RFOneWatt

Geez Drashna.. 8TB platters already.. in the Norco, yes? What is the heat situation like in your box? I have a 4020 with modified cooling that I've run for quite a while and my new server WOPR, in a 4220 case that has all stock fans. I just took most of the drives out of the 4020 last night and crammed them into WOPR and brought WOPR "officially" online. So far it's doing OK but the A/C has been on in the house since I made the switch. The drives are running a bit warmer than I'd like to see with the A/C on (nowhere close to bad) but enough to make me wonder if I'm going to have to swap the fans sooner rather than later. The newer 4220 came with the three 120MM fan wall, something I added to my 4220 along with a couple of Tornado 80MM's for the rear exhaust. @Hansolo77 - These are probably the two cables you are going to end up using in most cases. (and the best place to buy them!) SFF-8087 to Four SATA - http://goo.gl/xTXnnv or SFF-8087 to SFF-8087 - http://http://goo.gl/1XJ79a If I were you I'd pick up an LSI card of your choice when you can. I believe the IBM card is the same as the 9240. One of the main reasons I bought the Highpoint 2740 is because it takes advantage of the X16 slot. And it is FAST. Finicky to set up at times but I can't deny that it IS FAST. ~RF

Don't feel inadequate -- we all started somewhere. I don't think anybody here is using 8TB drives yet. Out of all of my drives a 5TB is my largest. The rest are mostly all 4TB HGST and Seagate drives. For the best bang for your buck I would recommend doing your research and buying (quality) used hardware. That's how I was able to afford my first Xeon server. Right now there are a ton of multi-processor Xeon boards/servers out there that are a dime a dozen with the only caveat being electrical usage due to being a bit older. I have a hard time recommending Highpoint stuff. It's finicky to say the least. I've been doing this for almost 30 years and I've never had a brand of controller that gave me as many headaches as the Highpoint's. I own, use and rely on two 2740's, a 2720 and a couple of their smaller Rocketraid cards (that I started with) and they all had weird/annoying issues. After some headaches I was able to work through all of the issues but had to jump through quite a few hoops to do so. Once they are up and running I have no complaints (so far) but I would not recommend them to someone who is unfamiliar with them and I'll never purchase another Highpoint product. If you're willing to play, learn and be frustrated go for it. Once they are "happy" they are pretty darn fast for the $$. If you're on a smaller budget I would suggest checking out some of the LSI stuff for your controllers. Drashna and some of the other guys here have more experience with them but I recently purchased a 9240-8i and I've had no issues and really like it. If you need a large drive case and are willing to forego a couple of amenities such as hot-swap trays you can get a much better deal on a Rosewell or something similar. I'm by no means a hardware guy but I'm sure you'll get some better answers from some of the other folks here. Good luck!!! ~RF

Hmmm.... Unmatched / weirdly named videos show up in my library thumbnailed but lacking metadata. I wonder if it when adding a library you have to tick the setting below to generate the thumbnail? I find Plex's metadata editor to be great although I'm not comparing it to anything. I didn't spend enough time with Emby to compare, just that I don't have any complaints about Plex's editor. (of course now I'm going to go check out Emby's in more detail haha) I'm pretty picky though, honestly... maybe I need to up my standards. I find it funny that six months ago (maybe a bit more) I was constantly bashing Plex for being a resource beast.. now I'm defending it. ~RF

This might be a stupid question -- but I originally made this mistake. Are you viewing Plex on your PS3 via DLNA rather than the actual Plex client you download from the Playstation store? Glad you got everything working!! Drashna has this knack for making you think sideways sometimes which is a blessing when, well ---- I need to think sideways. He's saved my butt on a couple different Sundays. -RF

Now that I think about it every single Sysop that I still keep in touch with (Here and in Europe) are doing IT to this day. Literally every one. I like to think we were a bit more hardcore back then, to be doing what we were doing. The technology really had to be sought out, it wasn't in your face like it is today. Especially when it came to telecommunications. Heck....The FBI took me to jail on my 15th birthday simple because the internet didn't exist. Bastards. There were quite a few different pieces of BBS software for the 64 but very few were any good IMO... The elite boards usually ran a flavor of Ivory BBS or Color 64. Most of the family oriented boards ran C-Net (or Image BBS as it was later known.) I loved C-Net and Image BBS so much that I broke that mold by running a scene BBS on C-Net and not caring what people thought simply because I had more archive space than anybody else and people were going to call regardless. ...and they did. Damn I was a bad ass at 13. ~RF

