Guess you will be building your NAS pretty soon (7.2 TB of raw content (1600 x 4.5G)) ? :D
I have about 800 movies at 1080p and about 60 different tv shows with about 1000 episodes. I use a Drobo that has about 5tb of used storage on it (8tb in total). I know a lot of people don't like Drobo because its proprietary software, but the reason I like them is I just don't have the time to spend when a drive does fail, and with Drobo I just pop out the bad drive and pop in the good drive and it does the rest. Drobos are more expensive but you can find descent deals of a couple year old used ones. Also I like them because as my library grows it takes about 45 seconds to increase storage by hoping out small drive and putting in bigger.
I also recommend the Drobo, I am currently using a Drobo-5N. I want to get a Drobo B800FS but I am waiting for the next generation Drobo's to be announced/released...
Biggest problem with Drobo is not when they are working but if you have a problem. Unlike a typical NAS you are VERY tied to them.
So if your unit has a problem out of warranty you HAVE to buy another one of their units to be able to access your data again AND then it's hit or miss sometimes.
Biggest problem with Drobo is not when they are working but if you have a problem. Unlike a typical NAS you are VERY tied to them.
So if your unit has a problem out of warranty you HAVE to buy another one of their units to be able to access your data again AND then it's hit or miss sometimes.
I concur. When using a proprietary RAID algorithm, you are locked into the vendor and at their mercy.
With someone like Synology, who uses the standard software raid available on all Linux systems, if I have a catastrophic hardware failure, I can remove the drives, put them in enclosures, plug into my Linux desktop and access the entire raid. I can also perform any required repairs.
Here is one wiki about the Linux RAID solution. https://raid.wiki.kernel.org/index.php/Linux_Raid
@Cayars - WOWO Please can you post a thread on this with further details on the TC part as this sounds brilliant! I Could do with this!
Started a thread here: https://forums.plex.tv/topic/131308-cayars-setup-walk-through-and-some-tips-and-tricks/
Carlo
FWIW, my connection is 50/50. It was 150/75 but when Verizon made increased the upload speed I downgraded. It is nice living in an area where there is actual competition (Comcast and Verizon). :D
It took about a week to do my initial upload but that was small compared to where I am today. I can pull down 2 TB in a weekend (I know this for a fact, unfortunately).
I concur. When using a proprietary RAID algorithm, you are locked into the vendor and at their mercy.
With someone like Synology, who uses the standard software raid available on all Linux systems, if I have a catastrophic hardware failure, I can remove the drives, put them in enclosures, plug into my Linux desktop and access the entire raid. I can also perform any required repairs.
Here is one wiki about the Linux RAID solution. https://raid.wiki.kernel.org/index.php/Linux_Raid
That statement is a little misleading, because With any system you buy you can have issues. My friends uses a RAID system and he somehow got a corrupted file where he couldn't access any of his data, but it made the backup to the other drive before he realized the issue, so he lost all of his data because it made a mirror image on the other drive. And I use a Drobo S which i bought in 2009 and have never had a problem. And I have read the articles complaining about after the unit is out of warranty Drobo does not want to help you with out paying, But my car, refrigerator, computer, and everything i own is like that. But the one time i had to call drobo late last year because it was taking longer than i thought to rebuild data (still usable) and they helped me no questions asked even though it was out of warranty. Turns out everything was fine. So For the true geeks that has all the time in the world to spend on it when something goes wrong, then yes drobo is not for you. But I work 50 hours a week and the last thing I want to do is spend anytime fixing the system.
That statement is a little misleading, because With any system you buy you can have issues. My friends uses a RAID system and he somehow got a corrupted file where he couldn't access any of his data, but it made the backup to the other drive before he realized the issue, so he lost all of his data because it made a mirror image on the other drive. And I use a Drobo S which i bought in 2009 and have never had a problem. And I have read the articles complaining about after the unit is out of warranty Drobo does not want to help you with out paying, But my car, refrigerator, computer, and everything i own is like that. But the one time i had to call drobo late last year because it was taking longer than i thought to rebuild data (still usable) and they helped me no questions asked even though it was out of warranty. Turns out everything was fine. So For the true geeks that has all the time in the world to spend on it when something goes wrong, then yes drobo is not for you. But I work 50 hours a week and the last thing I want to do is spend anytime fixing the system.
