So I’m about to upgrade my NAS and looking for recommendations.
I was going to go for the DS1815+ from synology, but with the car crash PMS post v0.9.6.16 I’m beginning to question this decision. Plex blame synology for breaking post v1 PMS, yet pre v1 PMS still works so surely Plex could fix if they wanted. Synology still haven’t updated DSM to unbreak the changes so is the love affair between plex and synology over?
So are there any other recommendations that work flawlessly with the current PMS?
CPU power isn’t a huge issue as I have a bit for bit rip of blurays for local play on OpenPHT on a mac-min (direct play) and then 4.5Mbps handbraked MP4 versions for wifi streaming to my other TVs and remote viewing.
As the title says, I’m looking for an 8 bay solution.
Thanks
Why don’t you use Mac as PMS and let NAS be just a NAS?
@Bartlomiej Baraniec said:
Why don’t you use Mac as PMS and let NAS be just a NAS?
It is something I’m considering… I’d prefer to keep the PMS away from the mac though as I don’t want to open up port forwarding to the mac. I’d prefer to keep the open ports just to the NAS which solely has media on it.
I would be more concern with forwarding ports to NAS 
Plex can run on non admin user with read access only to media shares. I’m not trying to convince you but Mini has so much more horse power then NAS.
I’ve actually got two mini’s. One is a dual core i5 2.3ghz, 8gb ram, the other a quad core i7 2.3ghz with 16gb ram.
I’d love to be able to ditch the 4.5Mb copies and let the PMS transcode the mkvs, but the mkvs are full bitrate so 35mbps or even higher at peak scenes. I’d need to be able to transcode at least 2 but potentially a 3rd. I’m not sure many cpus would be able to do all that hence the 4.5mb versions.
Even if I do go mac-mini for the pms, the question still stands as to which would be a good 8 bay NAS. I know some will say ‘build your own’ but I’d prefer an OOTB solution really.
What’s the issue with port forward to a NAS over mini?
The i7 one has 3615QM right? That’s over 7k passmark it should be able to handle 3 transcodes.
My choice of NAS would be Synology. I like the design in both hardware and software. I had ReadyNas and after few years it felt like Netgear forgot about older devices. I don’t have any opinion about QNAP I just don’t like their design.
90% of my friends who have NAS they have Synology.
My Plex runs on MacMini with very limited access to media and other local devices. NAS on the other hand would also store my private data, docs, pictures what not. It’s just me, I don’t have any ftp, webdavs, ssh, own clouds, quick connect or you name it to NAS from outside and Plex can only read media.
I’m not a fan of running PMS on an off-the-shelf NAS appliance. Keep the PMS server (Mac) separate from the NAS, or build your own NAS like I did. You could do something like I did with FreeNAS and have a box with 8+ bays (and if size isn’t an issue, you could go with a regular ATX motherboard which gives you more flexibility and options). I wanted something small however.
