Minimum hardware requirement for Vail (WHS 2011)'s transcoding feature?

[Sgt_Strider]

I remember reading that one of the advantages of WHS 2011 (Vail) is that it can transcode movies on the fly. Originally i wanted to build a file server with WHS 2011 and an AMD Fusion platform. I've been told that it's powerful enough to run WHS 2011 as a file server, but I get the feeling that it won't have enough power to transcode movies on the fly. Does anyone here know what the minimum requirement is to execute that task without dropping any frames?

 

[xnoodle]

The maximum CPU score required is approximately ~6.6 in order to be able to transcode to all possible targets (WMV or MPEG2 in various video frame rates and resolutions less than or equal to 720x480 ). However, a subscore of ~6.0 will transcode to all possible MPEG-2 targets.

But I also want to point out that there is a known issue with this prerelease of Vail Server - the server always assumes that it has the max CPU and offers all transcoding profiles to clients. If you try the same scenario with Win7 WMP12 you may notice that the Win7 Media Streaming host machine doesn't offer the transcoding profiles that require CPU more than machine CPU. We are working to fix this issue. If you have a server with very high CPU winsat score (say >6.4)then this issue shouldn't affect you in this prerelease. If your server's CPU is lower than that then you may see some glitches and buffers while streaming (if transcoding happens).

http://social.microsoft.com/Forums/en-US/whsvailbeta/thread/681ba9c1-1e3d-4154-8627-d6361cf0bf37


Also see http://www.wegotserved.com/2010/07/27/selecting-processor-windows-home-server-vail/ for a nice post by Patrick of servethehome(pjkenned on these forums)

 

[pjkenned]

I will be updating that once Windows Server 2011 RTM hits. The big thing here is that Microsoft has said no GPU acceleration so one ends up being CPU bound. The difference between working as a file server, and working for fast video transcoding is significant.