- September 18, 2006
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Belgium
Hi 'eggman',
Just out of curiosity: what are you using freenas for and why don't you run it as a virtual machine on your mediacenter?
TV server on VMware ESXi 4.1 (2 Viewers)
- Thread starter cfg
- Start date
Just out of curiosity: what are you using freenas for and why don't you run it as a virtual machine on your mediacenter?
- November 29, 2009
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Netherlands
Hello,
I what to use freenas for the NAS functionality, web/home for me and my family. The main reason why I don't want a separted NAS = Price + power consumption, I don't need a 24/7 NAS solution.
Indeed i could instal windows + MP on a system and run 1 VM session with freenas, but then I lose the compleet recover fuctionality of mij MP installation. And i don't have a good way of testing MP without stopping the MP functionality. The reason why I want a recover solution is: reliability. Lately i have a lot of problems playing everything smoothly... And my hardware should do the the job...
First job I have to do is to fix MP from crashing quite often ;-(
I what to use freenas for the NAS functionality, web/home for me and my family. The main reason why I don't want a separted NAS = Price + power consumption, I don't need a 24/7 NAS solution.
Indeed i could instal windows + MP on a system and run 1 VM session with freenas, but then I lose the compleet recover fuctionality of mij MP installation. And i don't have a good way of testing MP without stopping the MP functionality. The reason why I want a recover solution is: reliability. Lately i have a lot of problems playing everything smoothly... And my hardware should do the the job...
First job I have to do is to fix MP from crashing quite often ;-(
Short update:
I installed ESXi 4.1 sucessfully on my new mainboard, I can route the two Twinhan Cinergy S2 DVB-S cards into my XP machine without a problem. I need to install the driver and MP TVserver now to see how it performs. More updates coming soon...
I installed ESXi 4.1 sucessfully on my new mainboard, I can route the two Twinhan Cinergy S2 DVB-S cards into my XP machine without a problem. I need to install the driver and MP TVserver now to see how it performs. More updates coming soon...
New user here, just found this post today.
I have been running mediaportal for a few years and on the same machine I have VMWare server to run a couple of machines I use for home automation and a VPN (openVPN AS), its the only machine I leave on 24/7. I am in the process of building an ESXI whitebox and have run into problems with the TVServer.
How far I have got;
Built the whitebox and got ESXI 4.1 U1 installed, core I7 870 on q57m chipset (VD-d)
Got a primary windows 7 machine installed with VT-d graphics and USB, this works perfectly as a second slave mediaportal machine and is in place of what was my old slave machine, been working for weeks after smoothing out some ESXi problems with VT-d but it plays HD and games perfectly like its not a VM.
Got my other 2 VM's ported over and are now much more stable but that could just be the 8 threads and 8 gig of ram (old machine was E5200 with 4gb, 3gb useable).
This machine dual boots into windows so I can double check hardware, was usefull when I bought some duff ram.
Problems I have,
Hauppauge NOVA-T 500 wont work in the XP VM as it gets to the driver install firmware update and fails (just waits for update reply which never comes). In windows 7 VM I get USB_BUG_CODE BSOD's which I also get in native windows 7 so could be a MB problem.
PEAK dual PCI will work in XP VM but always reports no signal in TV Server channel scan. Same BUG_CODE in W7 both VM and native.
NOVA T USB works in W7 VM, scans channels and finds them but then wont tune any "unable to start graph" first test was with mysql which did not even create the timeshift file, now trying SQL Express and with this the file gets made but no playback starts. I've not done much testing with this stick (only paid penies for it and was using it to run a Hauppauge remote on the slave machine) but it does not work well in the past with anything I've tried it on.
Still testing, not giving up and it works perfectly as a MP slave device but that PC used to get switched off when not in use.
Incidently the lowest score in W7 experience index is 5.5 for memory in the VM so I dont know that latencies will be a problem, thinks like VLC and Squeezebox have been working fine for me for years in VM's running in VMWare server.
I have been running mediaportal for a few years and on the same machine I have VMWare server to run a couple of machines I use for home automation and a VPN (openVPN AS), its the only machine I leave on 24/7. I am in the process of building an ESXI whitebox and have run into problems with the TVServer.
How far I have got;
Built the whitebox and got ESXI 4.1 U1 installed, core I7 870 on q57m chipset (VD-d)
Got a primary windows 7 machine installed with VT-d graphics and USB, this works perfectly as a second slave mediaportal machine and is in place of what was my old slave machine, been working for weeks after smoothing out some ESXi problems with VT-d but it plays HD and games perfectly like its not a VM.
Got my other 2 VM's ported over and are now much more stable but that could just be the 8 threads and 8 gig of ram (old machine was E5200 with 4gb, 3gb useable).
