My libraries are currently spread across three servers with a total capacity of 140 TB. I’m thinking to consolidate them into one server with capacity at least 200 TB. I have 10,500 movies, maybe 100 shows, 500 albums, over 1000 other videos (but those typically run to half an hour or less), and some photographs that I would like to access on a single server - especially if I want to go through the drill of using Plex without Internet service. (It’s happened.) I can’t tag this with any one brand, because right now I have no brand loyalty, only questions about what kind of server to use and where to go to get it. So here are my questions:
What is the largest total data capacity manageable on a single Plex Media Server installation?
What is the largest number of movies, shows, albums, other videos, photographs, etc. that are supportable in a single library?
What is Thunderbolt, and how might I use that in server management? (I’m looking at one particular server that has that functionality.)
Would caching, say with Solid State Drives, do any good? If so, how big a cache would I need, and how much cache could the server practically use?
Which brand would anyone recommend, as in the one having the fewest issues for playing either in the home or remotely?
The only concern should be the limits of the database that Plex uses internally. Host it on an SSD and you’re probably good to go. Size doesn’t matter in terms of content, just the amount of content.
I used to run my security system such that Plex could access the video files - at one point when I forgot to clean up for a long time Plex was indexing 100K+ video files and it did not change any behavior other than the size of the database grew significantly.
Probably irrelevant
A lot, but hopefully the Plex folks can chime in
TB is external PCIe connectivity, essentially, and I don’t know why you’d use it on a server
Host Plex itself on an SSD - the way you store your content is probably immaterial, and SSD caches typically are useless for a low-parallelism media server.
White box / build your own. The bandwidths at play for a handful of users at a time don’t require much horsepower at all.
“Host Plex itself on an SSD” - sounds interesting. QNAP has a server box with 4 dedicated SSD bays and 12 bays that could go either for SSD or HDD. The next follow-up to that question is: how large an SSD volume should Plex have to work with? As in, ratio of size of Plex DB volume to number of DB entries.
Obviously I’ll wait on Question 2. You’ll have to remind me again what “white box” means.
With 120 TB of available storage, PLEX EXPORT is reporting 62,660 movies. Running dual SuperMicro servers (one server mirrors the other for redundancy) using Windows 2019 server. System is running smooth with a combination of movies, TV shows, recorded TV (using HDHomeRun tuner).
There is not a number for this. You could have petabytes and petabytes of data in a server and it wouldn’t matter.
I have 75,000 TV episodes in a single library on a low powered server and performance is fine. There are Plex servers with significantly more content than mine that run fine. You may experience a bit of interface lag on ■■■■■■ garbage clients like smart TV clients (of course this is also true of using e.g. Netflix/Disney/HBO/etc. on the same devices) – I recommend getting a set top box on the client side.
Thunderbolt is a transfer protocol for fast data transfer over cables. These days it is implemented on top of USB-C connectors. This is not relevant to you unless you plan to be streaming data from external drives and the drives support Thunderbolt. If you are buying a server, put your data on internal drives.
In general caching with solid state drives is most effective for sequential data transfer. If you’re playing files, that’s sequential data transfer, but it’s rarely an issue (especially if your hard drives are in a RAID array). If you’re browsing your library, that’s not sequential data transfer. You should consider putting your metadata and library on an SSD, but server read/write caches, I wouldn’t bother. If you are planning on having many people decoding high bitrate 4K simultaneously your considerations might differ because their sequential IO will probably saturate even a RAID array of hard drives.
I don’t think brand is relevant here. It sounds like you’re looking for a NAS that does most of the management stuff for you. Synology and QNap are the main brands that make those. UGreen is starting to, but isn’t quite there yet. If I’m wrong and you’re willing to manage your own, then you can just build a server with components from any brand. The main thing you’re going to want is good network connectivity, a processor with hardware video decoding (or support for a GPU with hardware decoding), enough RAM for your library, and enough storage bays to fit your data. No one knows your budget, so maybe give some info about what you’re considering and people can help steer you.
