nPVR on ESXi recording directly to unRAID on same ESXi

[nia]

Hi.
Since starting with GBPVR for myself and pushing friends in the same direction many years ago, one thing has been certain - my storage needs has been increasing - and so has energy prices. I have been through adding drives upon drives (many drive letters indeed), 6 port local HW RAID-5, unRAID as a file server. Now I want to consolidate my machines and streamline my setup, which will include my nPVR, unRAID, Weather-Display server among others.

Essentially, I am putting together a build with several ESXi 5 VMs on top of a SuperMicro X9SCM-F board, 16GB RAM, SSD for VM storage. The VMs relevant here is an nPVR on W7 32bit and unRAID version 5. My build thread is over at the unRAID forums here.

The unRAID disks will be running off hardware passthru IBM M1015 HBA's reflashed to LSI 9211. I have one card now and one incoming. That is 16 SATA ports that can be populated and with full SATA speed.

Now for the nPVR stuff and a couple of questions.

I haven't been too active in here for a while, as my nPVR, PCH A100 and still one MVP essentially just purrs along (thanks Sub &Martin). So forgive me if I have missed some great and obvious things. I have more or less been in an evolutionary state since 2004/5, so I may have missed the revolutions along the way. It's part of this posts purpose to be enlightened by Y'all :o

Background - bad habits and all...
I have for a very long time been moving files and folders to an identical structure and naming convention as nPVR is using. The ancient VideoArchive plugin helped when accessing files outside the original recording location, but as it died, I was too deep into my approach to be able to change, given GBPVR's and my capabilities. So I still move recording off my recording server to the file server whenever I need space. Then I just play the recordings through nPVR's "Videos" access to my file server on the A100, or directly in VLC.

I tend not to use nPVR interface for general cleanup. I use Explorer (actually Directory Opus, but that's another story) to delete or move recordings in bulk. I do however also delete files I have just watched from within the nPVR interface. As does the family (exclusively like that).

I have for a very long time not trimmed the nPVR database, so it still knows my old recordings - even the ones I have moved to my PVR file share or even deleted directly in the file system. They currently appear as failed recodings, but all metadata is intact. Stuff I hope to reuse (see below).

Recordings are cable .TS streams from Danish cable supplier Yousee.

My intention

Mirgation nPVR
I will copy the folders, database and setup to the VM in the same directories, install the latest nPVR that will then inherit the basic setup. This has been done in a test run relatively successfully.

I did have an issue with the latest download of the drivers for HDHR that I installed not being able to find all channels. But leaving the old devices from the previous machine seems to work for now. It is quite odd though. I'll retest and post specific questions if repeated.

With this in place, I will have the core functionality of nPVR intact, and all links to all previous recordings broken.

Change recording directory to be directly on the unRAID server
As nPVR and unRAID will be sharing the same hardware and have perpetual uptime :p, I will have nPVR record directly to my protected and expandable unRAID array. I think the best way is by addressing it in config like "\\Servername\Sharename" - in my case \\Tower\PVR ?

Questions - your input please
Any comments or input to the above is very welcome.

Beyond that, I have the following specific questions and doubts:

• Are there any specific issues related to recording to a SMB-fileserver like unRAID that I need to take into account?
  
• Will it be possible to amend the recordings database to properly refer to the files of the same name and structure as when recorded, but now just residing on the unRAID server. With this I mean, I can go into recordings, I select a recording, and it will display the description of the recording and play it transparently as if it was in its original location. I.e. it was originally recorded to D:, but now resides in identical folder and filename on \\Tower\PVR (or V.
  
• Will I be able to delete recordings on the fileserver through nPVR interface that war just recorded there? If they were placed there outside nPVR? I know that if I access through "Videos" I can't, but maybe if the fileserver ti nPVR looks like the native recording directory?
  
• Can I in any way have something equivalent to user access control on who can delete recordings?
  
• Will it be possible to have nPVR exporting information along with recordings, that makes it feasilble to access them and their metadata (description) through XBMC, Plex or similar frontend?
  

PS. One sacrifice: The FloppyDTV has to go, as the board has no FireWire port. I will add another HDHR to go to 4 tuners and be independent of hardware now and in the future.

[martint123]

Just posting so I can see in future how you get on with this.
I tried with the freebie esxi and a W7 vm, but my tuners didn't get passed through so it was a non starter.
Running the VM under windows worked fine, so it is/was an esxi limitation.
I was running it on an HP microserver which were available recently in the UK at knockdown prices with a cashback from HP.
Fortunately I filled it with drives before the flooding of the drive factories.

[psycik]

I would have through the tuners would be an issue. I figured if I went for a virtual solution then USB tuners might be an option, and network based ones would probably work best like the hdhomerun.

Be interested to see how you go. Personally I went the whs2011 route for my server with VMware server 2.0 for virtualisation. But have not moved a gbpvr recording server on there. That's still a separate box at the moment.

[liteswap]

ESXi is absolute about which hardware it will support, although many have found that unusual combinations do occasionally work - but since ESXi is an enterprise system, TV tuners are low on VMware's list of priorities, I suspect.

[nia]

So far it looks like it's working really well

I have completed the installation of the production unRAID as well as migrating my nPVR installation to a VM in ESXi.

As I'm only using HDHR (one old version I have used for a couple of years, one new of the new versions), I don't have to do any passthru.Being network accessed, it just works

So I have the same SuperMicro board running unRAID as storage server, running nPVR recording to a Samba share on the unRAID through \\Server\Share addressing for recording directory. Am as unRaid is flexibly expandable almod ad infinitum, I believe I will be in a good place now...

I think liteswap is right about ESXi being somewhat picky about what it allows to passthu, as well as it is not running properly on every MoBo out there. As it's free, it can be tested if you have a USB key to install it to and some time to spend. You don't have to install a completely new machine if you want to just test on existing hardware. I think ESXi 5 is maybe a bit more willing to passthru hardware.

At least USB should passthru fine, albeit I do have some issues with passing thru my APC UPS to the unRAID (Linux) VM.

I'll update when it has had som operational time to state if it is actually working as intended.