Why would Twitch streamers need a $20,000 server?? N3RDFUSION Visit
Linus Tech Tips
·Linus Tech Tips
·2017-05-06
·
1,899 words · ~9 min read
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so we have learned a lot much of it by trial and error over the last couple of
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years about the better management of the Computing resources we have on hand
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we've explored different video encoding
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software Solutions we've looked at CPU encoding versus GPU encoding AMD versus
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NVIDIA for GPU encoding and we even lost
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almost all of our data in this video
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here when wanx server lost a raid card
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so we are finally ready to take our
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edication by fire on the road and the
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first stop is going to be our buddies at nerd Fusion down in Seattle where we
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will be dropping off this storinator
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server so let's get going then shall
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we tunnel bear is the simple VPN app
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that makes it easy to browse privately and enjoy a more open internet to try
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tunnel bear for free check out the link in the video
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description so we're here now this
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actually isn't the first trip that's been made on account of this project
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Matt seus zagurski from nerd Fusion
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actually made his way up to the Frozen North about a month ago to do a tag team
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build of the final config a pair of Intel Zeon E5 2697 V3 14 core processors
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so that's 20 8 Haswell cores
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total 128 gigs of ddr4 ECC quad Channel
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memory a super micro X10 Dr T dual
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socket motherboard with 10 GB networking on board and I'll explain why that's
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important a little bit further on and
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100 boy this thing is heavy 100
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terabytes worth of Seagate Enterprise storage with available expansion base
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for up to a few hundred terabytes more with new 10 TB helium drives thanks to
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this awesome storinator that our friends over at 45 drives whipped up for us can
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you guys actually help me with this thanks Matt so this is actually a
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customized version of their new storinator so it's got an extended ATX
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compartment instead of ATX thanks for holding that for me champ as well as
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their new switch to 92 mm fans in the
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front to make room for this LCD panel that lets you more easily diagnose
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failed drives the last big change is the fact that the front panel can be
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entirely toolless well it's okay toolless but screwdriver lless if you
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don't screw that in and all the drives can be installed and removed without any
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of that fancy bar holding down you know
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top plates thing it's all just like a friction mount now uh we should get this
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thing inside we should but if you guys find yourselves asking yourselves well
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what would a bunch of twitch streamers need with some kind of like uber Mega
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server you're probably not the only ones
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so I'm going to use this opportunity where we're hand delivering the server
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to walk through all of the different functions that this server is going to
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be performing here at the nerd Fusion headquarters thanks to the magic of
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unraid yes of course unrated is making another appearance in Linus's server
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video surprise surprise so first and
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foremost is the storage of archived
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twitch streams as some of you probably know twitch only allows even Partners to
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store their streams for about 60 days on
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the service before it is deleted permanently so this at 100 terabytes
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will be by far the largest storage server that they have in the building
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which shouldn't be that surprising giving the only other one that they have
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is there on that shelf and is awful and
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will allow them to store about one year
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of archived footage for easy access to
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everyone who works here I got to figure out how to get out of
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here yep that was easy gymnast so use
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case number two is really cool and far beyond what you'd be able to do with a
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typical Standalone NZ unit like we saw sitting in the closet they're going to
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fire up a Windows VM on the unraid server then they're going to load an
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application called wowza that is going to enable them to do a couple of
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different things first of all they will be able to save a 12 megabit full 1080p
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version of everything that they stream and because that's not really optimal
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for twitch they will be able to live transcode that incoming stream onto the
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server to 4 megabit 900p which is ideal
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for twitch this has a couple of effects number one is it gives them better
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quality footage to work with for vods or if they want to bring up a past
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broadcast for whatever reason during a live broadcast and number two is with a
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little more magic within wowza it would actually enable them to have an off
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platform an off twitch higher bit rate stream available for some of their
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biggest supporters that's something that is not happening yet but could be
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possible with this setup use case number two and this is actually really cool
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involves a second VM this time Linux running a program called fog it's a free
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open-source cloning utility and the point of it is that we're actually
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standing in one of their guest streaming rooms so whether it's a remote employee
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who's in town for a while or someone coming in to do a a collab stream from
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the office here the point of it is to be able to take these guest streaming PCS
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and quickly and easily back them up or restore them to a previous state so that
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you know Alex's passwords or applications or whatever else are wiped
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off this computer and it's ready to rock for the next person who needs to use it
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a second Linux VM is going to be set up as a dedicated Minecraft server just for
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the guys here within the office now they already have one but it's hosted at ovh
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up in Canada which is a couple of problems number one is there's distance
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which means things can go wrong with the link between here and there number two
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is that it costs money if they host it out of here for people playing locally
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then it doesn't cost any extra money other than this server that we're giving
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them anyway and number three is that having it here on site in a VM means
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that they can just allocate more CPU and GPU resource to it as as needed because
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as some of you will know Minecraft servers can be RAM and to a lesser
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extent CPU Hogs and let's face it if
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your Minecraft server isn't performing properly you could be having a worse
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gaming experience than if you were trying to game without
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Doritos these aren't Doritos these are
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Tostitos they're stale so a third VM and we didn't really
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have anything to illustrate this because it'll be a year before they actually
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need one of these uh because that server is so huge so a
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third VM is going to be responsible for taking the archived footage off of the
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hot storage and putting it into Cold Storage so they're actually going to be
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picking up an autoloading tape drive
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which will basically uh once footage reaches a certain age or the server
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reaches a certain amount of fullness it'll take any of the oldest footage
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dump it onto tape label it move it out
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of the way and insert a new tape into the tape drop
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Drive oh cool okay so the last thing
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they're going to be doing is replacing their current security system with like
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a 15 camera setup this will actually be a second Windows VM we're up to a total
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of five VMS that is going to enable them to do a couple of things so number one
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is running I think they were going to use something like ey spy or similar so
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they're going to be able to have all those cameras keeping an eye on the employees who are you know fooling
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around instead of working that's the idea right Matt yeah
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yep got it yep and second of all they've
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actually talked about experimenting at least maybe to try it once with having a
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fullon live stream of everything that's going on in the office a second use
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aside from the whole video encoding thing for the CPU power that our little
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server in the closet there brings to the table so I hope you guys enjoyed this
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little look at all the things our fancy little server is going to do and I guess
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uh sort of indirectly what actually goes into running a a Twitch streaming
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company something that I bet a lot of you did not even realize existed so let
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me know in the comments below if there are any other creators that you think
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would have use for even if it's just storage a server system like this and if
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woo so thanks for watching guys if you dislike this video you know what to do
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but if you liked it hit that like button get subscribed maybe even consider
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checking out the products that we featured today at Amazon at the link in
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the video description also in the video description we've got our merch store
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where you can buy cool shirts like this one as well as there's something else
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there right link to our community Forum which you should totally join now that
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you're done doing all that stuff you're probably wondering what to watch next don't miss the biggest lesson we learned
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about server stuff when we lost all of our data temporarily but uh maybe I
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shouldn't have spoiled it whatever there's a lot of suspense and you can
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check that video out here