I’ve been frequently visiting the Plex Cloud forums section recently, as I was one of the Plex Server users who “jumped head first” into the Plex Cloud Beta experience. Prior to the Plex Cloud Server switch, I was running a server on an iMac that included an i7 processor and 16GB of RAM. So, for the long-period of time I ran the server on this machine, everything worked out pretty well.
Needless to say, the iMac died and I didn’t have the money to repair it. I attempted to create a new server on my main ASUS laptop (i7/16GB RAM as well), but due to the amount of Plex Friends utilizing the server, along with the constant daily use of the laptop, the experience went downhill A LOT from the iMac that was used ONLY for hosting my server.
Once the iMac was gone and I began to give up on the ASUS Plex Server / running out of local external storage, I stumbled upon the Beta release of Plex Cloud. After reading over the specifications of the Cloud server, I moved forward with a $125/month Dropbox Business service and began transferring all of my media to the cloud. As I began transferring to a cloud service that provided unlimited storage, I also began gathering earlier seasons of TV shows / full TV Series I removed in the past to conserve space on my limited external drives. At the moment, I have a total of 26TBs on my Dropbox server and with the decreasing support/reliability of Plex Cloud, I’m becoming very fearful that a new alternative is in my future whether I want there to be or not! What that alternative may be, I’m hoping it is the next AND LAST choice I need to make…
So, with all of that said, I really need a permanent solution to my Plex Media Server needs. I am far from rich but I am able to survive. So, monthly payment(s) of services are something I can handle (especially if it is replacing the $125/month I pay to Dropbox) but spending $1000s & $1000s in 1 purchase on a dedicated local server isn’t something I can afford with the other “debts of life” I’m attempting to maintain.
I stumbled upon a tutorial, http://forums.plex.tv/discussion/262896/plex-cloud-vs-vps-why-we-went-with-a-vps/p1, and I was very intrigued by the read. I reached out to the author of the forums post / full tutorial and they portrayed hesitation in this solution, based on my needs (listed below). So, the main point of all of this is … I’m becoming very discouraged that I will ever find a solution to my Plex Server needs (unless I hit the lottery). If anyone could help me in this dilemma, it would be TRULY TRULY appreciated, as prior to all of there changes I’ve made, I was literally OBSESSED with maintaining my server and sharing it with my loved ones who couldn’t afford the typical fee-based services a majority of people pay for (including myself … damn Netflix)!
Plex Server Needs:
3-5 simultaneous transcodes with hopes of 10 max. (Currently sharing server with 10 Plex friends/family).
26 TBs of data (and growing).
1-2TBs of average monthly data via Sonarr. (this is an over-estimate, as a majority of data I require is up-to-date).
3a. Playing into how Sonarr functions, the ability to support data (quality upgrade) changes multiple times on a daily basis.
Well as I said in the PM - substitute Dropbox for Gsuite right NOW That’s $10/month you need to spend instead.
There, I just saved you $115 which can spend on a very high end dedicated server that can serve 10 transcodes easily.
For $30-$50 you can buy a dedicated server that will probably suffice for your current needs, then you can always upgrade when the need arises, these things are usually paid for by the month.
Alternatively, you can buy a $500 computer, set it up with Ubuntu and Rclone + Plexdrive and run your own personal VPS right from home
@HappyPig0 that response is the reason I ran with my tail between my legs years ago when I inquired about something similar to this a few years ago! LOL - Windows-compatible software is my expertise … and it’s definitely not building a tower and/or server from scratch. I would even know where to begin!!!
@per_PLEX_ed Believe me, ever since I received your response, it’s all that’s been on my mind. $115 a month save is something I really could use right now, especially if it’s going “to waste”. My knowledge of computers revolves around windows OS so investing in a system I don’t truly understand scares me at the moment. The “monthly payment” route that I can cancel at any point seems to be the safer option for me in my mind…
Focusing on the cloud service swap, transferring 26 TBs has me a little nervous. If I am to eventually cancel my Dropbox subscription, what do you believe is the fastest/easiest route to transfer 26TBs before cancelling? (I believe my renewal hits in 8 days :neutral: )
Once the cloud transfer is complete, what would you recommend on the “very high end dedicated server” that handles 10x transcodes?
