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Server upgrade advice

The Strato S definitely counts against the recommended 4 server limit (and it can only serve 1 UHD playback at a time) so switching to a Strato without storage would be a better option from a performance standpoint, yes.

As for Co-Star, all Stratos other than Strato E and Strato M support system level Co-Star pairing (i.e. Co-Star pairing to a Premiere system with M-class players). Note that Strato V and Strato K must be running in grouped mode with a Terra. Strato K and V do not support Co-star pairing when in standalone mode.
Only original Strato, Strato S, and Strato C support Co-star player pairing with an Alto. Strato K, and V do not support this mode.
 
Just curious, why is there performance hits? I plan to add a Terra Prime (2U) HDD to my Terra Compact HDD. I’m sure there won’t be a performance hit but I know most people sell their compacts as they upgrade to bigger drive systems.
 
Note that this is an overly-simplified explanation that is devoid of many details. I also apologise for the long-winded nature of the reply. The short, TLDR version is, "It's complicated."

Every server in the system maintains its own local copy of the movie guide database which is all of the metadata related to movies such as cast, genre, running times, cover art, etc. It also has a local database containing records of the content that is downloaded to that server and their collection memberships (Played, Paused, custom collections, etc.).

When you have more than one server in your system, the databases on each server have to be synced with the other server(s) in the system. As the number of servers grow, the number of syncs increases which can impact performance. Grouping 4 servers together in itself won't necessarily show an appreciable degradation in performance but as the number of movies in the library grows, having multiple servers can impact performance.

Take, for instance, stopping a movie midway through. When you do this, a pause bookmark has to be created that is linked to the particular media object that you were playing. That pause bookmark gets written into a database on the server that was actually providing that media object. Additionally, some other records need to be created/updated to now add that movie to the "Paused" collection, a refresh function has to run so that the onscreen display of the any players in the system will now show that title in the paused collection, etc. If there's only one server, then you're done. But if there are more servers in the system, those updated records also have to be synced to the other servers in the system. Similarly, those other servers may have changes in their local databases that need to be synced.

So every server added to the system increases the complexity of that syncing operation. And in many cases, the syncing of that information can't be deferred to some later time because that would result in the onscreen display showing stale information (e.g. a movie has finished downloading to one of the servers but you can't see it because the sync operations haven't completed yet).
 
Nope, I completely get it. Figured it was some sort of database issue, not actually a data bandwidth issue. A lot of chatter on the backend. Especially with multiple players on a system.
 
J.Green said:
Note that this is an overly-simplified explanation that is devoid of many details. I also apologise for the long-winded nature of the reply. The short, TLDR version is, "It's complicated."
....
Click to expand...
Speculating here, as a seasoned distributed system developer, that K's system was developed before a lot of "modern tech" solving these problems were created (e.g. things like Redis or Infinispan).

Just need AI to make a new one*: Claude, make me a K like system using Infinispan :-)

* Totally joking here and, no, don't do that.
 
J.Green said:
Note that this is an overly-simplified explanation that is devoid of many details. I also apologise for the long-winded nature of the reply. The short, TLDR version is, "It's complicated."

Every server in the system maintains its own local copy of the movie guide database which is all of the metadata related to movies such as cast, genre, running times, cover art, etc. It also has a local database containing records of the content that is downloaded to that server and their collection memberships (Played, Paused, custom collections, etc.).

When you have more than one server in your system, the databases on each server have to be synced with the other server(s) in the system. As the number of servers grow, the number of syncs increases which can impact performance. Grouping 4 servers together in itself won't necessarily show an appreciable degradation in performance but as the number of movies in the library grows, having multiple servers can impact performance.

Take, for instance, stopping a movie midway through. When you do this, a pause bookmark has to be created that is linked to the particular media object that you were playing. That pause bookmark gets written into a database on the server that was actually providing that media object. Additionally, some other records need to be created/updated to now add that movie to the "Paused" collection, a refresh function has to run so that the onscreen display of the any players in the system will now show that title in the paused collection, etc. If there's only one server, then you're done. But if there are more servers in the system, those updated records also have to be synced to the other servers in the system. Similarly, those other servers may have changes in their local databases that need to be synced.

