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Streaming Video from WHS - Hardware to do the job! RRS feed

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    Hi

     

    When I build my WHS server I will want to stream video over my LAN to my Vista MCE PC in the Lounge. In particular I have alot of DIVX encoded content, as well as some Hi Def movies (both WMV & DIVX).

     

    My LAN has sufficient bandwidth to stream the Hi Def OK (I have already tested this on my Vista box), I was wondering what I would need hardware wise in my WHS server to stream video well, whilst at the same time doing backups, file storage, MP3 streaming etc.

     

    I am fairly certain the minimum specs wont do a particularly good job for this. Any suggestions?

     

    Thanks

     

    Ceri

    Wednesday, March 28, 2007 9:04 AM

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    Greetings and Salutations!  I see you've found the "What's in your server?" thread.  Another thread to check out is "Critique my setup - 1.55TB Home Server, and growing!".  Based on what I've read in those threads, if you're planning on doing streaming video (esp. HD streaming video) I believe you should get at least a 3GHz single-core processor, or any of the dual-core processors.  (I don't know what the AMD equivelants are -- I only have experience with the Intel chipset.)  The amount of RAM above the minimum spec (512Mb) doesn't appear to affect performance as much as one might expect, but having 1Gb RAM won't hurt.  Just be advised that having a dual-core processor appears to make more difference in performance than the amount of RAM.  

     

    Make sure your primary drive is one of your 500Gb drives.  There is a known issue with Beta 2 that can limit or hamper your ability to work with files larger than the available free space on your primary drive.  If you want details there are others on the board more technical than me that can explain it better; the Reader's Digest version is that if you use your 80GB drive as your primary drive, you'll wind up with about 65 GB free after the install.  After that, no matter how many drives or how large they are that you install afterwards, WHS will not replicate files larger than 65GB. 

     

    Let us know how well your setup works, please!

    Wednesday, March 28, 2007 2:15 PM

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    Acually, the requirements for the server to run are pretty low.  Streaming media requires ~768mb RAM if you want to do it right.  1 gb definatly suffices. 

     

    It was discussed at length (as well on multiple forums) here ; http://forums.microsoft.com/WindowsHomeServer/ShowPost.aspx?PostID=1261073&SiteID=50

     

    Aaron Clay

    Wednesday, March 28, 2007 2:08 PM
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    Greetings and Salutations!  I see you've found the "What's in your server?" thread.  Another thread to check out is "Critique my setup - 1.55TB Home Server, and growing!".  Based on what I've read in those threads, if you're planning on doing streaming video (esp. HD streaming video) I believe you should get at least a 3GHz single-core processor, or any of the dual-core processors.  (I don't know what the AMD equivelants are -- I only have experience with the Intel chipset.)  The amount of RAM above the minimum spec (512Mb) doesn't appear to affect performance as much as one might expect, but having 1Gb RAM won't hurt.  Just be advised that having a dual-core processor appears to make more difference in performance than the amount of RAM.  

     

    Make sure your primary drive is one of your 500Gb drives.  There is a known issue with Beta 2 that can limit or hamper your ability to work with files larger than the available free space on your primary drive.  If you want details there are others on the board more technical than me that can explain it better; the Reader's Digest version is that if you use your 80GB drive as your primary drive, you'll wind up with about 65 GB free after the install.  After that, no matter how many drives or how large they are that you install afterwards, WHS will not replicate files larger than 65GB. 

     

    Let us know how well your setup works, please!

    Wednesday, March 28, 2007 2:15 PM
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    Thanks for your recommendations!

     

    I was actually thinking about an upgrade to a low end AMD Dual Core Chip (like a 3800+ X2) which are pretty cheap these days, so you have pretty much confirmed what I was thinking.

     

    Also looking to up the RAM with the new CPU & Mobo to 2gb, so it will definitely run nicely on that setup!.

     

    As to the primary drive, I installed the 2 500gb drives first when I installed, then added the 80gb after, so that shouldn't be a problem for me?

     

    Thanks

     

    Ceri

    Wednesday, March 28, 2007 2:30 PM
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     Ceri Edwards wrote:

    Thanks for your recommendations!

     

    <snip>

     

    As to the primary drive, I installed the 2 500gb drives first when I installed, then added the 80gb after, so that shouldn't be a problem for me?

     

     

    No problem there.  You should be good to go.

     

    Wednesday, March 28, 2007 6:34 PM
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    Hi Guys,

     

    All this whopping memory requirements of video streaming are for the client machine or for the server?

     

    I have lot of .rm movies on my server and I just double click on them to play in the Real Player. My server is of lower power than that you guys have been talking about (just 1.8 GHz, 512 MB, 300 GB primary). But I have no problem except with my wireless connection.

     

    I think, as far as the server goes, whatever you access from it, all is only file access for it. It just meets the client's requests. It will be definitely better if you have a faster machine as server, but having more memory may not improve the performance of the access from a client. Probably, it will be sufficient if the server has enough RAM to accomodate necessary TCP packets involved in the network activity. Client's video is not sharing any RAM from the server. With Vist Ultimate on your client, you already have a powerful client. So you don't have to worry about your server, I suppose.

     

    Please correct me, if I am wrong.

     

    It appears you guys play a lot with video. So I want to know more about use of Media Library option in WHS. As I said earlier, I am seeing movies by just double clicking the file in the shared video directory. Then what else I can do with this option?

     

    ThanQ...

    Wednesday, March 28, 2007 7:52 PM
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    I am looking at streaming video from the server, not the client.

     

    I only seem to have problems (i.e. stuttering video, audio) when playing high bitrate AVI files (e.g. captured home movies from my CamCorder), as well as HD files. WMV seem OK, as do low bitrate AVI's.

     

    As for everything else, WHS does it all just fine - backup, sharing files etc.

     

    I am thinking at the moment that I need a beefier CPU (probably dual core) with at least 1gb of DDR2 RAM to do the job. Streaming from my Vista client (which exceeds this spec) is fine.

     

    As for the media Sharing option in WHS, I havent had much luck with that - it takes an age for the client to load the library, either through the Media Sharing Service, or via a mapped drive - takes about 6 hours (I have 13gb worth of WMA's). It shouldn't take this long should it?

     

    Mind you, my Lounge MCE PC accesses my upstairs PC for music via a mapped drive, and that takes about 15 minutes to build the library, so I think the fault there is either the hardware in my WHS server, or the WHS server software itself.

     

    My ultimate aim is to have all media shared from the WHS server rather than from my upstairs PC, where it can be duplicated and backed up.

     

    Thanks

     

    Ceri

    Thursday, March 29, 2007 9:07 AM
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    I think that going the dual-core processor route will fix this problem.  You've got three drives on your WHS machine with replication enabled.  I suspect that the bottleneck is that the server is trying to replicate the library across the drives while the library is being built.  With a dual-core processor, one core can be building the library while the other handles the replication.

     

    If in fact using a dual-core processor DOES fix the problem then this is something the design team will need to know, if only to create a more powerful minimum configuration for media sharing as opposed to file sharing/backup.

    Thursday, March 29, 2007 2:02 PM