Thinking of moving to a Raspberry Pi based install, and curious as I stand one up and play with it for a bit, is there any issue with running 2 Channels DVR servers on the same network?
Discovery? License? Playback? etc????
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No issues.
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How will the Firestick client know which server to connect to if both are running at the same time?
It will pick one at random. If it picks the wrong one, you can click Connect > At Home and enter the IP of the one you want to use, and then the app will remember that IP.
Or you could uncheck Bonjour Discovery on the second DVR.
Is there a way I can pay you more $ each month to let any given client pick a specific server? Sorry if I'm getting this thread a bit off track from the OP's intent.
Not sure what you mean. Any client can already pick a specific server, by entering the IP address of that DVR.
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I also have two servers running. One is used only by my elderly mother. Her Fire TV client occasionally connects to the wrong server (after an update?). When this happens, she starts deleting everything that is unfamiliar in the Library and in Passes. Thank you for the managed Trash!
I have Bonjour discovery turned off on both servers. It would be very nice if the clients would permanently retain manually-connected server info, and not randomly connect to the first server it detects. Or, even better, display a menu of available servers with some meta data to identify them.
An even better solution (for my scenario) would be user profiles that would enable independent views of all top-level features, and managed storage of recordings, passes, trash, etc. With that kind of functionality, I could run a single server and eliminate the redundancy of two completely independent servers.
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Strange.
I also have 2 servers running, one is for my mother to use, the other for myself only.
I have not had any issues with having bonjour off and any of the client apps connecting to the wrong server, they always have connected to the ip address of the server it was set to. So that she would not freak out and tell me the tv is broken and to come fix it.
I also have had it set so bonjour is on for her sever, in the event something reset or the app on one of the tvs is weird and needs to re-detect the sever, it will just auto connect to hers. that would make my client auto connect to it, should my client app get reset, but i have no issue changing server in my app if needed.
I am using beta apps, and have to go into the settings to manually update them on each client...so that may be a difference than your setup.
The only thing i can think of that would cause a client app to suddenly not detect the server address that is was manually set to connect to, would be if the server IP address changed. But that should not happen as long as u have a static ip set for the server or a DHCP Reservation set in the router for the servers MAC address, as many routers can do. Otherwise, the only time i have had a client app throw up the connect to server screen, is when the server is un-reachable for some reason, its powered off, ethernet cable un-plugged, a switch went down...etc.
I'm not seeing the connect to server dialog when this happens. It just happily connects to the wrong server.
That should only happen if bonjour discovery is enabled in the server.
Maybe the app is caching the other server address.
Try clearing app data and cache for the channels app on the client and then manually input the ip address when the connect to server dialog come up.
That is what i did when i first setup the other tvs to use a different server.
And it has not ever connected to the wrong server.
Otherwise, be sure Bonjour is disabled on the server you don't want things to auto connect to. And do a full reboot of your entire network, router, switches, server, and client devices....that should clear out any cached or anomalies hanging around that may cause that. (sometimes i notice that if i disable a network share on my NAS, my other computers can still see/discover it on the network, until everything gets rebooted.)
If it is still a issue, if you have the networking skills, and a router that supports it, you can create a different network subnet to run one of the server and clients on, isolating them from the rest of you network.
Creating a separate subnet for the second DVR is a good idea. If its scanning for port 8089 on the subnet, that would ensure that it's the only one discovered.
Remote clients for example.
A second subscription/account would be necessary, as only a single DVR may be indicated for remote access.
And then what. How does any given client connecting remotely select the desired server?
Based upon the account you sign in with when you authorize the remote client.
So, nothing interesting to note on the port forwarding to each separate server? It should 'just work'
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this sounds very similar to what i've been seeing occasionally lately on my chromecast gtv. seems like once a day lately it loses the IP of my DVR server and i have to reconnect manually (although i don't have two servers running)...
If you are running 2 different servers linked to 2 different subscriptions behind the same public IP, you will need to do some extra work. Something like relayd running on your external port to inspect the incoming headers, and then redirect to the proper server, would be necessary.
But that’s not really a supported configuration, so if that’s the route you want to take, be prepared to do the extra work.
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What a surprise.