I didn't say that I wouldn't have any issues if I walked away completely from Synology but at least the core data, the raid volume itself, is completely usable.
The 'amount of time' I spend repairing a crashed raid, in the worst scenario, is a) extract the drives from the NAS b) put them in enclosures (this takes a few minutes each) c) plug into the machine using a USB hub (I have 8 drives) d) starting Linux e) running mdadm to reassemble (and correct the volume itself) f) run fsck on the filesystem after reassembled.
The same 'assembly and check' tasks occur on all raids in one form or another and require time proportional to the number of drives & volume size.
I work insane hours and I don't have time for a failure either. It's an effort to fuss with pulling drives.
I will not debate the particulars of one vendor over another. I will state I selected the Synology because of the RAID solution, sheer performance, reputation, user interface, interfaces to all my computing needs, and ability to run some apps (including Plex) on it. I've had other RAID boxes which failed miserably. The ultimate failure was the media, not the box itself.
If I have one thing to say to anyone, get GOOD drives. Don't try to use Green or Blue drives (using WD convention here) and expect them to last. NOT going to happen. Red or RE drives will survive whatever you throw at it.
I didn't say that I wouldn't have any issues if I walked away completely from Synology but at least the core data, the raid volume itself, is completely usable.
The 'amount of time' I spend repairing a crashed raid, in the worst scenario, is a) extract the drives from the NAS B) put them in enclosures (this takes a few minutes each) c) plug into the machine using a USB hub (I have 8 drives) d) starting Linux e) running mdadm to reassemble (and correct the volume itself) f) run fsck on the filesystem after reassembled.
The same 'assembly and check' tasks occur on all raids in one form or another and require time proportional to the number of drives & volume size.
I work insane hours and I don't have time for a failure either. It's an effort to fuss with pulling drives.
I will not debate the particulars of one vendor over another. I will state I selected the Synology because of the RAID solution, sheer performance, reputation, user interface, interfaces to all my computing needs, and ability to run some apps (including Plex) on it. I've had other RAID boxes which failed miserably. The ultimate failure was the media, not the box itself.
If I have one thing to say to anyone, get GOOD drives. Don't try to use Green or Blue drives (using WD convention here) and expect them to last. NOT going to happen. Red or RE drives will survive whatever you throw at it.
SORRY! I didn't mean to come off rude. I just meant you can have problems with any system you go with. I guess I'm just touchy because there are so many web pages that bash Drobo for stupid reasons, like the whole out of warranty no support issue. I get drobo is not for everyone because they are proprietary system, but i almost feel the same with xbmc vs plex. xbmc you can do way more stuff but I think plex is just cleaner and easier. Same way with Drobo vs RAID. You can get creative and do all kinds of things with RAID, but I just want to pop out a drive and pop in a drive when something goes wrong.
SORRY! I didn't mean to come off rude. I just meant you can have problems with any system you go with. I guess I'm just touchy because there are so many web pages that bash Drobo for stupid reasons, like the whole out of warranty no support issue. I get drobo is not for everyone because they are proprietary system, but i almost feel the same with xbmc vs plex. xbmc you can do way more stuff but I think plex is just cleaner and easier. Same way with Drobo vs RAID. You can get creative and do all kinds of things with RAID, but I just want to pop out a drive and pop in a drive when something goes wrong.
You didn't offend. Not in the slightest. I was simply being 'an engineer' and stating what I've experienced and know from having been burned in the past. I apologize if my 'after 5pm candor' was harsh in any way.
I concur Drobo has its customers with their preferences as does Synology. Every RAID provider does or they wouldn't still be in the market.
~ 13tb consumed on two drobos. slowly switching to 6tb drives, have disk redundancy. ~ 1500 movies most 1080p, and ~ 150 tv shows, which works out at about 5200 episodes.
50 3D Movies (Bluray Quality and growing quickly)
5 Pre-release (Cam Quality)
204 Christmas Movies
60 Learning (DVD Rips)
3446 Movies
704 Music Videos780 Sports (720p NFL Games)
4893 TV Episodes (81 Shows, 291 Seasons)8494 Music Albums
Resolutions across the board:
SD 12.6%
480p 12.5%
576p 1.8%
720p 41.4%
1080p 31.5%
Other 0.2%I'm slowly replacing lower resolution files with 1080p. Everything is fully indexed and all videos are encoded in h.264 MP4 with a stereo track added as the first track (Dolby/DTS tracks are additional tracks encoded).