So every server added to the system increases the complexity of that syncing operation. And in many cases, the syncing of that information can't be deferred to some later time because that would result in the onscreen display showing stale information (e.g. a movie has finished downloading to one of the servers but you can't see it because the sync operations haven't completed yet).
Click to expand...
This is really helpful. Could you possibly explain what happens in a system that pairs a Premiere system with a Strato/Terra system? For example, let's say I have 3 Terra Prime servers and 2 Premiere 1U+ servers. Is there any syncing of any kind across the two paired systems? How does the combined user interface get generated? Does adding, say, a 4th Terra Prime server in this configuration slow the overall performance down more than it would if there was no Premiere system?
 
The 2 Premiere servers perform library and database syncs between themselves in the same manner that I've described above.
In the case of a Co-star setup, there is also a sync that occurs to transfer library information from the Premiere system to the Encore system. This sync is largely -- but not entirely -- one-way though since the Premiere system doesn't need to be aware of the Encore system's library.
 
J.Green said:
The 2 Premiere servers perform library and database syncs between themselves in the same manner that I've described above.
In the case of a Co-star setup, there is also a sync that occurs to transfer library information from the Premiere system to the Encore system. This sync is largely -- but not entirely -- one-way though since the Premiere system doesn't need to be aware of the Encore system's library.
Click to expand...
That is super helpful! I'm curious if that additional (mostly one way) sync also slows things down, and if so, is there a back of the envelope way to think about how much of an incremental impact that would have. Put another way -- would the overall experience be noticeably faster if I just unpaired the two systems (I certainly understand the downsides of doing this -- but would there be a noticeable performance upside)?

Thanks so much John for your engagement with us!!
 
artur9 said:
Speculating here, as a seasoned distributed system developer, that K's system was developed before a lot of "modern tech" solving these problems were created (e.g. things like Redis or Infinispan).

Just need AI to make a new one*: Claude, make me a K like system using Infinispan :-)

* Totally joking here and, no, don't do that.
Click to expand...
With limited resources and real-time video requirement, embedded system programming in the consumer electronics space presents a different set of challenges. What works for data centers may not work for K.
 
sfisher said:
...would the overall experience be noticeably faster if I just unpaired the two systems (I certainly understand the downsides of doing this -- but would there be a noticeable performance upside)?
Click to expand...
In a word: No.

In more than just a word:
There would not be an appreciable improvement in performance were you to unpair the systems. The amount of information being synced between the Encore system and the Premiere system is not enough to have a major impact on performance and, more importantly, it only has to happen when/if something on the Premiere side actually changes (e.g. a pause bookmark gets created/removed, or a collection membership changes, or a movie import/download to the Premiere system finishes). Otherwise, each system does its own thing without impacting the other.
 
Returning to @rbienstock’s original question, I think the answer on the Encore side is pretty straightforward — add an additional server when more capacity is needed. Obviously you could also upgrade to a larger server, but as already noted, is kind of an expensive proposition.

On the Premiere side, I would take the caution from support seriously. Doing a RAID rebuild is stressful on the disk set, and if you need to replace three drives, that’s a lot of rebuilding. I can think of three options to gain space, in no particular order:
  • Add another Premiere server.
  • Replace the 3U with a 1U+ with 30TB drives. That will get you 90TB of storage, which it sounds like is more than enough for your foreseeable needs. You’ll gain 2RU of rack space, and save quite a bit on power consumption. You also get a new warranty.
  • Purchase a 3U disk set with six or seven 12TB drives, and borrow a 3U chassis from a dealer. Replicate your content onto the new disk set using the borrowed chassis, then move that set into your 3U chassis. That will give you brand-new drives with a warranty, and room to grow as needed. If you buy six drives rather than seven, you’d end up with the same storage that you have now. If you’re Adding Encore storage as well, then you could save the Premiere storage exclusively for imported discs and download the Store movies currently on your Premiere onto your Encore system. If you buy seven drives, then you’d gain 12TB of storage so you could keep all the movies you have downloaded on the server now, have plenty of space for future imports, plus you’d have plenty of room in the chassis to expand storage in the future if needed.
Of these options, I recently did the second one — I replaced my 3U with a 1U+ and replicated the content over.
 
