Squeezecenter performance on Bubba Two?

[zagrad]

Hi people,

Today I have been reading a lot about home servers, NAS and mini pc's. I am looking for a system I can run Linux on to play with it and run a webserver on it. Also I want to use it as a file storage / backup and especially run SqueezeCenter on it.

Now Bubba Two seems to be capable of all that and I am really about to buy one. Some of the specs made me doubt a lot though. The Bubba Two only has got a 333 Mhz processor and 256 MB of RAM. I doubt if that is enough for running squeezecenter very well.
Now I have been searching the internet for performance tests, but there doesn't seem to be a lot of that...

I am actually trying to choose between the Bubba Two and the Synology Diskstation DS109 (1,2Ghz, 128MB). The Bubba Two really has my preference, for it has everything I need. I am actually very happy about the open Linux system it is running with root access!!

I have to be convinceded of it's performce first though, so can someone do that?
What I really want to know:
- How does Squeezecenter perform on the Bubba Two?
- How does it handle really big audio libraries?
- Can someone please do some performance test like this one (which was done on the first Bubba device): http://forum.excito.net/viewtopic.php?p=3610#p3175
Does it still take so much time to index the audio library, or to do a search on it?

Also: is the Bubba Two capable of running a webserver (not very active), torrent client (downloading and uploading), squeezecenter and mail server all at the same time? Will it slow down a lot - like annoyingly lot - or does it still perform well?

I hope this post will not be deleted (since I'm also talking about a possible concurrent device), but I am seriously interested in the Bubba Two.

Thanks in advance,
Paul

[asparak]

Hi people,

Today I have been reading a lot about home servers, NAS and mini pc's. I am looking for a system I can run Linux on to play with it and run a webserver on it. Also I want to use it as a file storage / backup and especially run SqueezeCenter on it.

Now Bubba Two seems to be capable of all that and I am really about to buy one. Some of the specs made me doubt a lot though. The Bubba Two only has got a 333 Mhz processor and 256 MB of RAM. I doubt if that is enough for running squeezecenter very well.
Now I have been searching the internet for performance tests, but there doesn't seem to be a lot of that...

I am actually trying to choose between the Bubba Two and the Synology Diskstation DS109 (1,2Ghz, 128MB). The Bubba Two really has my preference, for it has everything I need. I am actually very happy about the open Linux system it is running with root access!!

I have to be convinceded of it's performce first though, so can someone do that?
What I really want to know:
- How does Squeezecenter perform on the Bubba Two?
- How does it handle really big audio libraries?
- Can someone please do some performance test like this one (which was done on the first Bubba device): http://forum.excito.net/viewtopic.php?p=3610#p3175
Does it still take so much time to index the audio library, or to do a search on it?

Also: is the Bubba Two capable of running a webserver (not very active), torrent client (downloading and uploading), squeezecenter and mail server all at the same time? Will it slow down a lot - like annoyingly lot - or does it still perform well?

I hope this post will not be deleted (since I'm also talking about a possible concurrent device), but I am seriously interested in the Bubba Two.

Thanks in advance,
Paul

Hi Paul,

Can't give you benchmarks, but will try to run some when I'm home tomorrow. Bubba runs all of those at my house, plus acts as network firewall/SAMBA server and is perfectly fine. Web server runs seamlessly and I'm serving several chunks of php to a selected audience and a mail server fetching mail from 2 accounts. Bearing in mind it is only a small-ish ppc processor and 256MB ram, you are not going to get sub second responses which seem to be expected from computers today. it is a fantastic piece of kit and I have just had a second one delivered. Yes, you sometimes have to wait for horde to re-index the mail lists, yes a search of the media library can take a few seconds, but this isn't a dual-core x86 box with gigs of ram, it is a low power consumption server, which is saving me about 20 GBP per month in electric. Network throughput is perfectly acceptable for myself and my two sons, playing online games, while my wife surfs the web or does her internet shopping. Not sure if anyone else is noticing it, but the new 1.2.0 software release is also showing a noticeable performance increase in the things that I do on a daily basis.

Provided you are prepared to cut it some slack and set your expectations realistically to its hardware capabilities, I would be surprised if you were badly disappointed by it

[zagrad]

Thanks for your reply Asparak.

