip is about the same)

A Blu-Ray can be almost 45Mbps but most are lower.

Even and old HDD can do 70-80 MB/s. New 1TB platter HDDs can do 120-160MB/s.

So no matter how you configure your storage, you will have plenty of speed in your HDDs to serve multiple media streams simultaneously.

Some people use RAID to speed up transfer rates because you can stripe the data across several HDDs that can be read at the same time. If you had a RAID setup with 3 HDDs then you could "stripe" 1/3 of a 1GB file on each of the drives and then when you wanted to load the file it would read 3x faster (in theory) because all 3 drives could be serving the info at the same time. Hardware RAID and ZFS RAID systems work this way (depending on the RAID level you choose).

Your network will probably be a bottleneck before your storage system.

A basic home network will be 100Mbps
A lot of newer wired networks are Gigabit (1000Mbps)
If anything is wireless then you will probably be in the 20-80Mbps range for those devices (depending on your router, the wireless adapter in the device you're using and signal strength).

Hope this helps clear it up.

 

[JQLeitch]

Yep.

It's all just scale, Kbps, Mbps and MB/s.
8000Kbps = 8Mbps = 1MB/s

The best quality .mp3 files are 320Kbps.

A Digital SD Stream (DVD Quality) is less than 2Mbps

A Digital HD Stream is usually somewhere between 4-8Mbps (a raw DVD rip is about the same)

A Blu-Ray can be almost 45Mbps but most are lower.

Even and old HDD can do 70-80 MB/s. New 1TB platter HDDs can do 120-160MB/s.

So no matter how you configure your storage, you will have plenty of speed in your HDDs to serve multiple media streams simultaneously.

Some people use RAID to speed up transfer rates because you can stripe the data across several HDDs that can be read at the same time. If you had a RAID setup with 3 HDDs then you could "stripe" 1/3 of a 1GB file on each of the drives and then when you wanted to load the file it would read 3x faster (in theory) because all 3 drives could be serving the info at the same time. Hardware RAID and ZFS RAID systems work this way (depending on the RAID level you choose).

Your network will probably be a bottleneck before your storage system.

A basic home network will be 100Mbps
A lot of newer wired networks are Gigabit (1000Mbps)
If anything is wireless then you will probably be in the 20-80Mbps range for those devices (depending on your router, the wireless adapter in the device you're using and signal strength).

Hope this helps clear it up.

Yep, my router is arse. I was transferring files at 10Mb/s wired. That's pretty poor right? Would there be anything I'd have to do to increase it?

 

[smitbret]

Yep, my router is arse. I was transferring files at 10Mb/s wired. That's pretty poor right? Would there be anything I'd have to do to increase it?

If your router is old enough to be Tbase10 then that would make sense. Your best option would be to replace it with any modern router. You could get something more than adequate for $30-40. If you meant 10MB/s then that would be OK and wouldn't need to be changed as that would be near the limit of Tbase100 and be completely normal. Routers don't typically become slow as they wear out they just get unstable.

What router do you have? One other option is to connect everything wired to a faster rated switch that is connected to the router. You could get a Gigabit switch for about $35 but your wireless would still be limited to 10Mbps by the router.

 

[mfenn]

If your router is old enough to be Tbase10 then that would make sense. Your best option would be to replace it with any modern router. You could get something more than adequate for $30-40. If you meant 10MB/s then that would be OK and wouldn't need to be changed as that would be near the limit of Tbase100 and be completely normal. Routers don't typically become slow as they wear out they just get unstable.

What router do you have? One other option is to connect everything wired to a faster rated switch that is connected to the router. You could get a Gigabit switch for about $35 but your wireless would still be limited to 10Mbps by the router.

Agree. There's a huge difference between 10 Mb(its)/s and 10 MB(ytes)/s.

I'd be shocked if you had a desktop *router* that was 10BASE-T (10 Mb/s). That type of LAN went out of style in 1995, well before integrated home routers were a thing. Certainly I would not expect a router with integrated 802.11 (Wi-Fi) to be 10BASE-T.

100BASE-T (100 Mb/s) was ubiquitous until a few years ago, and is still common in lower-end units. As smitbret pointed out earlier, 100 Mb/s is plenty for any A/V streaming, though gigabit switches are quite cheap.

 

[JQLeitch]

If your router is old enough to be Tbase10 then that would make sense. Your best option would be to replace it with any modern router. You could get something more than adequate for $30-40. If you meant 10MB/s then that would be OK and wouldn't need to be changed as that would be near the limit of Tbase100 and be completely normal. Routers don't typically become slow as they wear out they just get unstable.

What router do you have? One other option is to connect everything wired to a faster rated switch that is connected to the router. You could get a Gigabit switch for about $35 but your wireless would still be limited to 10Mbps by the router.

I got it with my ISP, it's pretty piss poor.

It's a D-Link DSL-2680

 

[JQLeitch]

Agree. There's a huge difference between 10 Mb(its)/s and 10 MB(ytes)/s.

I'd be shocked if you had a desktop *router* that was 10BASE-T (10 Mb/s). That type of LAN went out of style in 1995, well before integrated home routers were a thing. Certainly I would not expect a router with integrated 802.11 (Wi-Fi) to be 10BASE-T.

100BASE-T (100 Mb/s) was ubiquitous until a few years ago, and is still common in lower-end units. As smitbret pointed out earlier, 100 Mb/s is plenty for any A/V streaming, though gigabit switches are quite cheap.

Haha, sorry about that. It was 10MB/s

 

[smitbret]

Haha, sorry about that. It was 10MB/s

Yeah, that's about 80Mbps and just fine for that class of router. I don't see it as being a bottleneck. If you wanted more speed from your network you could just connect everything wired to a Gigabit switch but it really won't make any difference in your ability to stream media between devices.

The only limitation I see is that the wireless is N150 which could bottleneck something like a ripped Blu-Ray stream to a mobile device but if your 1080p media is comprised of digital downloads then it won't be a problem.

 

[JQLeitch]

Yeah, that's about 80Mbps and just fine for that class of router. I don't see it as being a bottleneck. If you wanted more speed from your network you could just connect everything wired to a Gigabit switch but it really won't make any difference in your ability to stream media between devices.

The only limitation I see is that the wireless is N150 which could bottleneck something like a ripped Blu-Ray stream to a mobile device but if your 1080p media is comprised of digital downloads then it won't be a problem.

Hmmm yeah, if it ever gets bad I could always use Powerline ethernet with a micro usb Ethernet adapter to get a more reliable connection. Thanks for the replies.