I sent you a PM, but the easiest route to transfer between Dropbox and Gdrive is Rclone. Get yourself a real cheap unmetered VPS (I pm-ed you a suggestion of one I’m familiar with) and just wait it out until completed
@mBx.io you just need to invest a bit of time & follow some directions. If you already figured out how to set up Plex serving multiple remote uses & Sonarr sucking up 1TB shows per month then already you have the skills necessary. There are quite a few different ways of achieving your goal.
The really excellent tutorial by @per_PLEX_ed tells you all you need to know just follow the recipe book step by step.
If command line Linux admin really is too scary for you then take a look at https://plexguide.com which attempts to achieve the same aim but in an automated & menu driven way with very little Linux admin required.
If you want extra handholding you can rent a hosted Plex server from many different places. These have been around for years & historically you were limited to the locally attached storage on the VPS but it is normally easy to mount your Google Drive using rclone. Bytesized Hosting provide good priced powerful systems & have very good customer support. Most management is done through a web interface. https://bytesized-hosting.com/plans
Whatever solution you choose it is going to cost far less than the $115/month you are currently paying DropBox. The important thing is to sign up for G Suite for Business for $10/month & copy all your media to the unlimited Google Drive. Once there you can use any or all of the above solutions even simultaneously e.g. VPS, local server & hosted server.
As I’ve mentioned numerous times but never said enough …
Big shout-out to @per_PLEX_ed as well as @nigelpb & even @HappyPig0 for making me laugh (which is rare). All involved with responding to my inquiry is much appreciated! Although I am a fan of jumping into things with a paranoid “please do this for me” mindset, all involved helped keep me calm while making drastic changes to my media server setup! I will be experimenting with a few of the suggestions as I wait until my 80th birthday for 26TBs to transfer to my new G Suite purchase!
@“mBx.io” said:
I will be experimenting with a few of the suggestions as I wait until my 80th birthday for 26TBs to transfer to my new G Suite purchase!
When rclone still worked with Amazon Cloud Drive (& they offered unlimited storage) my relatively modest VPS was able to copy about 1TB per day between Google Drive & ACD so “Happy Birthday” for next month
@“mBx.io” said: @HappyPig0 that response is the reason I ran with my tail between my legs years ago when I inquired about something similar to this a few years ago! LOL - Windows-compatible software is my expertise … and it’s definitely not building a tower and/or server from scratch. I would even know where to begin!!!
@per_PLEX_ed Believe me, ever since I received your response, it’s all that’s been on my mind. $115 a month save is something I really could use right now, especially if it’s going “to waste”. My knowledge of computers revolves around windows OS so investing in a system I don’t truly understand scares me at the moment. The “monthly payment” route that I can cancel at any point seems to be the safer option for me in my mind…
Focusing on the cloud service swap, transferring 26 TBs has me a little nervous. If I am to eventually cancel my Dropbox subscription, what do you believe is the fastest/easiest route to transfer 26TBs before cancelling? (I believe my renewal hits in 8 days :neutral: )
Once the cloud transfer is complete, what would you recommend on the “very high end dedicated server” that handles 10x transcodes?
If your home upload speed is high enough to satisfy your sharing needs, what you could do is build or buy a local server that supports hardware transcoding (a Kaby lake i5 cpu with the hd630 integrated GPU would be sufficient) and mount your cloud storage directly on it. I use Google file stream because my files are all in GSuite.
This way you only pay 10$/monthly, the computer you need won’t cost much more than 500$ upfront and you’ll be good to go for a while. No more buying hard drives or replacing failing ones.
@KarlDag - sorry for the delayed follow-up to your response but I kind of disappeared to concentrate on getting my data off Dropbox and over to Goog .
As for my home speeds, I’m currently running on roughly 900/900mbps so the upload speed is definitely there. But, with my VERY little-to-none knowledge of Linux, I’d definitely have fears of f*****g up everything.
Bytesized appears to be highly recommended, but being on the US East Coast, I’m not sure a datacenter in NL would be the best.
@“mBx.io” said: @KarlDag - sorry for the delayed follow-up to your response but I kind of disappeared to concentrate on getting my data off Dropbox and over to Goog .
