Some days ago, I installed my new Synology NAS and moved the Plex Media Server from my Mac Mini Server to the NAS because I believe the server should run where the data is located (to prevent unnecessary network traffic, etc).
The only thing which does not work as good as it used to on the Mac Mini Server is the transcoding. I’m aware that the NAS is not fast enough to do this job.
In my opinion, it would be a great feature if I could configure the ‘resource’ which is used for transcoding.
This would give me the following scenario:
Run Plex Media Server on a NAS
Configure the Plex Media Server on the NAS to use my Mac Mini Server for any transcoding
Pros / Cons:
Media Server is where it belongs to
NAS with slower CPUs could be configured to support transcoding via other ‘resource’
dedicated resource for transcoding
additional PC required for transcoding
btw: the reason why I don’t want to run Plex Media Server on my Mac Mini Server is because all the files are located on the NAS. I assume that if I watch a movies via my other MacMini in my living room, it will stream the video via the MacMini Server which causes the file to be streamed from NAS -> MacMini Server -> MacMini in living room. This puts some unnecessary traffic on my network…
Note that the way you’re proposing it, you’re still going to get the ‘unnecessary’ traffic you wish to avoid.
In order for the Mac Mini Server to transcode, it needs to receive the full file.
So you either get:
->NAS -> Mac Mini Server (PMS here) -> MacMini Living Room
Or:
->NAS (PMS here) -> MacMini Living Room
But this one is too slow.
Or, your proposal:
->NAS (PMS here) -> Mac Mini Server (transcode) -> Back to NAS -> MacMini Living Room
The current implementation is as efficient as you’ll get.
You just need to choose whether you value transcoding performance (run the PMS on the MacMini Server), or local network utilization (run the PMS on the NAS).
To be honest, assuming you have 100Mbps links between your machines, I don’t see a reason not to run the PMS on the Mac Mini Server.
I know that I would get the same amount of traffic when transcoding… but in 95% of Plex usage, I use DirectPlay which would not cause additional traffic as I would get if I run the server on my MacMini Server.
All my wired network is 1000MBit full duplex, so network traffic won’t be a real issue… I just don’t want to ‘involve’ my MacMini Server during common usage at home. Especially if you have some friends accessing your media and using transcoding, it would be great to have this dedicated somewhere.
What’s the purpose of having gigabit networks if you’re not going to use it…not like you’re getting charged by the packet or anything.
For what it’s worth, that’s how I have mine setup. PMS on a mini, media stored on a NAS server connected via gigabit. I haven’t had any problems at all.
Which kind of Synology NAS do you have? My DS412+ transcodes like a charm. Even highres movies with 20GB. The externalize the transcoder brings imho more complexity without gaining more benefit.
I have to agree with Andre here. This requests seems to be a bit of a fringe case. The network is there to be utilized IMO. Use PMS on your Mac Mini instead, I think you are a bit to network paranoid
