Channels DVR and Plex sharing Intel IGPU for transcoding on Ubuntu

Channels DVR Server
#1

I am currently looking at some server consolidation, and my Plex server is a Ubuntu install running on an I7-9700K using the IGPU for hardware accelerated transcoding.

I was thinking of installing Channels on it, but wondering if both server applications can utilize the IGPU at the same time for hardware accelerate transcoding?

I am hoping others do this as I can't really test - my Channels install along with the associated Antenna and HDHR's are at a remote location on a Windows server, and the Ubuntu server running Plex is local to me with no Antenna or HDHR's. If I do this, I will be spinning up a new local Plex install for LAN playback, and moving the current Ubuntu Plex server to the remote location and moving Channels to it... The intent being the remote Plex server can utilize the high upload bandwidth at the remote site (100 Mb) for any time I want to watch content outside of my local location, which has poor upload bandwidth (can get over 1 Gb down and only 20 Mb up).

TLDR is the plan hinges on Channels and Plex sharing transcoding hardware on the same Ubuntu server, and would be a lot of configuration changes to test that if it doesn't work out.

#2

I run Plex , ChannelsDVR , Emby and SageTV on my ubuntu server and have no problem transcoding... IGPU can do multiple hardware transcodes.

Linux Ubuntu
20.04 (kernel: 5.4.0-135-generic)
CPU
8 cores / Intel(R) Core(TM) i7-7700 CPU @ 3.60GHz
load averages:  0.09  0.11  0.14
RAM
31.23 GB
84.7% free
NET
1 interface
10.0.0.2
#3

Yes, I have the same processor and it does both simultaneously very well.

#4

Thank you both. Wish I could mark both as solutions!

#5

Just a followup on this, I know I shouldn't be surprised, but I am shocked by how much more power efficient this upgraded server setup is. I went from a 3930K with a Quadro M2000 to 9700K, and I figured it would be a drop in power consumption, but Intel has really improved their low power / idle states over the year. I was running the new server in a rack at home for a couple of years, so never really got to see its power draw since it was sharing UPS space with all of my other servers.

At the remote location the 3930K was sitting at 45 minutes of runtime on the UPS when idle, not doing anything. I don't think the Quadro would be using its full 75 watts of power from the PCIE slot when not doing any transcoding.

The 9700K idle is at 150 minutes of runtime. Under load, transcoding 6 Channels DVR streams from 6 different broadcast channels (all from HDHR's), and a 4k movie on Plex transcoding to 20 Mbps 1080p, the runtime only dropped to 120 minutes on the UPS (my remote monitoring tools don't show me wattage). No stutters during the testing either, and none of the cores broke 40% load, even without hyperthreading on the newer CPU.

The 3930K machine only had 2 or 3 SSD's in it, and the 9700K machine has a 4 HDD ZFS array, a 6 SSD RAID array, 2 NVME drives, a 10 Gb NIC, and a SAS HBA in it. The CPU's only have about a 40 watt difference in TDP.

I've been using several older 3770K and 3930K motherboard/cpu combos for various utility purposes here and there, since they all have large Zalmann coolers that are nice and quiet and they perform in the range of a 9th or 10th gen i3... But I think I am going to phase all of these out with these power numbers.

Also found out my folks have a 900 Mbps upload now. I can get 1 or 2 Gbps down in my area but the max upload on any of the plans is 20 Mbps. So if I am watching Plex outside of my house, it will be coming from the server there as opposed to the home server.

#6

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