Build Advice Needed

[RJGNOW]

Hello Team,

Long time DrivePool user and I have a somewhat daunting task ahead of me. DrivePool has helped me through 2 catastrophic server failures and I'm going to continue to use DP for this massive (for me) endeavor. Sorry for the long post.

The 'Goal': I need to consolidate 3 machines into one always on (low powered) machine that doesn't break the bank. It also so needs to be somewhat compact (Case dims cannot be greater the 16"H x 20" D Width is not a problem)

Current Setup:

1) WHS 2011 Machine: 40TB (8 Storage Drives and 4 worker SSD ) storage built on a Asrock C2550D4I. (way under powered but lots of SATA ports) This machine handle backup services, but I'm also using Acronis.
2) TV Recording Machine: Phenom II X6 1090T 3.2 GHz W/ 8Gigs of Ram with 4TB windows based RAID, Win 7Pro. This box contains 3 Cards (2 OTA Tuners and 1 InfiniTV4 Cable Card Network Tuner). The software used is SageTV, MCEBuddy, and Comskip All Donor's additions. (so can use 'hardware acceleration') This box can handle recording up to 8 shows and remuxing (not transcoding) 4 before running into problems (80-90% CPU usage)
3) Blue Iris / HomeSeer Machine: i5-4570s 2.9 GHz W/ 12Gigs of Ram. Win10Pro. This box handles BlueIris 6 IP Cams Recording Direct to Disk. It also handles a fairly complex Home Automation system based on HomeSeer. This box typically runs @ 35% CPU usage. Blue Iris is optimized for Intel's acceleration.

What I'm Looking for:

My Primary Goal is to end up with ONE machine that can handle the above work load with the addition of Plex (which requires transcoding and none of the machines above are up to the task)

My budget is <2K. I don't need any Storage Drives (If I can find a MB and Case to handle a lot of drives that will fit my space requirement) So I'm thinking I'll need a Case, MB, PSU, RAM, Processor, 2 M.2 Drives, and unfortunately a video card??? (All the machines above have on board video) I have 1050 I can use, but I just don't know if it will meet the demand. Do I go AMD or Intel for the above requirements.

My biggest problem is I don't know where to start.

 

PS: I forgot to add, the cameras are routed via a 100 Mbit POE Switch to the Blue Iris machine, but the rest of the network is 1 Gbit. The data stream moving between the Blue Iris machine and the camera's is typically ~30-40 Mbps.

 

 

[Christopher (Drashna)]

My recommendation? 

You may not need new hardware.  You should be able to run HyperV on the Core i5 system, actually. You can use Windows 8/10 Pro for HyperV. 

If the tuners are physical cards, run the TV recording on the host system. And this would make hardware acceleration a lot simpler, too. 
As for BlueIris, that should run on WHS2011 just fine.  Though I'm not sure about HomeSeer.  If that works fine on WHS2011, you could run it there.

And then run WHS2011 in a VM on the system. You could run the BlueIris/HomeSeer stuff in a separate VM, if you wanted/needed. 

 

However, if you want new hardware, then am AMD system may be a better solution, simply because you can get more CPU cores/threads. Which is what would really help here (transcoding, both for TV and for cameras, if you do that). 

 

[RJGNOW]

2 hours ago, Christopher (Drashna) said:

My recommendation? 

You may not need new hardware.  You should be able to run HyperV on the Core i5 system, actually. You can use Windows 8/10 Pro for HyperV. 

If the tuners are physical cards, run the TV recording on the host system. And this would make hardware acceleration a lot simpler, too. 
As for BlueIris, that should run on WHS2011 just fine.  Though I'm not sure about HomeSeer.  If that works fine on WHS2011, you could run it there.

And then run WHS2011 in a VM on the system. You could run the BlueIris/HomeSeer stuff in a separate VM, if you wanted/needed. 

 

However, if you want new hardware, then am AMD system may be a better solution, simply because you can get more CPU cores/threads. Which is what would really help here (transcoding, both for TV and for cameras, if you do that). 

 

Thanks Christopher. Good advice as always.

The reason I'm pretty sure I'm going to need stronger hardware is none of the machines are powerful enough to handle 4 Plex streams (Can barely handle 2). And with my goal of ending up with 1 machine I can't use the WHS 2011 machine because it's built around the C2550D4I which is housed in a Silverstone DS380B case which only has 2 expansion slots, and I need 3 at minimum (for the tuners) if I'm not going to need a video card.