My server is shared with about 20 accounts that actively use it. A few more accounts that occasionally use it. Some accounts have multiple Rokus and I'll sometimes see 3 or 4 active streams from these "one" accounts. Many of the shared players (ie Rokus) are set at 4Mbps 720p resolution which causes lots of transcodes on my 720p/1080p movies. This is probably due to the Rokus being used on WIFI.
I've been manually converting many of my high-res movies to a 2nd file that is under 4Mbps 720p so Plex can stream this file instead of doing the transcodes. I simple use the "normal" file name with a [TC] in the name ie Abduction (2011) [TC].mp4. These TC files are not in the counts above. I've been using the built in transcoder in "sync" mode to generate these files to the "cloud" but have the cloud blocked via my router so they never get updated. I can then grab them. Still playing with this. I'll probably switch over to using ffmpeg or Handbrake to do this.
I'm presently working on adding a TV Recording Section (PVR) to my setup using the HDHomeRun Prime with CableCard on Verizon FIOS. Right now I'm experimenting/playing with Media Portal, MCE, NextPVR to find what's going to work best overall and allow me to have remote TIVO/Slingbox functionality. I'm getting tired of using Verizon FIOS DVRs with their "limited space". I want direct access for me in real-time to the recordings, remote scheduling, etc. I'll then setup commercial skip and automatic transcode to mp4 along with proper episode renaming for permanent storage of files into a new TV Recording section in Plex for all to enjoy.
At present all my files are available using both Plex and Madsonic. Madsonic (fork of Subsonic) is far better for pure music use then Plex especially on Phones. Madsonic also allows (if configured) a pure download of files instead of just playing them. This solves an issue for me where a few friends who travel a lot can easily grab/download a few videos to take with them on trips, etc. Madsonic allows quotas so this is easily managed.
I've been thinking of setting up a 2nd Plex server and splitting up the load a bit. I'm not positive but I believe the 9K albums are causing Plex to run a bit slower due to the increase in database/meta file sizes. I can defiantly feel a "slow down" in performance in "browsing sections" since I added them to Plex.
After I get the PVR functionality going to my liking I'm going to see if I can tackle distributed encoding of Plex so that it can have other computers on the network doing some of the real-time encoding.
So that's my setup for the moment. I also have 300/300 FIOS Internet. Don't ask me about storage. :)
Setup a couple of small ssd's in raid and store the plex DB on that, it should help with the searching speed
I'm using Drobo as well; recently moved from two FireWire 4-bays to a pair of Thunderbolt equipped 5Ds. The upgrade process was painful thanks to one of the Drobos being defective (its replacement was also defective—thanks Drobo), but now I'm sitting on 20.45TB of media spread across the two. I'm now in the process of replacing all the WD Green drives with Red ones. Not sure if I'd still use Drobo if I had it to do over again. It seems like the main features of the Drobo (thin provisioning, drives of any size) have been equaled by Synology.
Setup a couple of small ssd's in raid and store the plex DB on that, it should help with the searching speed
Yea, I've thought about doing this but it's going to be involved. My MetaData directory is close to 500GB in size.
The biggest problem for me is that I'm just about maxed out on my present server SATA port wise as all my storage is on that machine.
At some point in the next few months I'll probably build out a new Plex Server and turn my present server into a glorified NAS server. It will be easier to do at that point.
For kicks I might copy my MetaData folders over to my i7 laptop which has 3 SSDs in it and see if I can really notice any improvement. Granted it's not a RAID SSD setup but this might give me an idea of any performance gains just from moving from a spindle drive to an SSD for the MetaData.
Carlo
My MetaData directory is close to 500GB in size.
Carlo
Do you have 'index files' turned on? Those consume huge amounts of space.
For kicks I might copy my MetaData folders over to my i7 laptop which has 3 SSDs in it and see if I can really notice any improvement. Granted it's not a RAID SSD setup but this might give me an idea of any performance gains just from moving from a spindle drive to an SSD for the MetaData.
Carlo
I have to say, I recently swapped out my Boot Drive in my server (which also serves as a Video and Audio Editing system) to an SSD and wow!
What a performance boost. Cached images and thumbnails just BANG onto the screen during searches, etc.. The thing boots so fast now I sometimes don't get to see the Windows Splash screen. Best upgrade I've done for any system, and it's not an old box by any means, I built it myself just a couple years back.
