ARGUS TV on Windows Server

Revision as of 20:20, 16 April 2013

About

Several ARGUS TV users are successfully running ARGUS TV on Windows Home Server (WHS). There are many advantages in doing this, and a few issues to overcome as well.

Hardware

Requirements

The minimum hardware requirements for ARGUS TV are very modest. It runs acceptably on an Intel Atom CPU although you may need to adjust the process priority.

Keep in mind that ARGUS TV also needs other software like SQL to run and these programs also use system resources.

If you are running WHS on powerful hardware, you will likely have no issues. However off the shelf machines are often very low spec, and may need a few tweaks to run smothly.

Currently (at the time of writing), I am using an Acer H340 as my server. It has an Intel Atom330 CPU and 2GB of RAM. It sits in a cupboard happily serving my needs with 2 connected client machines streaming HDTV or stored media, and recording whatever else is needed.

Drivers

Tuner drivers can appear difficult to install on WHS, the manufacturers installers often do not run, and Windows usually does not find them online.

Pointing the "Update driver" dialog to the driver CD is usually all you need to do to successfully install the drivers.

Shares on WHSv1

Where to Create Shares

Possibly the most important thing to consider with WHSv1, is where to put the shares for time shift and recording. Although creating shares in the WHS Console is the easiest way, it may not be the best. It can be awkward to share the folders properly and performance can be poor.

WHSv1 uses Drive Extender. Drive Extender works constantly and tries to keep your files evenly spread across all drives in the storage pool. Adding the the shares, (especially the TimeShift share) to the pool can cause very heavy disk usage as Drive Extender constantly tries to balance the storage. The heavy disk usage can cause issues with playback of files from WHS.

The best place to create shares is on a disk that is not part of the pool. If you are short of space, a 0.5 - 1TB USB drive can work well enough.

How to Create Shares

If you are using a dedicated disk for your shares create your shares just like you would in Windows XP. See Shared Folders.

If you are adding the shares in the console, there are two steps to take.

• First create the share in the console as normal. Do not enable duplication for the time shift folder.
• Next open the "Shared Folders" manager (Windows Key + R then type fsmgmt.msc). Double click "Shares" and find your shared folders. Edit the permissions for each folder, and add the user "Everyone" and give them full permissions.

Warning: You should never manually add shares to drives in the storage pool, always use the WHS Console.

Shares on WHS 2011

WHS 2011 does not have Drive Extender and so shares can be added as normal.

SQL

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