I am looking for recommendations on the best NAS device to host my Plex Media Server. While the Compatibility List is quite extensive, it does not include many NAS devices including those by Ugreen. It is also difficult to determine which devices are most optimal for implementing a full-function Media Server.
Really appreciate any help or advice. THANK YOU!
The NAS compatibility spreadsheet lists NAS that run Plex natively.
For other NAS, such as Ugreen, you can run Plex using Docker or a VM. There are way to many such devices for Plex to try to test and list their capabilities. In general, running Plex on such a device would have the same capabilities as running Plex on a Linux system with the same CPU.
Define what you mean by a “full-function Media Server.”
Plex Media Server can run on a Raspberry Pi and on a 60 core Xeon CPU. Hard to make any recommendations without knowing what you are trying to accomplish.
Thank you for the information. I posted my question before realizing there are already some answers in other blogs. What I found out is:
Ugreen is not on the compatibility list because it is not supported by Plex. Although it can be configured to run Plex, I would rather have Plex run natively.
It appears the two best options are Synology and QNAP.
As a result of the above, I have now turned my attention to the QNAP TVS-h674-i5-32G-US 6 Bay High-Speed Desktop NAS. I like having the 6 bays for expansion, plus it appears this NAS supports both software and hardware accelerated transcoding.
My application is fairly modest - I have about 1,000 VHS, DVD, and BluRay movies I am in the process of ripping using MakeMKV. Plus I have very large music and photo libraries that I want to host on the NAS. Although the majority of access will be within my home network (just upgraded to eero Pro 6e), there will be some remote users.
PERSONALLY, I prefer using a host server like Windows that can be upgraded with a new GPU, or faster processor while keeping ALL media on a separate NAS that prioritizes storage, expansion and expandability using additional HDD expansion units.
That setup has served me very well and has allowed be to make several/maybe smaller upgrades over time (about 10 years) they are affordable and can mostly be accomplished in a few hours.
I personally don’t have the funds to upgrade an entire NAS just to get AV1 or other modern codes support, etc.
My Synology NAS 1800 series has dual expansion units along with a Ryzen 7700X and Intel ARC A380 on Windows has servers me well – my Windows setup started as a mini-itx Ryzen 2000 API and is now an. E-ATX with 96GB of RAM of which 64GB is dedicated to Plex’s transcoding cache.
Using Windows has also allowed me to use standard inexpensive tools to make regular backups of my Plex data SSD to a second SSD (actually, it’s two smaller SSD’s using DrivePool to make them appear as a single drive).
I’m not saying similar things can’t be done on a NAS, but it’s too big of a learning curve for me and I would certainly not been able to upgrade of I had to spend $2000 every time I needed a GPU replacement/upgrade.
That’s my 2 cents. I hope it helped more than confused you.
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