Replacing My Server (Help Please)

[TolkienBard 58]

Sadly, I woke up this morning to messages from my family that my server was unreachable. When I went to find out why, I discovered the server was not on. Alas, pushing the power button did not remedy the situtation. Nor did checking all the connections and toggling the surge protector and then trying the power button again. I am however, getting a heartbeat light on the board, so I am not entirely sure what is going on. I should have an answer on that by later this evening, since I am getting it in front of a tech first thing this morning. Still, there will obviously need to be some sort of repair. I figure there are three scenarios at this point.

 

Best case, the power supply or something similar needs replacing, and I'm back up and running with minimal effort or expense.

 

Bad case, something has happened which has caused the board to die, but has left the HBA card and processors intact and still useable.

 

Worst case, whatever happened, one or both of the processors will need replacing, meaning I likely wind up with a whole new sytem instead.

 

With the best case, obviously I won't be replacing the server, just a single part. It is with the other two cases that I am in need of some help. Mostly, I am not savvy enough to know how best to allocate resources when building out the server. I haven't yet researched what a new board will run me, but since the processors are getting a bit up there in age (dual Xeon L5520), I am assuming the board will be a little on the pricey side. If that turns out to be the case, then I may still simply be better off replacing instead of repairing. Or will I? Therein lies the rub. I don't know enough about the technical side of server performance, to know which specs I should be worried about. Sure, bigger and faster across the board is always nice, but not always necessary. And, in this case, it may not be possible to go bigger across the board.

 

So, since I do not know how Emby does its thing, I have a few questions.

1. Am I better off with the dual L5520 (2.26 GHz and 4 cores each) or a newer, core i7 (probably quad core) that runs at a higher speed?
2. If I go with a new processor, am I going to notice a difference between an i5/i7 and the Xeon E3s that look to be from the same series?
3. Since the only thing I will be running on the system is Emby,will it make much difference if I continue using the 24 GB of RAM I have now, or if I wind up with only 8-16 GB (assuming I have to rebuild and need to save money)?
4. Since the metadata is in the media folders, will making the OS drive an SSD really do much to improve server response for library browsing, or will it just improve my boot times?

 

 

Regardless of which direction I wind up taking, the new machine needs to be abale to fit/handle a dual port SAS adapter and a M1015 SAS HBA. So if I go with a totally new system, I still need a decent-size board. I can go with prebuilt or not, it really doesn't matter. There is nothing wrong with my current case, so I am probably better off just dropping the new guts into it, but I am open to suggestions..

Edited August 15, 2016 by TolkienBard

[TolkienBard 58]

UPDATE:

 

The PSU checks out fine. Re-attaching the PSU and pressing the power button resulted in a quick puff of ozone smell. The power is disconnected again. But now I am left between buying a replacement board, or just buying a new build. If I buy a replacement board, I am left running the risk that one of the processors or the RAM is also burned out now. If that's the case, the price between replacing and repairing is not really all that great. Of course, that assumes I move to a new single processor Xeon instead of a dual processor setup.

 

Will the drop in cores from 1 processor to 2 processors really impact Emby performance though?

Edited August 16, 2016 by TolkienBard

[Tranquil 94]

Do you use stream transcoding often? Or even simultaneous?

 

Gesendet von meinem SM-G925F mit Tapatalk

[TolkienBard 58]

With the improvements made in the clients lately, I now only transcode about 1 in 3 streams that get played instead of 80% of them. As for simultaneous streams, that is a very big yes. And yes, sometimes it still happens that multiple streams are transcoding at the same time, but never more than 2-3transcoding ones.

[mastrmind11 722]

Sadly, I woke up this morning to messages from my family that my server was unreachable. When I went to find out why, I discovered the server was not on. Alas, pushing the power button did not remedy the situtation. Nor did checking all the connections and toggling the surge protector and then trying the power button again. I am however, getting a heartbeat light on the board, so I am not entirely sure what is going on. I should have an answer on that by later this evening, since I am getting it in front of a tech first thing this morning. Still, there will obviously need to be some sort of repair. I figure there are three scenarios at this point.

 

Best case, the power supply or something similar needs replacing, and I'm back up and running with minimal effort or expense.

 

Bad case, something has happened which has caused the board to die, but has left the HBA card and processors intact and still useable.

 

Worst case, whatever happened, one or both of the processors will need replacing, meaning I likely wind up with a whole new sytem instead.

