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Author Topic: How much RAM does MC use as a pure server?  (Read 771 times)

mattkhan

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How much RAM does MC use as a pure server?
« on: January 01, 2022, 06:26:19 am »

I'm thinking of moving my library server to a Windows VM, it would not be used to actually play media as I'd rely on the "Play local file if one matches" option to play files directly instead. It means there would be v little user interaction with the server itself as the clients would handle the load. Any ideas on how much RAM does MC use in such a setup? I'm thinking it will be driven by auto import & audio analysis which suggests not that much.
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mattkhan

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Re: How much RAM does MC use as a pure server?
« Reply #1 on: January 01, 2022, 06:30:12 am »

btw the reason I was thinking of doing this is to let the main HTPC (which currently hosts the server) sleep when not in use and hence reduce power consumption. As far as I'm aware letting a server sleep is still a bad idea because clients only wake the server when they initially connect, it's a longstanding issue but I haven't noticed any change to address this.
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JimH

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Re: How much RAM does MC use as a pure server?
« Reply #2 on: January 01, 2022, 10:15:11 am »

Do a Google search for Wake on Lan JRiver.

Wake on Lan is tricky to set up.
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mwillems

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Re: How much RAM does MC use as a pure server?
« Reply #3 on: January 01, 2022, 12:18:56 pm »

So I've got mediacenter running on a headless linux VM that isn't used for playback at all, just as a server (for similar reasons).  It runs on debian with xfce4 installed.   

MC itself is using about 4G of ram right now, but almost all of that is cached/buffered memory that MC will yield back if asked (i.e. optional, not necessary).  The current "hard" RAM usage for MC on my system is about 200MB of memory, but that increases during transcoding which may or may not be in the mix for your setup.  I've run this VM with 4G total RAM and it worked just fine, but performance suffered a bit.  Obviously MC can run on older raspberry pis that only have 1G RAM total, so it's absolute "needs" are relatively small.  I'm currently running at 8G RAM, and that seems to be plenty for my uses (mostly as a library server, but some TV recording and light transcoding).

I can't say how much RAM you'd need in a windows VM, but thought this might be a useful data point.
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mattkhan

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Re: How much RAM does MC use as a pure server?
« Reply #4 on: January 01, 2022, 01:12:12 pm »

Do a Google search for Wake on Lan JRiver.

Wake on Lan is tricky to set up.
it's not a WOL problem, that works fine

the specific case I'm referring to is this one -> https://yabb.jriver.com/interact/index.php?topic=109823.0

the same problem affects jremote & the user experience during this is v poor. It would be marvellous if this behaviour were changed so that a client is aware of the health of it's server and could handle the server sleep issue. Conceptually the problem seems really quite simple to solve (client maintains awareness of server health/state, if playback request made then send WOL to wake server if it's down, if server no wake up in x seconds then show error to user along the lines of "server disconnected") but obviously I can't say why it's hard to implement.



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mattkhan

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Re: How much RAM does MC use as a pure server?
« Reply #5 on: January 01, 2022, 01:12:34 pm »

I can't say how much RAM you'd need in a windows VM, but thought this might be a useful data point.
thanks, that's really useful
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