Hello everyone, I would like to build a new server and I have a lack of knowledge in the area. I would like a server capable of having 7 or 8 simultaneous users. After reading a lot on different forums, I hesitate between 2 systems. Which do you think is the best and do you think there are things you need to correct or add? Thanks a lot for your help.!
Wow, your choices make my hardware to be quite minimal.
What I have used:
Nvidia Shield: did well for a couple of roku players.
Gen 4 i7 Low Power mini-itx: Worked very well, this was run inside a virtualbox vm hosted by Windows. Had to move on to another pc.
Dell optiplex 755 w/ E6550: Did very well, despite having drives connected via USB 2.0 using SATA adapters. At one point, we had 3 ROKU, 2 portable devices (Plex App) and no problems.
Lenovo T410 w/ i3 M540: Also did very well, drives connected to USB 2.0 via SATA Adapters. Processor load hit 55% once during a birthday celebration. 3 Sources of music being streamed, 2 videos playing back for kiddos (Roku), another movie playing on projector (Roku), and 2 friends were streaming remotely.
Lenovo T410 w/ i3 M540: Same laptop, but had to replace drives. Now going direct to eSATA. Still in process of configuration.
Your hardware is WAY over the top for streaming videos. Seriously over the top. But, where it will begin to shine is if / when you start needing to transcode streams on the fly ie remote connections. Use DirectPlay whenever possible, stay away from FireSticks as playback devices. I prefer Roku, no problems with them whatsoever.
I don’t do any kind of transcode at all, at least not on the server side. There may be some on client side, but I am not even sure about that. The only content complaints that I have received is that it is hard to find something good to watch when scrolling through a library of 2000+ titles.
With the exception of the 55% processor load mentioned above, processor usage usually stayed right around 5-8%. None of my systems have more than 8GB memory, the Dell Optiplex was running on 4GB.
I will throw this caution at you: Make damn sure that your drives are NOT SHINGLED! At least not for the drives that are written / read from frequentyly. Drives that are archive only will do fine, but read / write causes some serious performance issues. I use Seagate IronWolf now, and performance is without comparison much better than the WD Reds I was using prior.
Oh, and I was using OpenMediaVault for OS / NAS. Based on Debian Linux. Resources are miniscule compared to Windows Whatever. I prefer to install Plex NOT as a docker / portainer. OMV does not require a videocard, it is actually recommended to run it without a Xserver / display.
Thank you very much for your reply, in your opinion should i choose the quadro p-2000 or the gtx-1080? Thank you also for the choice of hard drive, I thought to buy WD Red but with your review I will opt for the seagate. Regarding the OS, I don’t know much about linux but I’ll read more about it… I also thought about trying Unraid … I’m still thinking
If I remember correctly WD replaced all Red drives with a capacity of 6TB or below with SMR drives. You definily don’t want them. I am using WD Red since ages and never had any performance issues with the CMR drives,
The absence of a nic in your system 2 part list gives the impression that the mobo already commes with a 10Gbps nic onboard, doesn’t it?
Honestly, for me, the GPU doesn’t matter at all. My PMS sits on a shelf, and doesn’t even have a monitor attached. But, this is a dedicated appliance. It doesn’t need a monitor, keyboard, or even a mouse.
I would suggest that you try OpenMediaVault on a spare hard drive that you have laying around. Its relatively a straight forward install, though there is a bit of a learning curve. But, you will find all you need in forums and from others that have already blazed the trail ahead of you. Even better if you have an old(er) laptop to throw this on. My T410 are using 1st generation I3, and does wonderfully. But, I do have to leave the display open… OMV is configured via web browser, so you will need another computer to do that, or large tablet.