 

With the best case, obviously I won't be replacing the server, just a single part. It is with the other two cases that I am in need of some help. Mostly, I am not savvy enough to know how best to allocate resources when building out the server. I haven't yet researched what a new board will run me, but since the processors are getting a bit up there in age (dual Xeon L5520), I am assuming the board will be a little on the pricey side. If that turns out to be the case, then I may still simply be better off replacing instead of repairing. Or will I? Therein lies the rub. I don't know enough about the technical side of server performance, to know which specs I should be worried about. Sure, bigger and faster across the board is always nice, but not always necessary. And, in this case, it may not be possible to go bigger across the board.

 

So, since I do not know how Emby does its thing, I have a few questions.

1. Am I better off with the dual L5520 (2.26 GHz and 4 cores each) or a newer, core i7 (probably quad core) that runs at a higher speed?
2. If I go with a new processor, am I going to notice a difference between an i5/i7 and the Xeon E3s that look to be from the same series?
3. Since the only thing I will be running on the system is Emby,will it make much difference if I continue using the 24 GB of RAM I have now, or if I wind up with only 8-16 GB (assuming I have to rebuild and need to save money)?
4. Since the metadata is in the media folders, will making the OS drive an SSD really do much to improve server response for library browsing, or will it just improve my boot times?

 

 

Regardless of which direction I wind up taking, the new machine needs to be abale to fit/handle a dual port SAS adapter and a M1015 SAS HBA. So if I go with a totally new system, I still need a decent-size board. I can go with prebuilt or not, it really doesn't matter. There is nothing wrong with my current case, so I am probably better off just dropping the new guts into it, but I am open to suggestions..

 

The only real difference between the i5/7 and the Xeon E3 is the price. 8-16GB RAM is sufficient.  You won't notice much of an improvement w/ an SSD.

 

Check out the Dell PowerEdge T20, which comes w/ a Xeon E3 1225 v3 (capable of 7 simultaneous transcodes)  Picked one up for $300 on Amazon and 16GB ECC ram for $90 (for a total of 20GB).  Throw your favorite flavor of linux on it and you've got a beast.

Edited August 19, 2016 by mastrmind11

[mjktg99 35]

 You won't notice much of an improvement w/ an SSD.

 

For the price of SSD nowadays, there is no reason not to use one.  It will improve system performance as a whole, not just boot time.

[Tranquil 94]

I swapped all my Emby datas to a SSD and the speed improvement is awesome, especially when it comes to the search function!

 

Anyway, if you are now about to buy a new board and maybe a new CPU, I personally would look for a Board/CPU which is capable of HW transcoding as this is coming slowly into Emby. Just to be future proof.

About the memory: My home Server, running Windows 8.1, only has a total of 8 GB installed and there are much more other services running by side of Emby without performance problems due to paging. 

[ChannelZ 3]

The only real difference between the i5/7 and the Xeon E3 is the price. 8-16GB RAM is sufficient.  You won't notice much of an improvement w/ an SSD.

 

The main difference between the Xeon and an i5/i7 is ECC RAM support.  That's a BIG difference.

 

As for the SSD, you will absolutely see a difference in performance.  Emby (and Plex) both slow to a crawl on even the fastest HDDs compared to a low-end SSD.  I compared my relatively modest Emby library on a 10,000rpm WD Velociraptor (one of the faster HDDs) to an elcheapo Sandisk SSD SSDPlus, and there was a totally obvious improvement, even when browsing the library via the web. 

 

Get a decent SSD and you can move your transcoding folder and everything there, and you'll get excellent performance and 20% of the power consumption when active and probably less than 1% power consumption when idle.  I use a SanDisk Extreme Pro 240GB SSD on my Emby server, and it's been excellent.  10 year warranty on it too.

[mastrmind11 722]

The main difference between the Xeon and an i5/i7 is ECC RAM support.  That's a BIG difference.

 

As for the SSD, you will absolutely see a difference in performance.  Emby (and Plex) both slow to a crawl on even the fastest HDDs compared to a low-end SSD.  I compared my relatively modest Emby library on a 10,000rpm WD Velociraptor (one of the faster HDDs) to an elcheapo Sandisk SSD SSDPlus, and there was a totally obvious improvement, even when browsing the library via the web. 

 

Get a decent SSD and you can move your transcoding folder and everything there, and you'll get excellent performance and 20% of the power consumption when active and probably less than 1% power consumption when idle.  I use a SanDisk Extreme Pro 240GB SSD on my Emby server, and it's been excellent.  10 year warranty on it too.

Very valid point re: ECC memory.  And your thoughts on the SSD gave me a new weekend project.