You don't like the PS3 Plex client? I think it's the absolute best (that I've seen) compared to just using Chrome. I'm surprised. It almost sounds like you might have an issue because I have 8-9 PS3's on my network, all wired gigabit and no speed issues or usability complaints. If there is a better client I certainly want to check it out. The Samsung client is darn nice too but I still prefer the PS3 client overall. 5MB a second, yeah - that's a problem -- Tell us a little about your configuration... Are the speeds different copying from your HTPC TO the Server (the W7 box in VMWARE) and FROM the server to your HTPC? When your W7 VM box is pegged what's the processor utilization in ESX? I'm guessing your wired gigabit and not trying to use wireless on the PS3? What kind of drives are you using (Specifically RPM) and are you using a FEEDER drives in your pool? I've never had a problem with Network I/O boost in DP but it's an easy place to start. ~RF

Thanks Drashna. I sold one of my prized HAM radio tube amplifiers to get this far and am considering selling another piece to populate it with drives. (Actually that's pretty stupid to do before I need the space, considering how fast drive prices change..) I'll probably just end up buying a new drive every few months as I need the space. Haha.. I was equally stunned when I did my first "search for all missing" in Sonarr as well. I'll be sticking with Plex for the time being but keeping an eye on Emby. That reminds me -- I'm still running Emby on the Media Center box I'm putting together/playing with. It's been sitting for a few days now, I need to check it out. Depending on how resources are looking once this server/network overhaul is "done" I may leave it running... heck.. maybe in a VM. Unimportant Question, Drashna -- I just installed a Highpoint 2740 x16 card in that X10-DRI-O board and I was wondering if you knew if it made any difference which slots I occupy first? I did a quick Google and couldn't really find much (if anything, really) which tells me it's probably not that important and I didn't see it mentioned in the manual however when I was installing the card I noticed the CPU1/CPU2 markings on two of the three x16 slots on the motherboard (the third isn't marked) so I got to thinking about it... Obviously it matters for memory.....hmm. The next card that is being dropped in is that LSI 9240.. ~RF

HA! You checked it out Drashna... and you've been thinking about switching haven't ya! Or did you mean Sickbeard still handles things better? Looks like this thread got a bit derailed..sorry about that.. I'll revive it with my 10G networking questions / choices in the near future, I got my new dual Xeon server up and running this weekend and need to figure out a solution soon. This thing should be able to handle just about whatever I throw at it, I think. ~RF

True enough unfortunately..the tweaking doesn't end for a while. What isn't it auto-processing? I have Sonarr running alongside Couchpotato and everything works as intended. The reason I'm curious is because I only used Sickbeard for about a day before switching to Sonarr and I'm wondering if I'm missed something? Thanks -- I need to take another peek at the scheduled tasks. When I originally installed Plex I searched for a quick solution to auto-start it (couldn't believe it wasn't in the server options) and thought there were a couple roadblocks. (Whichis why I mentioned SRVANY) ~RF

Haha.. Yes, I'd say so. Fancy meeting you here. I ran (I)ndustry BBS out of Detroit, MI. We won the Boardwatch top 10 a few times IIRC,for what that's worth. Take a look at the last comment in this post: Vircom I was wondering if the younger folk actually believed what those GODS over @ Vircom made possible with what they had to work with. I "upgraded" to Worldgroup.......for about a month, I think. Those were amazing times. ~RF

I'm sure I've seen your system and may even know you - I was a Boardwatch subscriber and ran one of the largest BBS' in the country. I'm surely going to recognize the name of your BBS. My story sounds similar to yours... in a nutshell: started out running a Multi-Node system on an Amiga. Once we hit 16 lines we couldn't get any more multi-port hardware so I switched to Major BBS. Maxed out at 88 POTS lines before switching over to multiple T1's and into the ISP category. (I've left out some bits as you know.. haha) Major BBS? Wildcat? ~RF

160 megs in 82/83?? That is insane for an individual at that time. I'm guessing it was the biggest Public Domain repository in the country. -T

It was 799.95, with controller. I still have no idea how I convinced the parents. I've been known to get creative with my drive mounting... this is the almost end result w/ my 4220 box. Ended up with four of those WL 600's across the top, double sided tape. ~RF

