NAS and the home network

[malgernon]

At the moment I've got all my home data (images, music, recordings etc) in my PVR in our living room - the PVR that automatically boots up GBPVR. I imagine most of us here have a similar set up.

Ideally I'd like to move all of this data to a NAS running a Linux distro like FreeNAS (http://www.freenas.org/). It would be secure, backed up, properly cooled and ideally in a different room (e.g. Study).

I'd like to keep GBPVR by the TV, possibly even running it diskless from a Compact-Flash IDE disk - not as as a GBPVR client - rather it would be my main GBPVR installation but the data it uses and recordings would be stored on the NAS.

If I then wanted to add GBPVR clients in other rooms, they would use the diskless living room GBPVR box as the server, though the data itself is in the NAS box.

Is this a viable model to aim for? The advantage would be a quiet, cool low-power tiny box by the television and all my precious data in a utility room, with humming fans, RAID, back-up, larger box and whatever.

Does anyone have anything similar, or have an alternative solution which offers advantages over this?

When I started out I wanted a single server that could do everything (PVR, FTP, file server etc) but with time I'd rather have small, discrete low-power mini-itx systems dotted around that are single-purpose rather than all-singing all-dancing systems.

Regards,

Malgernon

[Spartan]

Does the MVP work for you? I basically have this same setup (see my system below), and only a cat5 cable running from my router to the MVP which sits on top of my TV.

[Ted the Penguin]

all-singing all-dancing

mmm fight club "all singing all dancing crap of the world"

personally I would suggest combining the file and ftp server. but no there should be no problems with GB-PVR and running it over a network, thw word should is dependent on your connection speed, I would strongly reccomend gigabit if you are going to have no local hard drives in the box with the tuner. other than that, sounds like a great idea. I currently store recordings on my local drive and everything else comes off of my file server (video, music etc.)

good luck

[malgernon]

Does the MVP work for you? I basically have this same setup (see my system below), and only a cat5 cable running from my router to the MVP which sits on top of my TV.

I'm not using it at the moment but I think eventually I'd like a couple of MVPs, diskless Epias or something comparable.

So I guess my real question is, can such clients as MVP work connecting to a diskless GBPVR server (sitting by the television) if all the actual data (music, video, pictures) is stored on a NAS?

I currently store recordings on my local drive and everything else comes off of my file server (video, music etc.)

From what Ted has said its workable (thanks for the advice Ted). I think with wake-on-lan I wouldn't even need the NAS on 24/7 . A dedicated W2K/SP4/GBPVR installation is about 2.5 GB in size but there must be tons of stuff that can be trimmed from Windows, so booting from a CF card is starting to look feasible.

[Ted the Penguin]

you are welcome

I'm not using it at the moment but I think eventually I'd like a couple of MVPs, diskless Epias or something comparable.

So I guess my real question is, can such clients as MVP work connecting to a diskless GBPVR server (sitting by the television) if all the actual data (music, video, pictures) is stored on a NAS?

as with before, your problem here is going to be bandwidth. anytime you want to access a file from the MVP you will need to transfer the file from the NAS to the gbpvr server (over the network) then stream it to the MVP, so it would be about double the bandwidth required. same thing for running comskip it will have to access the file over the network.
if you are serious about the setup have a dedicated gigabit lan interface (firewire would work too) between the NAS and the GP-PVR server, then an additional lan interface for everything else.

[Jeff]

I have two RAID NAS drives and watch videos from them via the MVP. I have a 100MB network and it works just fine.

Jeff

[malgernon]

So Jeff, just to confirm do you use gbpvr as a server? In other words, is gbpvr in the loop serving video on your NAS to your MVP? And gbpvr isn't installed on your NAS computer but on a different PC? Sorry, just want to be sure

Regards,
M

[Ted the Penguin]

also what type of video are you streaming? what kind of bitrate does the video have?

[Jeff]

My setup is a server PC running GBPVR with two tuner cards in it (a H. 150 and 250). I archive the recordings these make to either local USB drives or one of two RAID NAS drives. Both of the NAS drives are dedicated RAID boxes (not running Windows) so neither is running GBPVR. I watch videos from the MVP. The data is going from the NAS drive to the server PC and then from the server PC to the MVP.

Jeff

[malgernon]

Thanks Jeff - its great to hear that its not only possible but being done.

The 10/100 ethernet issue may become significant because hardly any epia boards come with gigabit ethernet. In fact I may set up streaming some different formats (e.g. DivX) from my laptop to my desktop via my PVR to see whether its flawless for all types of content. I wish there were Epias with two PCI slots - would make them so much more versatile!

Cheers guys,

M.