So given my goals with the machine, and that some of the software is optimized for Intel acceleration (Quick Sync Video) would you still recommend AMD.  In either case, Intel or AMD which processor would you recommend.  Threadripper looks great, but way out of my budget. ;-)

 

TIA

 

[Christopher (Drashna)]

You're very welcome! 

1 hour ago, RJGNOW said:

The reason I'm pretty sure I'm going to need stronger hardware is none of the machines are powerful enough to handle 4 Plex streams (Can barely handle 2). And with my goal of ending up with 1 machine I can't use the WHS 2011 machine because it's built around the C2550D4I which is housed in a Silverstone DS380B case which only has 2 expansion slots, and I need 3 at minimum (for the tuners) if I'm not going to need a video card.

That's hard, yeah.  Personally, I overengineered, and have an old dual Xeon X5660 system (dual 6 core, with hyperthreading) for Emby (Plex).  it's a champ. A power hungry champ. 

But if the Core i5 system can handle it, ... run everything on that.  Just move the WHS stuff to a VM.  That's a viable, and good option. 

1 hour ago, RJGNOW said:

So given my goals with the machine, and that some of the software is optimized for Intel acceleration (Quick Sync Video) would you still recommend AMD.  In either case, Intel or AMD which processor would you recommend.  Threadripper looks great, but way out of my budget. ;-)

If it doesn't work with nVidia's acceleration, then yeah, intel.  Look for old hardware on ebay or the like first.  You can find good systems that are being phased out for pretty cheap.  The trade off is that it may not be as power efficient, which may be an issue.

Or, use you're existing Intel system (the Core i5).

But I've used the Intel QSV stuff with Emby, and it wasn't "great"It had issues, especially when you need multiple streams

And yeah, thread ripper looks pretty nice for transcoding and ripping and the like. 

[HellDiverUK]

I've had no problem with QuickSync in Plex.  Tested with 4 streams on a Celeron N3160 (which is a 4W CPU), and I don't have enough devices to even get close to the limit of my i5-6500T server.

[RJGNOW]

Thanks, I think I've settled on the i7-8700k, So even though I'll get less cores/threads/lanes I will have the advantage of QSV, which is the only accelerator BlueIris will use. My only concern is how many streams (from different programs) can QSV handle.

[HellDiverUK]

1 hour ago, RJGNOW said:

Thanks, I think I've settled on the i7-8700k, So even though I'll get less cores/threads/lanes I will have the advantage of QSV, which is the only accelerator BlueIris will use. My only concern is how many streams (from different programs) can QSV handle.

Ah yes, I meant to mention BlueIris.

I run it at my mother-in-law's house on an old Dell T20 that I upgraded from it's G3220 to a E3-1275v3.  It's running a basic install of Windows 10 Pro. I'm using QuickSync to decode the video coming from my 3 HikVision cameras.  Before I used QS, it was sitting at about 60% CPU use.  With QS I'm seeing 16% CPU at the moment, and also a 10% saving on power consumption.

I have 3 HikVision cameras, two are 4MP and one is 5MP, and are all running at their maximum resolution.  I record 24/7 on to an 8TB WD Purple drive, with events turned on.  QuickSync also seems to be used for transcoding video that's accessed by the BlueIris app (can highly recommend the app, it's basically the only way we access the system apart from some admin on the server's console). 

Considering Quicksync has improved greatly in recent CPUs (basically Skylake or newer), you should have no problems with an i7-8700K.  I get great performance from a creaky old Haswell.

[RJGNOW]

Since it looks like the max SATA ports on my probable ASUS PRIME Z370-A board is ~6, I need an affordable 8 Port Hotswap SATA controller.. Any suggestions?

[Christopher (Drashna)]

20 hours ago, RJGNOW said:

Since it looks like the max SATA ports on my probable ASUS PRIME Z370-A board is ~6, I need an affordable 8 Port Hotswap SATA controller.. Any suggestions?

LSI SAS 9207-8i. Or a 9211-8i. 

$80-100 for one, give or take, but they're GOOD quality. 

[RJGNOW]

Thanks Christopher, which one is better?

[Christopher (Drashna)]

They're basically identical  The main difference being that the 9211 is PCI-e 2.0, while the 9207 is PCI-e 3.0.  So you can run more drives, at max, concurrently. But unless you're using SSDs, this won't really matter. 

[RJGNOW]

Perfect, Thank You