Advice on a new server with live tv aspirations

[davidtrw 0]

Ever since MBserver was announced I have wanted to centralize my media and other important documents to a central home server.  I was initially thinking I would just use WHS2011 to manage everything, but recently I am not sure if that is the best option.

 

I plan on having an ever increasing supply of hard-drives which will all be managed via flexraid for pooling/parity.

This server will also run MBserver obviously.

I plan on replacing my infinitv 4 with an infinitv6 eth.  This would reduce the load on the living room PC and network share the tuners.

 

 

My main thoughts are would it be better to setup the server with Windows 7 so I could then use WMC for serverWMC for livetv to other clients?  Also if this server had WMC I was thinking it could be up 24/7 to allow media center extenders access.  With the ever increasing features on MediaBrowser I want something other than my HTPC that can utilize the live tv stuff.

 

Should I aim for a server running windows 7 or maybe even 8.1, or stick to a more traditional WHS2011?

[divide_by_zero 7]

I've explored this as well. Currently running WHS 2011 w/ Stable Bit DrivePool as my media server, but the WIn 7 HTPC does all of the recording and storage of TV stuff. I have grand asperations of setting up MCE Buddy to transcode and copy these files to the server on a regular basis, but haven't spend the time to dive in and get that all setup.(Mostly because my HTPC is x86, and MCE buddy's Quicksync transcode is x64 only. If your HTPC is x64 and has a compatible CPU, this might be an option for you as well.)

 

Last I checked, ServerWMC was shaping up to be pretty solid. Unless you really need any of the WHS functionality (which is what, at this point? Client backups that may or may not have issues restoring, and not much else that comes to mind), I suspect you'd probably be fine with a Win 7 or 8 server. You could go with Win 8 for built in "Storage Spaces" drive pooling, but haven't really looked into that as I've had good luck with DrivePool.

 

FWIW re: your proposed storage config, I've seen a whole bunch of horrifc cases of parity being more of a curse than a blessing, and am personally much more comfortable with folder-by-folder redundancy/mirroring. (All it takes is a couple bad sectors on one of your remaining "good" drive after another disk fails to cause the whole array rebuild to fail and go TU/offline.) But everyone has a different level of risk they'll be willing to accept.

Edited October 31, 2014 by divide_by_zero