I must admit that I have only read positive reviews untill now from people who own one of these, so I don't expect it to be a disapointment. But ofcourse it all is a bit of what you are used to.
In the forum post I linked to (http://forum.excito.net/viewtopic.php?p=3610#p3175) the guy is talking about an indexing time of 9 hours (!!) and making a search on his library is taking minutes. I do not want a device that is so slow. Now I know that this is about the Bubba one, which I think wasn't even meant to be used for squeezecenter. But that's why I would like some benchmarks before I truly trust this one and before bying it.

Also you say that "if you are prepared to cut it some slack and set your expectations realistically to its hardware capabilities ... ". As I stated in my first post there are comparable devices on the market with a much faster processor. Even there is the option of building my own little server (which I will not do though). Just to state out that there's other options too. In fact, I think the only real advantage of the Bubba Two in comparison to concurrent devices is that it is meant to be a little more than just a simple NAS (since it has SSH access and all that). But that is just as far as my technical vision goes; there's probably more to it

I'm really looking forward to your benchmark!

[asparak]

Thanks for your reply Asparak.

I must admit that I have only read positive reviews untill now from people who own one of these, so I don't expect it to be a disapointment. But ofcourse it all is a bit of what you are used to.
In the forum post I linked to (http://forum.excito.net/viewtopic.php?p=3610#p3175) the guy is talking about an indexing time of 9 hours (!!) and making a search on his library is taking minutes. I do not want a device that is so slow. Now I know that this is about the Bubba one, which I think wasn't even meant to be used for squeezecenter. But that's why I would like some benchmarks before I truly trust this one and before bying it.

Also you say that "if you are prepared to cut it some slack and set your expectations realistically to its hardware capabilities ... ". As I stated in my first post there are comparable devices on the market with a much faster processor. Even there is the option of building my own little server (which I will not do though). Just to state out that there's other options too. In fact, I think the only real advantage of the Bubba Two in comparison to concurrent devices is that it is meant to be a little more than just a simple NAS (since it has SSH access and all that). But that is just as far as my technical vision goes; there's probably more to it

I'm really looking forward to your benchmark!

Hi there,

As you say, its all what you are used to. The Synology was also on our list of systems to look at, when we were choosing a new server, but I rejected it, because it consumes twice as much power, has only a single Ethernet port and appears to be essentially a NAS with some capabilities added on, rather than a proper server, plus it has a ambient noise factor of at least 25db, where as the only sound you hear from the Bubba is the disk spinning occasionally and thats only if you listen very closely. It was quite spooky the day I turned the old RAID server off. I'd got so used to all the fans, that the quiet was disturbing for a while It also doesn't seem to come with a drive installed as standard, that is an extra cost from most vendors.

128MB of RAM worrries me as well. Seems way too low for what they are saying it can do and I would expect the disk to be thrashing quite regularly.

I suppose it all comes down to what you need from any particular solution in the end. I'll try to do those benchmarks for you tomorrow.

[zagrad]

... the Synology has only a single Ethernet port ...

Oh indeed I didn't even see that.

... It also doesn't seem to come with a drive installed as standard, that is an extra cost from most vendors. ...

Actually buying the harddisk via Excito isn't cheap neither. Allthough... it depends on which disks they're actually using. The 1000 GB HD costs 105 Euro incl. VAT in the Excito shop.
The 1000GB Western Digital WD10EADS costs 76 Euro on wifimedia.eu
The 1000GB Western Digital WD1000FYPS RE2-GP 24x7 on the other hand costs 127 Euro on wifimedia.eu

I'm actually quite curious now which disk Excito puts in the Bubba Two as well (but maybe I can find that somewhere else on this forum; I'll look for it).

[asparak]

80 GB: Seagate Barracuda / Maxtor Diamondmax. Decent noise levels and very good price.

500 GB and 1 TB: Western Digital Green Power disks. Excellent noise level, very low power and decent price.

SSD: 32 GB Patriot Warp. They have good test results and excellent reliability. No moving parts makes Bubba Two with SSD completely silent.

[zagrad]

500 GB and 1 TB: Western Digital Green Power disks. Excellent noise level, very low power and decent price.

Thanks, I've seen that information already, but doesn't state which kind of Green Power disks though.
The disks I posted (1000GB Western Digital WD10EADS and 1000GB Western Digital WD1000FYPS RE2-GP 24x7) are both Green Power disks, but the second one should be specially designed for being active 24/7 because it has extra good parts inside. That's why there's a price difference of 50 euro's between the two and that's why I was curious which one of those two is in the Bubba Two.

If it's the first one then it's expensive and I'll buy the 24/7 disk seperately. If it's the second one then it's cheap and I'll buy the Bubba Two (if I buy it) along with the disk.