This machine dual boots into windows so I can double check hardware, was usefull when I bought some duff ram.
Problems I have,
Hauppauge NOVA-T 500 wont work in the XP VM as it gets to the driver install firmware update and fails (just waits for update reply which never comes). In windows 7 VM I get USB_BUG_CODE BSOD's which I also get in native windows 7 so could be a MB problem.
PEAK dual PCI will work in XP VM but always reports no signal in TV Server channel scan. Same BUG_CODE in W7 both VM and native.
NOVA T USB works in W7 VM, scans channels and finds them but then wont tune any "unable to start graph" first test was with mysql which did not even create the timeshift file, now trying SQL Express and with this the file gets made but no playback starts. I've not done much testing with this stick (only paid penies for it and was using it to run a Hauppauge remote on the slave machine) but it does not work well in the past with anything I've tried it on.
Still testing, not giving up and it works perfectly as a MP slave device but that PC used to get switched off when not in use.
Incidently the lowest score in W7 experience index is 5.5 for memory in the VM so I dont know that latencies will be a problem, thinks like VLC and Squeezebox have been working fine for me for years in VM's running in VMWare server.
Nice fact you are mentioning here.
I successfully got it up and running by converting my dedicated TV server into a VMware ESXi guest machine. I route my two DVB-S cards into the VM by using the VMDirectPath method (aka "PCI passthrough"), the guest machine works and the client machines can now watch TV without problems, even HDTV.
The current problem at the moment is that only ONE TV card works, the second one reports "no signal".
I'll keep you up-to-date.
I successfully got it up and running by converting my dedicated TV server into a VMware ESXi guest machine. I route my two DVB-S cards into the VM by using the VMDirectPath method (aka "PCI passthrough"), the guest machine works and the client machines can now watch TV without problems, even HDTV.
The current problem at the moment is that only ONE TV card works, the second one reports "no signal".
I'll keep you up-to-date.
- August 20, 2007
- 2,161
- 747
- Moderator
- #16
AW: Re: TV server on VMware ESXi 4.1
DPC Latency Checker
You could run dpc latency checker to verify - and post a picture of the results here.
DPC Latency Checker
Ok heres 2 screen shots, backs up what I was thinking as I can play full on 3D games without a hitch. Racedriver grid is the only game I play but it runs smooth on the VM with a VT-d'd ATI 5770 (single slot) and 4 of the 8 cores setup for the VM.
First my desktop for comparison, Q6600 at 3ghz 460GTX graphics
And the VM
Short spell of testing this morning, the USB stick wont work in mediacentre either, no big suprise, it scans and finds 60+ channels but cant display them. Going to have to approach this with more structure I think in order to find a solution.
First my desktop for comparison, Q6600 at 3ghz 460GTX graphics
And the VM
Short spell of testing this morning, the USB stick wont work in mediacentre either, no big suprise, it scans and finds 60+ channels but cant display them. Going to have to approach this with more structure I think in order to find a solution.
Got it working now. I am using a pinnacle 3010ix PCIe twin tuner. It looks like my motherboard GA Q57m has an incompatibility with VIA USB cards as both the TV tuners I have tried (Hauppauge Nova T 500 and Peak) have been VIA USB cards, also a 4 port VIA USB card I tried had similar problems, USB ports could be seen but things plugged into the ports did not function.
Anyone got any good suggestions for twin tunner PCI cards that are not based around VIA USB bridges? I knew I should have gone with the Q67 and 1155 setup but for some reason picked 1156 even though the choice of VT-d CPU's was much more limited.
Can confirm TVServer works in a VM and Mediaportal also works in a VM with suitable graphics passed through.
Anyone got any good suggestions for twin tunner PCI cards that are not based around VIA USB bridges? I knew I should have gone with the Q67 and 1155 setup but for some reason picked 1156 even though the choice of VT-d CPU's was much more limited.
Can confirm TVServer works in a VM and Mediaportal also works in a VM with suitable graphics passed through.
Good to hear everything is fine now for you.
I still got the problem here that a second DVB-S card gives no signal, though both cards work if I use only one card for passthrough, test, and then use the other one for passthrough and test again.
So it's obviously not an antenna issue but related to virtualization. Strange thing.........
I still got the problem here that a second DVB-S card gives no signal, though both cards work if I use only one card for passthrough, test, and then use the other one for passthrough and test again.
So it's obviously not an antenna issue but related to virtualization. Strange thing.........
One option I found that made the PCI passthrough more reliable is to ad a line to the config file 'pciPassthru0.msiEnabled' and set the value to false. Obviously set the number to the same as the card passthru ID. Default is true and I had to set it to false to get full functionality out of the graphics card.