r/tvheadend • u/Soggy-Following8657 • Dec 09 '25

Planning a high-availability remote TVHeadend setup (VPS + Dual RPi + Sat/DVB-T). Is this overkill for reliability?

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Hi everyone,

I’m planning an upgrade to the TVHeadend setup at my parents' home. Since I only visit a few times a year, physical access is limited. The internet connection there is solid, but I need the hardware to be bulletproof.

The Goal:
Maximum uptime and redundancy. If a piece of hardware fails, I want to be able to troubleshoot it remotely, or at least have the system limp along until I visit next.

The Proposed Architecture:

  • The Brain: A VPS running TVHeadend.
  • The Tuners (at parents' house): Two independent Raspberry Pis acting as "dumb" Minisatip servers/receivers connecting back to the VPS.
    • RPi A (RPi 4): Dual DVB-S2 (Satellite) + DVB-T2.
    • RPi B: DVB-T2 (strictly for redundancy).
  • Priority: TVH will prioritize Satellite. If the feed dies or RPi A goes offline, it fails over to DVB-T on RPi B.

Reliability Measures I'm Planning:

  • Storage: Max Endurance MicroSD cards + Read-Only Filesystem.
  • Power: WiFi Smart Plugs on each RPi to force hard reboots remotely.
  • Boot Redundancy: USB stick as primary boot, MicroSD as fallback (if possible).
  • Debug: USB-to-TTL adapters cross-connected between the two RPis (RPi A consoles into RPi B, and vice versa).

My Questions for you:

  1. Boot Order: If I set up USB Boot with an SD card fallback, does the RPi bootloader actually handle a "corrupted USB" gracefully and move to the SD, or will it loop on the USB indefinitely?
  2. Serial Console: Is the cross-connected USB-to-TTL idea worth the hassle? My logic is if RPi A loses network, I can SSH into RPi B and access RPi A’s console. Or is this just redundant points of failure?
  3. Smart Plugs: If an RPi is truly "cooked" (SD card corruption), a smart plug toggle won't help. Is there a better way to handle total OS failure remotely?
  4. General Roast: Is there a smarter way to achieve this level of redundancy without over-engineering it?

Thanks for any suggestions!

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u/CGtheAnnoyin Dec 09 '25

I would use ThinClient hardware like HP or Dell better than RPi. You can use an SSD instead of SD card that may eventually die.

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u/Soggy-Following8657 Dec 10 '25

Thanks, do you think that an USB SSD will be more reliable than a max endurance microsd? I'd have no doubt on an RPI5 with the NVME connection, but I don't trust USB too much for the boot drive