After watching a few things with Emby...transcoding and access via DLNA appears a bit "wonky". I had two large MKV's that would stop part way through in Emby but play fine in Plex. It appears there isn't a PS3 client, which is an issue now that I've been spoiled by the Plex client..but one of the neighbors using a 360 txt'd me asking me "What this Emby thing was" and to leave it on...so... still playing with it, trying the other clients, etc. Most certainly a nice piece of software. Hey, in 1996 I had a DOS 6.22 box running a HTTP server, POP3 server, SMTP server, IRC server, FTP server, NNTP server, SMTP server, NTP server, RADIUS server while running a multi-node BBS.. All on a Pentium 60 w/ 16 megs of ram -- and it did it without flinching. Now THAT was amazing. I had friends who ran Media Center boxes..2005 me thinks. It was an actual whole O/S, they had dedicated machines and cable cards. I'm guessing it was then baked into WHS. IIRC I avoided it because I had Direc-TV which meant no tuner card support. So for my use, with TVersity and the DLNA access via XBMC on original XBOX (still a damn useful machine) at the time I didn't see any reason to run it. Thanks for the GPU link. Very interesting to say the least. This is obviously a stupid question and yes I could Google but doesn't there have to be logon for Task Scheduler to run something? Sonarr will take ya five minutes Just do it. Woot.. just popped the motherboard and PS in the 4224! She'll be fired up tomorrow. Things take me so long because I'm so damn indecisive... I'll sit and procrastinate on the configuration rather than just plowing forward and then think about.....I need to do more plowing and less thinking!

He absolutely hit the nail on the end and my professional experience mirrors his, specifically with Seagate Cheetah 15k's being the drive majority in most all my large data center experience in the last 10 years. For the C64, I had the first hard drive ever available. A 20 MEG Xetec Lt. Kernal...which contained a 20MB Seagate SCSI drive. That was 1985. Fun Times...I was 11 years old and man did I have to beg for that. It was a Christmas/Birthday present. Here's one I think about quite frequently: Drive Orientation for longevity - horizontal or vertical. Physics tells me horizontal.. Drive manufacturers say "no matter." I'll mount mine flat, thank you... just because it makes me feel better I suppose.... ~RF

That explains some of it -- I have avoided everything "Microsoft Media Center" since day one and I didn't think people actually used Windows Home Server was a real thing up until a couple of years ago. You just made me chuckle... "Check out the Emby Service" -- The first day I installed Plex I was combing through the options and was perplexed that I couldn't find the "Start As Service" option on a "SERVER" piece of software. Back in the NT days I used SRVANY in situations like this and I planned to do the same for Plex but just haven't gotten around to it. Amazes me it's still not an option. I recently switched from Sickbeard to Sonarr. I don't think I'll be headed back. I did however find the option in Emby to store all of the metadata in a specified directory so that problem is solved. As for my thoughts? Well, I can't be definitive until I run Emby for a bit longer but right off the bat they are so close it's ridiculous and it's nice having the choice -- but I will say this: Emby is free. (Doesn't really matter, I'd donate anyways) Emby is more my speed. (Multiple meanings) I'll probably switch permanently to whichever one gets the GPU acceleration implementation working correctly....my bet is on Emby. ~RF

Well, I installed Emby last night on a new HTPC I've been playing with and pointed it at my media library, over the network. Nobody mentioned it was open source!! #1: How long has Emby (Media Browser) been in existence? So far I am very impressed. It's clear they are going toe to toe with PLex, which is great. I was a bit annoyed when I found my cleanly organized media directories were all filled up with metadata this morning but I found those options this morning.. So I've had zero time to play with it but this is going to be interesting!! ~RF

No, I never have. Sounds like you need to poke around over at http://c64.org -- You will certainly find the answer to your question. I never actually play too many video games.. heck, even when I was importing them into the US when I was a kid I didn't play many of them. I was more into the demo scene, importing and collecting. One of these days I need to hook all of my Commodore stuff back up. It's been sitting in a storage closet at my parents house since the FBI gave it back. (15 years after they took it!) ~RF

There goes my weekend......sigh. How I missed Emby in my travels is beyond me... I think we're going to be going head to head with Plex at this point. ....maybe I'll just go camping. haha

I somehow missed this response earlier. I didn't realize Emby was that nice. (as in an actual Plex competitor) It really is hard to believe the UI is so that much better, Plex is beautiful. Argh. Now I feel the need to install it just to compare. ........more hours in the day! ~RF

