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Disk Activity/Latency when running Emby in a VM on Hyper-V
RedBaron164 posted a topic in General/Windows
I've been running Emby in a VM on Hyper-V for a couple of years now. Recently I've been trying to resolve some disk activity/latency issues that have been causing delays while loading and moving around in Emby from various clients. I think I've finally found my solution and wanted to share what I learned on the off chance it might help someone else. Long story short, move the cache/metadata/transcode-temp directory to a separate virtual hard disk (vhd). I noticed that when an Emby client would take a long time to load or start to timeout, disk activity on the server would jump noticeably. I also found that running the disk cleanup task would cause the same kind of usage. While monitoring the disk performance in task manager and resource monitor I would see that disk activity would max out, the disk queue length would be around .90 - 1.5 and average response time for the disk would hit 500ms. All this even though the disk throughput was only being reported at about 500kbps. I had two vhdx's on the VM, a Fixed size Disk for C: and another Fixed size disk for D: which is where shows are recorded. The first thing I did to try and improve the situation was reconfigure my Hyper-V's host storage as a Raid 10 array instead of Raid 5. This helped a little but not significantly and the issues were still present. I kept monitoring disk usage and noticed that the cache directory was being accessed rather frequently so I decided to move the Emby cache to a different disk. I added a third 10gb Fixed size disk and changed the cache path. This helped a little but I would still see performance issues when the Library.db was being accessed heavily. After looking into if I could move the Library.db to a different directory (and finding out it would be rather difficult) I noticed that the Metadata directory would show up frequently so I decided to move that instead. I moved the metadata location to the same drive as the cache and after refreshing the metadata in my libraries I finally noticed a significant improvement in performance. I also decided to move the transcoding-temp directory to the third drive as well just to cover all my bases. I originally did not think that moving the cache/metadata directories to a different virtual disk would make a difference since all the VHD's were on the same physical volume. But doing just that appears to have resolved my issue and now I regret not doing it sooner, I've been running performance tests since making the changes and so far I have not been able to re-produce my original performance issues with a variety of different clients including FireTV/Web/Theater. My Emby clients are much more responsive and not having to sit around and wait while browsing my music library is refreshing. And if I never see that VolleyError timeout message again I'll be very happy. I'm going to keep a close eye on my disk utilization and performance for the next few days but wanted to share what I was experiencing and what I did in case anyone else runs into the same issue. Also, on a side note, I did try enabling Quality of Service Management on the Virtual Disks but it ended up making the situation worse. I'm also not sure if this solution applies to only Hyper-V or also VMware. I'm not running VMware ESXi at home so I can't say for certain. But if you are running Emby in VMware and are having a similar issue then maybe this will help you as well.- 21 replies
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Hardware for Emby (and other servers) ESXi Vs Docker - Performance
ScottRTL posted a topic in Hardware
Hi Everyone, sorry for the long-winded post: I have approximately, 5 remote users that may be transcoding at any given time, plus 3 possible direct streams in my house, then mobile phone/tablet usage, maybe a couple at a time max (but rare, at least for now) I know there are a lot of posts where people are asking what kind of server to use, and if their server is good enough, my question(s) are different. First I will give an idea of my previous servers so you can see where I have been, so we can understand better, where I would like to go: 1.) I started with a Drobo FS (for Media) with single drive redundancy, and a Dell Poweredge R610 running a Plex server (this worked well for a few years), but I did need to rebuild Plex now and again, and setup all my coverart/other metadata a few times. (not fun). 2.) I moved to a Drobo 5N (with a cache drive) I initially tried the Plex server built into the Drobo 5N, but the server was too slow, so I went back to the Dell and used the Drobo just for the Media 3.) I lost all the Drobo files because a second drive failed during a rebuild. rip. So I moved to a Synology DS1815+ (maxed the RAM on it, 2 drive redundancy) I upgraded my Plex server to an HP DL360 G6 with 128 GB RAM and 2x Xeon 5650 (got it for cheap through my work) Eventually I lost all my metadata (not media) on Plex because a SAS drive failed. 4.) I created an iSCSI LUN on my Synology and put Plex on that (so I don't have to worry about losing the VMs/MetaData), tried that for a while, but it was too slow. (At this point I decided to switch from Plex to Emby for features as well) 5.) So FINALLY (sorry for the long post again) I ended up with my DL360 running ESXi, with an Emby VM, and a seperate torrent VM (always behind VPN). Basiclly, The DL360 isn't working anymore, it is currently in my garage, and during the summer, it sounds like a jet taking off, and the fans die often. The only place I can move it is the basement, and that doesn't fit there (it's GIANT), so I need to build a PC, and I figured I would futureproof a bit, and move away from enterprise to avoid the expensive replacement equipment. (Fans, and SAS drives). I am not sure if I should continue on the ESXi route (compatibility with non-enterprise parts seems to be annoying, and the VMWare matrix is a nightmare, at least to me), or maybe run something like FreeNAS or UnRAID (Emby Container). I don't want to go the UnRAID/FreeNAS route, only to find out that I have taken a step-back in performance (like the Drobo and the Synology server application was). However, I do like the idea of getting four M.2 500GB NVMe drives running the OS, so I never have to worry again about losing my VMs(or containers)/metadata. OR just install a linux server OS, then run all my servers as containers on that. I see that I can set a GPU to passthrough to an Emby container in UnRAID, and get GPU transcoding. So that seems like a perk. So, I am curious what everyone thinks about potential hardware setup, and what my best option may be for the OS to take advantage of said hardware. I am putting this post in hardware, because the hardware I am buying is going to change depending on what OS(s) can take advantage of it (give best performance). When it's all said and done, I'll want a full replacement for the Emby Server (currently ESXi VM) and my torrent server (ESXi VM) and a couple other servers (Home assistant, Minecraft, whatever else I am playing with). With the best possible performance. How much RAM do you think? (like 32 or 64 DDR4 will be way faster than the 128GB that I hardly use currently) Intel CPU (probably, right?), Nvdia Video card seems to be a good choice (around 2070 looks fine)...? RAID on SSD or NVMe, at the OS level? Is this just going ridiculously overkill? Can anyone help with some ideas please? I would really appreciate any insight to help me make some decisions before it starts getting too hot in the garage. Thank you! -
This is a strange question for me to ask considering that I work with enterprise servers everyday although they are almost always exclusively RHEL or Windows based (you wouldn't believe how many times I typed "yum install" rather than "apt-get"). In any case, I was sort of forced to abandon native Windows version of Emby Server for Ubuntu Server 15.10 with Emby Server installed due to issues with Emby not staying bound to the specified ports in Windows. What I am trying to figure out is what, if anything, do I need to do to make sure that Emby can natively transcode H.265/HEVC and other content when a device doesn't natively support it which is a rarity. Is there any particular codec packages for Ubuntu Server (and I do mean the server version; I don't need the GUI overhead) to get everything working within VMWare Workstation 12 or is everything packaged up in a neat little bow?
