question on dedicated server and streaming contents from mapped drives and nas

[dannieboiz 13]

On my local network, I have two machines that will have MBC. But I can see in the near future I could have up to 8 devices (maybe more) using the resources of MBS. 

 

I did a test on my current machine. Core i7 2600k, 12gb Ram and SSD with all contents stored locally via SATA drives by streaming 4 different HD movies at the same time and saw my CPU spike to 99%. 

 

 

I'm sure a dedicated beefy server would be ideal but I'm questioning if it's worth while for the extra cost? How do you gauge how much processing power is needed per client? From what I understand, MBC doesn't use much resource but the web client does since it requires MBS to transcode the contents. Do I need something like a dual Xeon? 

 

also, my home is wired for GbE and everything else is, if a dedicated server is put in place I might move all my movies to my NAS and some might need to go on another shared drive. What's the affect of it if I had to retrieve the file over my network? 

[Luke 37259]

Over the next couple years your'e probably will need some significant horsepower for 8 devices. Over time that will go down as the capabilities of smartphones and tablets continue to improve transcoding will be needed less frequently.

[Sundog 16]

I'm running 5 devices currently (though not simultaneously!). If they are MBC clients, the server CPU and ram will be less important than hard discs. With multiple clients, the drives need to seek and provide data all over the discs. Multiple steams will tax your discs, but for MBC, the files are playing direct over the network, but are not being transcoded.

 

For transcoding, unless you're willing to go big time, and get a powerhouse workstation with a dual CPU motherboard, you're going to start having issues at 2-3 feeds. There's another bit you need to watch, and that's wireless. If these clients are wireless, Most access points themselves can become a bottleneck. Home APs aren't built to handle multiple 1080p streams.

 

As a general rule, whatever the device, I'd recommend limiting use to 3 simultaneous devices or less. Also get a decent home NAS with 5 or more drives. Then hardwire as much as possible on the network. Wireless is convenient, but can't compare to a physical link!