I have new Hardware for my Plex Server - fresh install, need some advice

Plex Media Server
1

I run Plex, have for a long time. I like it a lot. No real issues other than the CPU (I7-3770k) is pegged when transcoding and it’s win7. I serve up my collection of DVDs around the house, on the road and have a friend in long term care 4000mi away that uses a firestick to watch as well. Works great.

I use the trickledown method for computers, the CAD station gets the newest fastest, all the other comps get it’s castoffs. Today is the day that my Plex server gets someone else’s castoffs (I7-4939k @4.3Ghz, 32Gb of fast Ram and a PCI SSD as well as a GTX780.)

OR, I was thinking I could do a Hyper-V win10 install on my file server (2x Xeon 2.4Ghz 6 core, 128GB of ram, nothing for GPU tho.) It provides domain services and file services - it’s bored 99% of the time. No, I’m not willing to install Plex on the file server (WinSrv2019 - is it even possible?) But a VM would be OK.

My method of connecting the plex server to the file server is over a gigabit lan and uses my personal account to fire up plex, along with mapped network drives for the various locations Plex needs. (doesn’t this method play havoc on plex-as-a-service)

Since I’m going to do a fresh install, a few questions.

Should I (could I) create a HyperV Win10 VM on the file server which has plenty of CPU/RAM? Or should PlexServer be on it’s own hardware? If I do a VM, it’s that much less my electric bill would be (it’s ridiculous.)

I’m thinking I should also be looking into configuring Plex as a Service, what’s the consensus on that? What’s the best method?

Anything else I should be considering before I get started? Thanks in advance.

2

Step 1 complete
Spooled up a win10 VM on my server. Updated.
Installed Plex Media Server on it
Copied over the data directory from the old machine
regedit to point to the new data
It worked! (not quite that easily, but pretty much w/ a little tinkering)

Then created a new domain user for plex giving it mostly read rights to shares.
Logged in as the user.
Went thru heck and back trying to get Plex to be able to ‘see’ the mapped drives. Found a thread on mapping network drives w/ their share names and switched over to that method.
It worked!!

Gave it 8mb of ram and 24 CPUs. (is that enough ram?)

Popped up a high res movie and switched on subtitles.
Much faster. IDK if it’d be faster than the newer 4939k, but it is quite a bit more responsive.

Now to work on Plex as a service.

3

Step 2 complete (run as a service)

Followed this guy’s instructions on setting up Plex in Task Scheduler and it worked like a charm.

Found a setting for ‘make my cpu hurt’ too and this has also sped it up quite a bit.

Happy camper, I’m off to do other things…

4

Just updating this after a few weeks for anyone else who wishes to run Plex on a Virtual Machine.

This works fantastic!

I have a file server that’s running 24/7 anyway and it’s bored most of the time, so letting Plex do it’s thing on there is a no-brainer.

Setting up Plex as a Service was very easy and has been 100% reliable so far.

The transcode setting ‘make my cpu hurt’ will drop the hammer on that 24core server.
Response time at the player is noticeably improved.
Never more than a second or two when skipping around in a movie with subtitles on (forcing a full transcode.)

My buddy in long term care 4000+mi away was watching a movie with me last night both of us in HD. Amazing. No skips, stutters or pauses.

For those of you with a bored computer that’s got some extra horsepower, this is the cat’s meow way to install PlexServer.

5

Still working great. I had a blip with the latest updates of windoze/plex. Don’t know which one was causing the grief, but a few reboots fixed it.