Second DVR server, same HD Homeruns (temporary)

#1

I am looking to move my server from a physical Windows box to a Ubuntu VM. To maintain 'service continuity' I would normally spin up the second server, work out all the configuration and inevitable kinks, then switch to the new server, powering down the old one.

I've read that other than causing an issue with remote access (I can do all my testing on the LAN so that won't be a problem) you can have 2 DVR's on the same network, but I am wondering how this works if they are using the same HD Homeruns?

For example, on a 4 tuner HDHR, if server A grabs tuner 1 and 2 for something, and then server B needs to access the tuner, is either (or both) sides smart enough to have server B utilize tuner 3?

Again, this is not for a longterm setup, just during the transition between the 2 servers.

#2

What you would want to do is migrate everything to the new server, turn off bonjour discovery and remote dvr on the old server.

As for tuner allocation, they will absolutely conflict with regards to recording if you dont' have enough tuners. You could just slowly remove passes on the old server till you're happy with it.

What I would do is just do a full migration, check to make sure the clients are all using it correctly, and disable the old server by unchecking the DVR button in the web admin settings.

If you need to roll back to the old server, just migrate back to it using the same method you did to migrate to the new server.

#3

Thanks for the outline, will be good during the final implementation and moving the data over.

For the tuners, I have a duo and quattro, and only ever use 1 tuner at a time on the duo and 2 on the quattro (and only for recordings) so it sounds like if I am not hitting the max on either they will be fine, right?

The issue is I know I will need to run them side-by-side. I am on-call for work 24/7 so I run the risk of getting halfway through setting up or testing things on the new server, and then might not be able to sit back down and work on it for another week or 2, so I can't have the old install down during that time.

#4

The only part of migration that is time consuming is copying the recordings. Instead of copying them, share the folder they are in and point the new server to the share. This migration will take about 15 minutes. Once the new server is up start a copy from the share to the new storage. Once that completes, change the new server to point to the new storage. Do a second copy that skips anything that is already there and you are done.

If your storage is on a NAS or network share, then migrations are super easy.