Latest Version Extremely Sluggish on WHS HP MediaSmart

[bethesdaadk]

Anyone having a problem with the latest version running on WHS? It's always been zippy, but now I cannot use it and am having to use the built in HP Media Streamer...which is not nearly as good.

May need to downgrade to the last version?

[whimpyjones]

I have a homebuilt WHS on a 3.0 ghz pentium 4 running tomcat and the war versioin and have no problems what so ever with the current version.
What version are you running, what problems are you having?
Tell us more about your system and the specific problems you are having and we might be able to help.

[bethesdaadk]

HP EX470 with 2GB RAM upgrade and Powerpack 3 installed.

Subsonic for external music access

Squeeze Server for internal music access

Using the HP Media Streamer until I figure out what's killing Subsonic.

[whimpyjones]

What are the specific problems with subsonic?
What version/server are you using, tomcat, jetty?

[GJ51]

Are you sure that it's Subsonic that's killing the server? I ditched my HP MSS because the Twonky Media server was killing the CPU. How did you install SS? Do you have the other media services on the MSS disabled? What processes does task manager show as taking cpu load when SS is running?

[bethesdaadk]

I believe I do have Twonky still running so that the HP Media Streamer still works. Never was an issue before. I will downgrade Subsonic to the last version and report back when I've had the chance to do so.

[GJ51]

I know there has been some progress with Twonky since I gave up on it, but at one time it was a real CPU hog that brought the server to its knees. That's why I switched to SS.

[HighCast]

Wow, your WHS servers look fast.
I'm running it on oldish IBM Thinkpad T41 laptop (1.6 Ghz single-core Centrino CPU, 1 GB of RAM and an external usb drive for the music archive) without any issues. The only slowness I've discovered is that when the Subsonic loads up for the very first time after restart, things show up slowly. After waiting a while, the system starts to run smoothly.

Note: I have no additional softwares from the manufacturer installed. Just plain W2003 Server with WHS components.

The whole server peformance is OK, as this is not the only server software running on that machine.

One thing which could also affect is that your antivirus software may be doing the real-time scanes. That will slow down the things nastily.

[donpearson]

Subsonic bulids a cache the first time its loaded up after every reboot.

[GJ51]

Wow, your WHS servers look fast.
I'm running it on oldish IBM Thinkpad T41 laptop (1.6 Ghz single-core Centrino CPU, 1 GB of RAM and an external usb drive for the music archive) without any issues. The only slowness I've discovered is that when the Subsonic loads up for the very first time after restart, things show up slowly. After waiting a while, the system starts to run smoothly.

Note: I have no additional softwares from the manufacturer installed. Just plain W2003 Server with WHS components.

The whole server peformance is OK, as this is not the only server software running on that machine.

One thing which could also affect is that your antivirus software may be doing the real-time scanes. That will slow down the things nastily.

They should look fast. Quad core 2.83GHz Xeon, 8GB ram, 8TB HD space, connected to 35/35 FIOS.

The ex470 should run fine for music and video that doesn't need transcoding if it's set up properly. I remember that there are some background process that run on the HP MSS that can really slow it down. I dumped the whole MSS form factor as it ran hot and was eating hard drives on me. I lost 3 in one year. Since moving to an Antec 300 case with 2 added 120mm fans in front of the hard drives I've had no hardware failures. My hard drives now run BELOW room temp! The MSS box leaves no room for ventilation above or below the drives making them run hot. The Antec 300 gives plenty of room above and below each drive for good air flow. My basement is 70F and the drives in my server range from 69 - 80F or 21 - 27C The boot drive is 7200rpm, my Samsung F3/F4 drives are always around room temp.

Both public servers are on the quad core Xeon system, which is divided into Server 08 R2 as the boot OS and WHS 2011 RC running as a virtual server using 2GB ram. I also have a WHSv1 box running on a quad core AMD 65W cpu with 4GB ram and 8TB of hard drive space for internal use. It performs very well also.

As I've written many times, it's really important to understand the limitations of what SS can do on your particular hardware configuration. I get a real kick out of the guys who start whinning that SS won't transcode their Blue Ray video and play it on their Android phone when they're using a single core atom with 512 MB ram on a DSL line.

