[mythtv-users] how much is enough -- configuring a server

Mark Small msmall at eastlink.ca
Thu Nov 15 10:39:50 UTC 2007


On November 15, 2007 03:20:56 am Calvin Dodge wrote:
> On Nov 14, 2007 11:24 PM, Kevin Nelson <kevin at soundcyst.com> wrote:
> > anyways, i'm setting up a distributed system with about 8 client
> > machines and 4 pcHDTV 5500 cards. is setting up a dual chip Xeon
> > system overkill for this kind of server? I spoke with someone at a
>
> If this is simply recording, then serving files, then yes, it's way
> overkill. The official FAQ page for the card says the minimum CPU is a
> 400 MHz Pentium, so the encoding must be hardware-based (a 400 MHz CPU
> wouldn't encode even SD with a software-based card).
>
> And file-sharing is definitely NOT a CPU-intensive task.
>
> I'd say a single Core Duo or Athlon 64 would be more than enough for
> the tasks you describe.
>
> And I'd also say 8 gigs of RAM is far more than you need - if this
> system is doing only encoding and file serving, then 1 gig (maybe even
> 512 megs) should be sufficient.
>
> Calvin
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In such a system, your biggest bottleneck will likely be bandwidth to the hard 
disk(s).  If you've got 4 folks watching HDTV streams, that's a TON of data 
the gets written and read constantly.  Some sort of RAID setup, or 1 or more 
slave backends may be necessary.

Thy only reason to have a beefy CPU for your setup is transcoding to mpeg4 to 
reduce file size.

Mark


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