FYI - FreeNAS - Works surprisingly well on poor/old hardware

Plex Media Server NAS & Devices
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Hello, new to the forum but as standing in a field watching dull sports, thought I’d contribute my recent experience.

I’ve used FreeNAS for around 3-4 months and thought I’d give Plex ago again, after some initial problems (user error mainly).

After setting it up in the office, I was home last night and glad to see that after paying for subs, it worked pretty well. A little laggy to start with and it looks due to background FreeNAS tasks. The phone app works very well and any problems I do have is config related no doubt.

What’s impressive is the basic and ‘found in the back of a cupboard’ hardware I’m using. System spec:

CPU: 12+ year old Anthlon dual core running at 2.5GHz ish
Motherboard: cheap old Gigabyte, similar age
RAM: 1 x 8GB stick Non-ECC
Striped 3x300GB (test machine)
PSU: 450w equally as old as CPU
Network: Draytek 2762AC

Anyone that knows FreeNAS will know this is a joke of a setup and no one would expect reliability, but it’s a testing rig for me to become familiar with freenas (strengths and weaknesses). So far I’m very pleased and the final config (consisting of owned parts) will be:

CPU: Xeon E5-1650-v4
MOTHERBOARD: Asus X99-E W/S
RAM: min. 16GB ECC but aiming for 32-64GB (FreeNAS loves RAM)
PSU: Platinum 750w, reliable make
HDD: Use of the 10 SATA ports in RAIDZ2 for critical data, and less for disposal data.

So there we go, perhaps interesting to someone out there. My final config will also include a secondary machine connected via fibre to a snapshot box situated in an outbuilding.

All this because although I’ve not suffered huge data loss, I have experienced stealth data corruption issues, such as faulty video playback and severe image degradation. I don’t want to gain the knowledge to do this and would prefer to do many other things, however if I want my data to remain intact, I can’t trust Windows. I would go the Linux route, but for a little extra reading, the reliability is significantly greater when you borrow the experience from the enterprise people.

I definitely did considering an all in one package (S/W and H/W combined), but after reading a number of user issues, decided against it. For example I heard of bespoke PSU’s dying and the difficulty involved to fudge the use of a standard sized one or paying a hefty price to wait and get the correct one - all the while my data not being accessible. I feel I’m competent enough to figure out the issue and replace the faulty component if needed, and that’s sure easier with a decent PC-like set up.

Something I absolutely must do is get a UPS for mine, that’s something significant and very important to a stable machine.

Cheers!

Just a little update since last year (New to NAS's and Plex)
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Very cool! I know you exist over on the ixsystems forums as well. I’d reconsider that Asus board, only because it doesn’t have IPMI. You can get an inexpensive X10 Supermicro on eBay that doesn’t have the stuff you don’t need - SLI, on FreeNAS, funny :slight_smile: - and does have the stuff you want, such as IPMI.

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Ah haa, I recognise that helpful face!

Yes indeed, the IPMI would have been perfect - rest assured I’m still aiming for the snapshot server you recommended (with IPMI!). I have the CPU/Case, just waiting for funds to be sufficient to buy the Supermicro M/B and RAM you kindly recommended. :joy: yeah can’t see FreeNAS/SLI any time soon…or ever! But it’ll give me space for NIC and may be one day, NVME drives through PCI!

Thankfully, purchases are going to through the company, so 100% claimed as an expense! :wink:

Good to see you over here, putting people right and helping as you do! :+1:

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Just some additional info, I’m playing an SD video that’s 1.5GB and it’s playing it quite easily. Low resources on server, but if I persisted with this, I would have to adjust some automated house keeping that occurs on the FreeNAS server so it doesn’t interfere with playback.

Screenshot 2020-07-13 23.20.58
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This is run from home, but the FreeNAS server is in my office… I admit it’s only 300-400m away :slight_smile: The Download speed of the office is around 70-80Mb, the home connection is 30-40Mb, with proportionate upload speeds.

If the server I’m currently running (mentioned above, old), the final rig shouldn’t have any issues…though I’d be interesting how well I fail at 4K!

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Watching the stats a little more, but I do note the poor little Athlon suffers quite a bit at times when playing a film to another network that off-site.

remote streaming.PNG
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The location of the client shouldn’t have that big an impact of the server load. I would check further into what client was being used and what the quality settings are on it. It sounds like a transcode is being triggered by the remote device.

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You are right, it only happened with one file so I suspect it had to be transcoded - I typed too soon!

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Look at you with your 8GB, bragging. :slight_smile:

Agreed. I have an unreasonable amount of success w/ FreeNAS on a Core 2 Duo E7500 w/ 4GB of RAM. I’m careful, but I do have multiple jails.

I’m certainly allergic to transcoding. No problems with 5 or 6 direct play or direct stream sessions.

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Haha, I’m a rock n rolla for sure, and get you with your Intel chip…posh. :joy:

To give you a laugh, I tried a VM of Ubuntu on there…it struggled. Interesting the mouse only worked on 1 CPU, 2 CPU’s disabled the mouse!