Somehow Emby has slipped under my radar over the last few years. I might have to take a look at it for the heck of it. I've tried most every DLNA server that I've run across and my experience goes like this..... The first DLNA media server I ever used was TVersity, for a few reasons. #1) It was the first and only (at the time) DLNA server that would transcode AND only when needed on a per device basis. #2) It was 100% free. #3) I simply couldn't find anything better. Free or Paid. I needed to feed original X-Boxes running XBMC, X-Box 360's and several WDTV Live boxes but the majority of clients were/are Playstation 3's. After A LOT of tweaking I got TVersity where I wanted it and had no complaints for several years. It just worked. Like you said Plex wanted to transcode everything which made it basically unusable for more than one or two streams so I stuck with TVersity. It just worked. Then I ran across Serviio and have been using it for about a year or so. A few short months ago I decided to check Plex out once again and wow, I haven't looked back. Plex has its (minor) quirks but they are working their butts off over there and I have zero complaints. The community support is superb and they will get around to fixing what little annoyances I have. I notice the Plex server is updated about once every two weeks or so. I didn't even know they had a Windows 8 app. If it's that bad just open up a browser (suggest Chrome in desktop mode) and skip using the app entirely. I have been extremely impressed with all of the Plex clients that I have tried (they sure support a lot!) but I must say the Samsung Smart-TV app is stunning. The PS3 & Android app are great also. I've read that the Roku 3 and Vizio clients are also wonderful. Personally I think the best experience is had in Chrome. I know we're not exactly apples-2-apples with our configurations (DLNA, etc.) but I just wanted to share my experiences. I still run Serviio in tandem with Plex though as a backup. I did pay for it and it works great in case I ever have an issue with Plex I can just stream from Serviio, it's on a different machine and pointed at the same media (drive)pool as my Plex server.. although I haven't had to use it yet. PLex has come a long way in the past several months. I 'spect they got some funding. Now go upgrade your Plex pass and show them some more love. They aren't slouching over there and I'm sure any issues you have will be resolved. WIth all that said I wish you the best viewing experience and thanks for sharing your thoughts. Now to decide on the 10GB hardware I need.... Argh.. need more hours in the day to research!!!! ~RF

Thanks Drashna. I'm an old man with many hobbies and in the beginning of the year I sold a prized piece of HAM radio gear to fund these two Norco builds. That is good to know re: hardware modification on the fly. My first experience with Hyper-V was several years ago when I was working with a client that needed USB passthrough. At that time I wasn't able to make it happen with Hyper-V however ESX supported it... so that let me on the road to ESX, which I've deployed extensively since then. When I was working on the configuration of my 4220 box a few months ago I installed Hyper-V and played with it for several days and am pretty much sold on it. Although I didn't test USB passthrough on Hyper-V -- I'm guessing it works fine these days? -RF

OK, Gotcha. Time to start trolling E-Bay. As I said before, I'm not much of a hardware guy so .... ummmm... Two 10GB NIC's, one for each Norco box... Two Mini GBIC's for the Cisco SG200? Am I missing anything Drashna? WWDD??? haha ~RF

Yup, sure do. For the C-64 I've been using C-64 Forever by Cloanto for years (It comes with about 100 free games). For my old modded X-Box I use Vice64. For the Amiga, it's Amiga Forever. If you're a fan, looking for disk images or the least bit interested in the C-64 head on over to C-64.com. Lots to explore... certainly the best C-64 site on the net IMO. Not sure how this should influence but the Highpoint 2740 is a 16x PCI Express 2.0 card and the Adaptec has 512MB of onboard cache. This showed up today so I should have the motherboard fired up in the next couple of days and I'll be able to play with the controller on that. Then to decide on the disk configuration. I really liked the LSI for the few minutes I played with it and the few days I ran it. (While I waited for my first Highpoint 2740 to be RMA'd) so I'm still up in the air on how to configure things. I of course agree with ya on the VM's..Currently my virtualization is handled by ESX 5.5 on a freshly maxed out / refurbished Dell Poweredge 2900 box running in the neighbor's basement. (the price they pay for a wired gigabit connection to my network ) I also get free eggs from the other neighbor for DLNA access to Serviio... haha it all works out. This 2900 is the box I back up all of my important stuff to, secondary domain controller, W7 script box, etc. My virtualization preferences might be changing as I start to play with Server 2012 a bit though.. -RF

I haven't really planned much too much aside from the most obvious. I was poking around E-Bay earlier - quite the range in price on 10Gbit adaptors. Seems like Intel is the logical choice but I've got some reading to do. Do you have any experience with one model/brand over another? Like I said, I'm not much of a hardware person but I'm learning. ~RF