I did not intend to endorse any particular brand / model of anything, just pointing out that my hardware was OLD and still did quite well. As far as the hard drives go, There is a big falling out in the industry about the manufacturers using shingled drives and not advising consumer. WD Black were intended for Enterprise RAID, were shingled, and fail miserably and catastrophically. Do your due diligence. I have seen some Hitachi SAS drives that are wicked fast, not shingled, very cheap, but are SAS. IronWolf is the only model off the top of my head that is a straight up CMR (Not Shingled), high capacity, good reliability, but can be noisy, but not any louder than the cooling fan on the power supply.
If your library is less than a TB, I would just drop in a M2 or SSD 1TB drive and save everything to it. Make it a dedicated drive. Writing to the drive and reading many does very little to wearing out the cells. Reading / Writing hastens the wear and tear, but you are still talking about years. I use IronWolf 6TB drives (2 of them) because they were $130 ea at online store, and have a great track record. Did I mention they are not shingled?
If I may add here?
There will be some very valid suggestions and choices / options presented.
One thing you really should do, as far as your choice of OS is concerned…
Go with what you know.
It’s hard enough to manage everything in-flight with a new server. IMHO, and I think others will agree, you don’t need the added headache of learning and mastering a new OS.
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If you are solely running Plex Media Server, an HP 290 is all you need if you are able to use external storage. I have a NAS set up with 24 bays and simply set up a network share for Plex. Then on the HP 290, I have added more RAM to the stock config, have it run Ubuntu Linux and Plex. Plex uses the network share for all of my media, but I can handle quite a few connections with QuickSync (hardware encoding) turned on.
There’s a good thread about this particular (wonderful) machine here: https://forums.serverbuilds.net/t/official-hp-290-p0043w-owners-thread/2829
There’s also a good overview of hardware transcoding here: https://forums.serverbuilds.net/t/guide-hardware-transcoding-the-jdm-way-quicksync-and-nvenc/1408/3
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I will be looking at those platforms for my next victim. Just learned not to keep a T410 in a cabinet that gets warm from the sun… and the 7200rpm 6TB Ironwolf drive located next to it.
Turning up an old(er) Asus Q87T mini-ITX and though it has nearly everything that I want, it won’t run direct from a 12v supply. It needs 19. Using a 12 > 19v laptop adapter in meantime.
Are these HP290 upgradeable as far as processors / memory? LowPro PCIe?
I run Plex on my old desktop, now repurposed. It is much like you #2 above. The CPU has 8 cores and can easy transcode but I take all my media (mostly from HDHomeruns) and have them transcode for me. Once in place I make them all h264/ac3, because that is what most player do not need transcoded.
Now do I need all that CPU? No, in fact I throttle them down regularly. But it was old hardware I repurposed.
I took the internal SATA ports and redirect them to a SATA to eSATA bracket (it is not even a card). Connected to that are two external RAID arrays with 16 TB (R5 WD Red 4TB disks) and 1TB (R1+0, WB Red 500G disks). I also have an NVMe drive I use for downloading and transcoding (when I have to). The media is all on that R5 array, the Library is all on that R10 array.
Other than that riser card I did not get any additional hardware. Well other than throw and old Rage3 card into it for a console. It does not do any hardware acceleration. It runs no graphics display. It only has a console which I use only when there is an issue. Other than that I SSH into the thing to check it out.
About the only thing I would suggest is to check out docker and make a docker compose. Then back that up and the only thing you really need to restore is run docker compose and go get something to drink.
I was using an old desktop as server (Intel Quad Core Q6600, 4GB RAM, Gbit network, no GPU coding), but I had plenty of problems when transcoding. for friends outside my home. So I updated the computer with an aliexpress combo of Xeon E5-2690 processor (passmark 10000, 8 cores, 16 threads), motherboard X79 and Chinese low end NVME. I reused 8GB non-ECC RAM, old graphics card, cooler and PSU. Cost: 130€. It works extremely well and can handle several concurrent transcodings. No problem in home use, transcoding 4K movies to 1080p, and external connections have also improved, although I have not made complete tests.
I think Aliexpress combos are a cheap but powerful alternative for transcoding hardware. I am thinking of a second hand GPU for hardware transcoding.
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