10 or more stations/streams from 1 PC

Hello,

I have found a solution how to run multiple stations on 1 computer but I'm interested has anyone tried to run 10, 15, 20 or 25 stations with RadioBOSS combined with Stereotool on one PC and what were specs of that PC. Especially interests me how would RadioBOSS behave in case of running 30 instances. Asking 'cause I have possible business that requires 17 stations on start and number of stations would be raising in time to 30 stations so any information would be very helpfull.
At the moment I have a bit older Dell PC with i7-3930K, 64GB RAM, 4 x 2 TB disks in RAID 5 and Windows Server 2016 for testing purposes of the solution I'll decide to go with.
I'm looking at several solutions (SAM broadcast, RadioDJ...) but RadioBOSS seems the simpliest of them all.

Thnx in advance for any help/answer!
 
tvrdko.stojkovic said:
Especially interests me how would RadioBOSS behave in case of running 30 instances.
All running RadioBOSS instances are independent from each other, so you only need to worry about performance issues, mostly CPU and disk drive.

tvrdko.stojkovic said:
Dell PC with i7-3930K, 64GB RAM, 4 x 2 TB disks in RAID 5 and Windows Server 2016
There should be no problems running up to 50 instances of RadioBOSS with this setup, provided that each of them encodes and sends one-two network streams and does not utilize any 3rd party processing like StereoTool.

If you add StereoTool, then it's up to how you configure it - the CPU usage will be different depending on what StereoTool features you enable. I think it should be OK to run 30 stations if you don't enable anything heavy in StereoTool.

You should also consider disabling any unneeded Windows services to release more CPU power for all those running instances.

If some of the stations do not require StereoTool you can consider freeing up some resources by using RadioBOSS Cloud: https://www.radioboss.fm
It runs on high performance servers with quality bandwidth.
 
Thanks for reply.
In the meantime, for testing purposes I have set up remote desktop connection, installed 25 instances of RadioBOSS + StereoTool on mentioned PC, set up stream for each installation and let them play. Average CPU usage was 40% (less than 2% per RB instance) and RAM usage was 12%.
First connection thru RDC to PC made me scratch my head. CPU jumped from 40% to 95% and after few seconds RB's started crashing. Found that Desktop Window Manager jumped to 50% and caused RB's crashing.
Disabled all of the visual effects, restarted machine, started all of 25 RB's and disconnected from PC.
From this point on DWM was sitting peacefully at 0,1% to 1% CPU usage and 30MB RAM usage.
Second connection went OK (but still CPU jumped from 40% to 94% for a second), disconnect, connect again after 5 minutes and then hell opened up. 5 instances of RB went to 15%, few of them went near 10% and they all started crashing again with in log visible drops of connection to stream server.
Restarted PC, disabled some not needed services, restarted PC again, run all RBs, connect, CPU jumped from 40% to 93%, some RBs showed window saying "The application seems to be frozen", but some of them crashed and restarted and some of them continued playing with no visible connection drop.
I have set this up for simulation purposes to see will RadioBOSS fill my requirements. This kind of behavior is not acceptable as this possible business requires connecting to server on daily basis, even few times during the day, depending on customer requirements.
Later I'll send bug report from one RB instance so you could check out what is happening.
 
You can create multiple users on a server and run 1-2 instances of RB under each to avoid problems with RDP connection.
 
Hmmmm, that haven't crossed my mind...thanks, I'll try that.
In the mean time, in attachment you'll find bugreport.

EDIT: Just remembered, it won't work, CPU usage jumps to 20% when more than one account is in session.
 

Attachments

  • bugreport_20181206-131352.txt
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tvrdko.stojkovic said:
EDIT: Just remembered, it won't work, CPU usage jumps to 20% when more than one account is in session.
Yes, the problem indeed exists. When you connect with RDP, it causes all window handles to be recreated, causing lots of code to run to handle those re-creations. This causes peak CPU load as you have lots of RB instances running. The core of this problem is deep, and it's not even in RadioBOSS itself, but in the framework it uses (Delphi VCL). So the only real solution for this problem is to use different user accounts, thus avoiding mass window recreation when you connect using RDP.
 
Thanks for swift reply.
In  meantime I have tried with up to 20 instances in steps of 5, all the way up to 20 works fine, but with 25 instances everything crashes.
I'll try to find some solution for this situation, get back here if I'll resolve it.

Once again, big thanks for the help!  ;)  :D
 
tvrdko.stojkovic said:
In  meantime I have tried with up to 20 instances in steps of 5, all the way up to 20 works fine, but with 25 instances everything crashes.
I'll try to find some solution for this situation, get back here if I'll resolve it.
In this case, I'd recommend using three user accounts and run 10-15 instances under each - to make sure it's safe and is well under the limit when the problems arise.

tvrdko.stojkovic said:
but with 25 instances everything crashes.
It doesn't crash, actually. As CPU is overloaded temporarily, the processes for each instance become very slow and this triggers freeze detection in RadioBOSS - that's what the bug report you've sent earlier is about.
 
djsoft said:
In this case, I'd recommend using three user accounts and run 10-15 instances under each - to make sure it's safe and is well under the limit when the problems arise.

You were right, 3 accounts and 2 x 10 and 1 x 5 RB per account instances solved most of the problem.
With Stereotool custom light preset average CPU usage is 40% and RAM 12%.

djsoft said:
It doesn't crash, actually. As CPU is overloaded temporarily, the processes for each instance become very slow and this triggers freeze detection in RadioBOSS - that's what the bug report you've sent earlier is about.

One little thing still remains but it's not up to RB, at the moment of RDP connection CPU usage jumps to 100% but it's just a short spike that doesn't affect any of RB's instances.

Anyway, thanks again for suggestions and help!
 
tvrdko.stojkovic said:
One little thing still remains but it's not up to RB, at the moment of RDP connection CPU usage jumps to 100% but it's just a short spike that doesn't affect any of RB's instances.
Yes, we can't do anything about it from within RadioBOSS as it's Windows that uses the CPU. It can possibly affect RadioBOSS if you connect to RDP when playing track ends - this can delay the next track start a bit
 
Hi there,
I installed RadioBoss 2x on Windows 10, but the individual instances are not opened separately. Even if I go to the installation folder and open the individual installation from the respective folder, it does not work.
 
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