Do you have 'index files' turned on? Those consume huge amounts of space.
Yes, and they sure do suck up the space. :)
I have to say, I recently swapped out my Boot Drive in my server (which also serves as a Video and Audio Editing system) to an SSD and wow!
What a performance boost. Cached images and thumbnails just BANG onto the screen during searches, etc.. The thing boots so fast now I sometimes don't get to see the Windows Splash screen. Best upgrade I've done for any system, and it's not an old box by any means, I built it myself just a couple years back.
Yea, the more I think about it the more I think this will help. I just decided I'm going to do this upgrade this weekend. A 1 TB SSD should work for my needs for a bit.
I won't use it for the boot disk but only for the Plex MetaData folders and for the Transcode cache directory.
Good call!
I have been thinking about this as well, is the metadata stored in the "The path where local application data is stored" under server general?
I see where the transcode temp folder is set already.
And should all of the existing metadata be copied to the new location before the path is updated?
---
I just found this thread and post using a symlink
https://forums.plex.tv/topic/35146-location-metadata/?p=240559
Yes, the best way of doing it is to note the directory where it's presently stored.
shut down Plex server
copy all the data from the original location to the new SSD storage location.
restart plex and change where the metadata is located
shut down and restart plex
Should now be using the new location
50 3D Movies (Bluray Quality and growing quickly)
5 Pre-release (Cam Quality)
204 Christmas Movies
60 Learning (DVD Rips)
3446 Movies
704 Music Videos780 Sports (720p NFL Games)
4893 TV Episodes (81 Shows, 291 Seasons)8494 Music Albums
Resolutions across the board:
SD 12.6%
480p 12.5%
576p 1.8%
720p 41.4%
1080p 31.5%
Other 0.2%I'm slowly replacing lower resolution files with 1080p. Everything is fully indexed and all videos are encoded in h.264 MP4 with a stereo track added as the first track (Dolby/DTS tracks are additional tracks encoded).
My server is shared with about 20 accounts that actively use it. A few more accounts that occasionally use it. Some accounts have multiple Rokus and I'll sometimes see 3 or 4 active streams from these "one" accounts. Many of the shared players (ie Rokus) are set at 4Mbps 720p resolution which causes lots of transcodes on my 720p/1080p movies. This is probably due to the Rokus being used on WIFI.
I've been manually converting many of my high-res movies to a 2nd file that is under 4Mbps 720p so Plex can stream this file instead of doing the transcodes. I simple use the "normal" file name with a [TC] in the name ie Abduction (2011) [TC].mp4. These TC files are not in the counts above. I've been using the built in transcoder in "sync" mode to generate these files to the "cloud" but have the cloud blocked via my router so they never get updated. I can then grab them. Still playing with this. I'll probably switch over to using ffmpeg or Handbrake to do this.
I'm presently working on adding a TV Recording Section (PVR) to my setup using the HDHomeRun Prime with CableCard on Verizon FIOS. Right now I'm experimenting/playing with Media Portal, MCE, NextPVR to find what's going to work best overall and allow me to have remote TIVO/Slingbox functionality. I'm getting tired of using Verizon FIOS DVRs with their "limited space". I want direct access for me in real-time to the recordings, remote scheduling, etc. I'll then setup commercial skip and automatic transcode to mp4 along with proper episode renaming for permanent storage of files into a new TV Recording section in Plex for all to enjoy.
At present all my files are available using both Plex and Madsonic. Madsonic (fork of Subsonic) is far better for pure music use then Plex especially on Phones. Madsonic also allows (if configured) a pure download of files instead of just playing them. This solves an issue for me where a few friends who travel a lot can easily grab/download a few videos to take with them on trips, etc. Madsonic allows quotas so this is easily managed.
I've been thinking of setting up a 2nd Plex server and splitting up the load a bit. I'm not positive but I believe the 9K albums are causing Plex to run a bit slower due to the increase in database/meta file sizes. I can defiantly feel a "slow down" in performance in "browsing sections" since I added them to Plex.
After I get the PVR functionality going to my liking I'm going to see if I can tackle distributed encoding of Plex so that it can have other computers on the network doing some of the real-time encoding.
So that's my setup for the moment. I also have 300/300 FIOS Internet. Don't ask me about storage. :)
Damn, you sharing with anyone?