Well I have been a Kaleidescape dealer for over 2 decades, and yes 1U+ are definitely still available new. There are actually 2 different capacities of 1U+ Servers currently available, 36TB and 90TB. If you don’t have a good dealer who is knowledgeable with regard to the Premiere system you are welcome to DM me.

Cheers,
Alan
 
MikeKobb said:
Returning to @rbienstock’s original question, I think the answer on the Encore side is pretty straightforward — add an additional server when more capacity is needed. Obviously you could also upgrade to a larger server, but as already noted, is kind of an expensive proposition.
Click to expand...

I'm pretty sure that that is what I'll do. My one wish here is that I wish Kscape still made a Compact Terra Prime SSD with less than 246TB of space. If I could buy a Compact Terra Prime SSD 31TB new with Warranty, I'd get it in a heartbeat.

MikeKobb said:
On the Premiere side, I would take the caution from support seriously. Doing a RAID rebuild is stressful on the disk set, and if you need to replace three drives, that’s a lot of rebuilding. I can think of three options to gain space, in no particular order:
  • Add another Premiere server.
  • Replace the 3U with a 1U+ with 30TB drives. That will get you 90TB of storage, which it sounds like is more than enough for your foreseeable needs. You’ll gain 2RU of rack space, and save quite a bit on power consumption. You also get a new warranty.
  • Purchase a 3U disk set with six or seven 12TB drives, and borrow a 3U chassis from a dealer. Replicate your content onto the new disk set using the borrowed chassis, then move that set into your 3U chassis. That will give you brand-new drives with a warranty, and room to grow as needed. If you buy six drives rather than seven, you’d end up with the same storage that you have now. If you’re Adding Encore storage as well, then you could save the Premiere storage exclusively for imported discs and download the Store movies currently on your Premiere onto your Encore system. If you buy seven drives, then you’d gain 12TB of storage so you could keep all the movies you have downloaded on the server now, have plenty of space for future imports, plus you’d have plenty of room in the chassis to expand storage in the future if needed.
Click to expand...

The real advantage for me of option 2 would be getting the warranty. I can't imagine that I'd ever need 90TB though. How much are the 36TB and 90TB 1U servers anyway?

I'm thinking that the best route for me would be to simply get more Encore storage and move all the Kstore HD content on the Premiere system to the Encore and just keep the Premiere system as-is until it fails or perhaps getting a 1U 36TB for my Blu-ray content. I also have another way to regain space which is that I have a large number of Criterion Collection Blu-rays that I've upgraded to their 4K versions which are already outside of the Kscape system. I could delete those without losing much because I don't really watch the HD versions anyway and they're on the system just for the bonus features.

In terms of moving the Kstore HD content to the Encore system, I assume that the way to do that would be to delete those titles and then use the new Kstore feature that allows you to specify which system gets the downloads to send those downloads to an Encore server, right?
 
By the way, Mike, hi. I remember you well from when you were at ReplayTV, a wonderful product that I would really miss if I still watched TV or cable instead of streaming.
 
The feature to direct store downloads to Premiere vs Encore actually predates the new download preferences feature (it was already on the web store), but regardless, you’d want to make that selection.

It’s late and I’m a little tired, but I think there’s actually a pretty streamlined way that you could get those titles all downloaded onto your new Terra server with minimal fuss. If you temporarily undo the Co-Star pairing of your systems, you should then be able to go on the store website to Manage -> My Movies, and select the option to view movies not downloaded to your Encore system. Then you can just choose “Download all…” which will allow you to toggle off any that you want to skip, then start them all going.

Regarding an SSD server in the sort of mid-capacity range (i.e., more than 8, less than 246), unfortunately, the crunch in SSD storage caused by AI datacenters buying up SSDs has made the pricing problematic. Hopefully we’ll see those prices come back down at some point.

Oh, regarding pricing, I’d encourage you to reach out to a dealer. The best I could do here is quote MSRP.
 
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