As for my home speeds, I’m currently running on roughly 900/900mbps so the upload speed is definitely there. But, with my VERY little-to-none knowledge of Linux, I’d definitely have fears of f*****g up everything.
Bytesized appears to be highly recommended, but being on the US East Coast, I’m not sure a datacenter in NL would be the best.
Why Linux? Im on windows 10, streaming files from Google drive (Gsuite) and living the dream. No need to use a VPS with a 900Mbps upload speed, IMO.
@KarlDag I’m assuming this same windows 10 machine is also what runs software list Sonarr/Transmission/SabNZBd/PIA ? Also, how many transcodes would a machine like this support?
Speaking of Sonarr (if used), how are you going about the unlimited data Gdrive + updating data quality)?
@“mBx.io” said: @KarlDag I’m assuming this same windows 10 machine is also what runs software list Sonarr/Transmission/SabNZBd/PIA ? Also, how many transcodes would a machine like this support?
Speaking of Sonarr (if used), how are you going about the unlimited data Gdrive + updating data quality)?
Number of transcodes varies a lot depending on codec, filw bitrate, output bitrate, etc. But I’d say if you’re going to use torrents, compressed h264 files probably more than 5, if you’re going to use HEVC 4k full bitrate BluRay rips, than probably 2 or 3…
Let’s just say I use an i5-7500 and since hardware transcoding was introduced I’ve never encountered a hiccup… But it’s used only for family and some friends.
When you mount Gsuite as remote storage (I use the Google file stream app, but most people use rclone mount or netdrive I think) it shows up just like a regular hard drive would… So you can point donate and other apps directly at it like you would point it at a local hard drives and whenever it downloads /upgrades a file it will upload it to Gsuite automatically.
@KarlDag I’ve been testing NetDrive for the past few days, but now I’m switching over to testing Google file stream. NetDrive seems to be a tad slow, so I’m hoping Google file stream is a bit quicker. If I do end up moving to GSuite I was planning to move all my files first, then once everything was copied I planned to change the Google file stream drive letter to my local that Plex is currently pointing at. The hope there is that Plex wouldn’t try and rescan and potentially mess up all of my modified posters, tags, and other metadata. I can’t see how to change the drive letter though and I can’t seem to hide Team Spaces so I can set up the path exactly like my local drive. Any tips on transitioning from local hard drives to cloud? I think I’m going to keep my local PMS, but just move the storage to the cloud. Just trying to figure out the least painless way to do that.
@mbarylski said: @KarlDag I’ve been testing NetDrive for the past few days, but now I’m switching over to testing Google file stream. NetDrive seems to be a tad slow, so I’m hoping Google file stream is a bit quicker. If I do end up moving to GSuite I was planning to move all my files first, then once everything was copied I planned to change the Google file stream drive letter to my local that Plex is currently pointing at. The hope there is that Plex wouldn’t try and rescan and potentially mess up all of my modified posters, tags, and other metadata. I can’t see how to change the drive letter though and I can’t seem to hide Team Spaces so I can set up the path exactly like my local drive. Any tips on transitioning from local hard drives to cloud? I think I’m going to keep my local PMS, but just move the storage to the cloud. Just trying to figure out the least painless way to do that.
What I did is move my files and ADD the new cloud location to my existing library. They were scanned as being the same files as I have locally so all metadata and other stuff stayed the same. From there I erased the local folders from my Plex libraries.
File stream worked well for me for a while then I started hitting hiccups… But found no other solution that worked - rclone, expandrive, oDrive, etc. All didn’t works so I think something wasn’t quite right about my server or my connection… I ended up cancelling Gsuite. Fast forward 2 months, I regret and am uploading again as we speak lol
Will also be using this mount point with emby, we’ll see how that goes.
@KarlDag Ah, ok. I like that solution better. Hope your experience is better this time. I might hold off until I hear yours is working well. What problems did you run into before?
@mbarylski said: @KarlDag Ah, ok. I like that solution better. Hope your experience is better this time. I might hold off until I hear yours is working well. What problems did you run into before?
It just wouldn’t stream anymore… At all… Maybe a few seconds but that was it. But folks using a VPS have had cloud storage mounted with rclone for months without issue, so problem must have been on my end.
That’s $10/month you need to spend instead.
What problems did you run into before?
What problems did you run into before?