Yes direct play seems to be the answer to low resources. This could be an worn out question, but am I correct that there are two options for this video malarkey:

1: Small file size (and storage needs), no transcoding but limited viewing quality
OR
2: Large file size, transcoding but available at high res

I have realised that 4K output is god level and great deal of hardware to be perfect, but I’d certainly welcome any thoughts you have - and sincere apologies if this subject has been done to death!

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Yeah, that’s a fancy 11 year old Intel chip I’m using. I should point out that some of my 4GB of RAM is stolen by the integrated video …

I’ve got a few 10TB SATA drives attached with ZFS. The BIOS doesn’t like the big drives but FreeBSD/FreeNAS/ZFS saw them immediately. As you can imagine, a significant portion of my RAM goes to the ZFS ARC.

Most of my media is 1080p, except some trashy TV and ripped DVDs.

For the few things I’ve tried at 4K, I used h265 10bit and made sure I could direct play them. They work fine locally over good WiFi, to both an ATV4K and a Roku TV.

I also made and kept the 1080p h264 copy so other devices can still direct play.

I only tested a few as a novelty. I can see the difference, I just don’t care enough. They’re brutally slow to encode and … well, we’ve been discussing how slow our computers are.

If you’re after 4K there are some better resources than me:
https://forums.plex.tv/t/info-plex-4k-transcoding-and-you-aka-the-rules-of-4k/

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Wow, OK you win the CPU/RAM minimum game, points are lost due to the huge HDD’s you have though!

I wonder if you even have any ARC to speak of, with your graphics overhead, FreeNAS install and so on! :stuck_out_tongue_winking_eye:

That’s all very interesting though, thank you for sharing - so am I correct that h265 is more Appley, while h264 suits non-Appley devices?

I like the look of Roku TV bobbins, might be nicer to have one that’s cable and not wifi connected though, if they exist! I did install Plex on my (Samsung) TV and that seemed to work well…I just didn’t have the server in the same building, so it didn’t work, ooops!

Understood about the encoding pain, especially with recycled old dogs like ours.

By chance I’ve given that 4k thread a glance already, but thank you for including it.:+1:

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Back in my day, we had to hike 3 miles uphill in the snow to change the channel, and we only had two channels, and we were thankful …

Many of them have Ethernet!

Embedding the Roku in the TV is very “Appley”. There’s only one remote and my mom can operate it. The Plex app is at its best on Roku, too.

No, I don’t want to give the wrong impression about that. h625 and h264 aren’t Appley and non-Appley at all. h265 is just the next generation after h264. They’re both widely supported by many devices.

There are lots of discussions about the benefits of h265. Both h264 and h265 make high quality video. h265 makes smaller files and is the standard for encoding 4k, UHD Blu-ray, etc.

My primary library is h264 because it has better playback support, better support within Plex, I can tolerate the larger file sizes, and it processes dramatically faster.

But in stepping up to 4k, the smaller files of h265 are more desirable and easier to stream. Any devices that can handle 4k are also new enough for h265.

Other people have jumped fully on h265 for their libraries. They usually have faster systems, don’t have older devices with compatibility issues, or really like the smaller files

If you like h265 or want to try it, don’t re-encode h264 into h265. That’s adding a generation of loss to your video. Encode something yourself, or download a sample.

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Ah them were the days, youngen’s don’t know how easy they’ve got it eh.

That sounds ideal for your mum, I’m going to look into this Roku you speak of, thank you :slight_smile:

That sounds good then! I’ve already run CAT to the TV and once I’ve insulated the attic (to prevent high temps), that’s where the ‘server’ is going to be plopped. I sort of prefer cable although it’s a pain compared to wifi, it simplifies things a little I think.

It’s really very kind of you to take the time to set me straight with the h264/265 debate. As I’m at the start of my video media storage ‘journey’, would you suggest I go the h265 route?

I suppose I sort of have started, though at the moment my films are in VOB format via dvdshrink…yes, I’m an amateur!

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The good news is that you don’t need to make an absolute decision in advance. You can test a few and see how each works for you. You can have both types. You can even have both for an individual file.

Because it’s the future, you can keep a high-quality 1080p movie in less space than a single-layer VOB+dvdshrink previously required.

The other amazing thing about the future is that stuff is MORE compatible, in general, even if you have a slow(er) server and don’t want to do any transcoding.

The most obvious place H.265 is less compatible is in web browsers. If you’re comfortable using the desktop apps, phones, recent TVs, chances are very high that H.265 will work fine.

See if you like the file sizes vs. amount of time it takes to encode them.

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Thanks for getting back to me Volts, very kind.

All understood, thank you! Yes, I will be glad to get rid of the Vob’s for sure, due to size.

That’s really helpful though, I think I’ll try for 265 over all, as then I can default handbrake settings and I don’t use a browser to watch any videos, so that works for me. Like you say, as time goes by 265 should be more compatible with more devices. I’ll give it a fiddle, thanks again :+1:

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