There is a WIDE range of performance possibilities available with SS, but individual configurations each have their own limitations. Patience and proper setup for your unique system is essential to getting the most out of SS.

[HighCast]

I also noted that the transcoding of movies is not an option with my 'server' hardware mentioned above. It simply causes gaps etc when trying to play SD resolution music vids or movies. As this was discovered to be an issue, I removed these file sources and I keep streaming those from my workstation which has also a configuration which could be called 'high-end'.

From my point of view, I agree on your points. If people are telling something is slow on some particular setup, it should be tested on another one before starting to complain about it. (for the thread starter, this was not pointed specifically to you but for ALL)

i set the system on old laptop as it uses way less amps than this workstation I use for gaming and playing. It's just better option to keep the only server which requires availability on all hours of the day on the machine, which spends way less power to run, even it will not play the videos due the lack of hardware resources.

The only real issues what I've found is the Inaccurate search results of song lyrics (seE another post at this board from me) and the lack of genre sorting by default UI. (also the video playlist would be nice as many users here agree with that..but lets see what our norwegian developer will put up on the next releases
Have you seen any road map of where this software is going? I bet you've inspected many aspects of the product, so you have most likely crawled all over the forum, which I am not aiming to do

[GJ51]

I appreciate your comments as it is evident that you understand that Subsonic can be used in satisfactory ways on different platforms as long as expectations are realistic. Although my servers are a bit on the high power side for specs, they were carefully designed for low power consumption. Both servers only draw about 60W on average and rarely go over 100W under heavy load. Additionally, the WHS v1 box has Lights Out installed. This is a WHS addin that puts the server to sleep whenever there are no active workstations on the network. After 5 mins. of no activity it sleeps, then as soon as someone logs on to their computer it automatically fires up. The other server is on 24/7 burning the same amount of energy as a 60W light bulb. As soon as I can get one of my teenagers to move out I'll be way far ahead, they never turn any lights out.

The transcoding thing is fine for small home video that you don't want to reformat. Anything else of higher resolution or long length really needs to be formatted as either mp4 or flv to get good throughput. Doing so takes a lot of load off the server and allows multiple simultaneous streams without bogging down the server. Small, low powered systems can easily handle music. I'm hoping to build a small dual core atom box just for fun to see how much it can do with SS. I'm pretty sure that if the music and video is in the right format it'll run just fine.

Here's what Sindre would like to get to if he has time:

http://subsonic.svn.sourceforge.net/vie ... n/TODO.TXT

I'm glad it's not my to do list! A quick read through will show you how much Sindre really pays attention to what users are saying in these forums. If you know of any other dev out there that pays this much attention to their product, please let me know who/where.

[bethesdaadk]

So, the issue was not versions of Subsonic. The issue was my new SonicWall Firewall at work. Specifically, the content filtering component of the anti virus package on the firewall was killing most flash related sites...including Subsonic. Once we turned that filter off, we were back in business. Had I had a chance to test the site elsewhere, I might have noticed that the performance was bad ONLY at work, but work is the only place I use it. I have squeezeboxes at home.

So there you go. This might be helpful in other cases.

[GJ51]

It all goes back to what I've said many times on this forum. Many users start complaining that SS doesn't do this or doesn't do that, but in reality, they just don't understand that Subsonic is in reality, just one link in a chain. Granted it's a pretty big link, but even so, it only takes one small glitch anywhere along the data path for things to get iffy. Server hardware, OS, SS installation, Java, NIC, network connection, router setup, gateway device, internet connection, to finally whatever is on the recieving end wher you're trying to listen and whatever is involved at that end, which is just the reverse of what I described at the server end. All the stars have to be in alignment for Subsonic to function properly ... and even then, the performance capability of SS is a function of the combination of all those factors. The more CPU power and bandwidth you have, the better the performance.

[alphawave7]

So, the issue was not versions of Subsonic. The issue was my new SonicWall Firewall at work. Specifically, the content filtering component of the anti virus package on the firewall was killing most flash related sites...including Subsonic. Once we turned that filter off, we were back in business. Had I had a chance to test the site elsewhere, I might have noticed that the performance was bad ONLY at work, but work is the only place I use it. I have squeezeboxes at home.

So there you go. This might be helpful in other cases.

Thanks for reporting back! Hope it DOES help another user.