M.2 Caching Question

Plex Media Server NAS & Devices
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Server Version#:Working on new build
Player Version#:

Im rebuilding my Plex environment (been up and running for a long time, just a fresh start). I got a Nas and was wondering where my m.2 drive would give me the most benefit. should I, set it up as a cache drive or primary drive and install plex on it.

I feel like installing plex for responsiveness to libraries would be best, but wanted some opinions. Or point me to an article I might have missed. thank you

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  1. Create the M.2-based DataVol
  2. App Center → Plex Media Server → Migrate to → (new datavol)
  3. QTS will move PMS to that M.2

At this point, to save undue wear and tear on the SSD, a scratch HDD directory somewhere for the transcoder temp (you don’t need SSD speed for that) is usually best practice

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good call, thank you

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@ChuckPa, can I ask another question about this setup?

What is best practice for Raid configuration with Plex?
I’m not overly concerned with losing data, just want to try and keep it. losing files takes a while to replace in the long run.

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I have RAID 6 (allows for 2 drives to fail). RAID 5 tolerates 1 drive failure

The speed of reading the data is trivial compared with protecting it (retention).

I have both RAID 6 (for what’s live) and then the (proper) full mirror backup
on HDDs which are turned off until it’s time for the monthly backups again.
(RAID is good online protection but it’s no backup)

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Just have good back ups, Raid is not for back ups, it is for uptime. Most people could do without raid, better to spend the money on backup hard drives.

If anything maybe mirror 2 drives for the actual server folder then unraided drives for the movie data, back up those drives.

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@therec

Skwor01 expresses it well.

  • Most don’t need RAID
  • Backups are more important.

Those of us with hundreds of TB… :see_no_evil: That’s when RAID really helps. :rofl:

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100s … :face_with_spiral_eyes:

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Thank you all,

Im sitting around 14TB, time to rethink my strategy… and buy more hard drives. lol

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root@apollo:~# df -h
Filesystem      Size  Used Avail Use% Mounted on
tmpfs            26G  4.6M   26G   1% /run
/dev/md0p1      464G   49G  415G  11% /
tmpfs           126G     0  126G   0% /dev/shm
tmpfs           5.0M     0  5.0M   0% /run/lock
tmpfs           192G  2.9G  190G   2% /ramdisk
/dev/sda1       1.1G  6.1M  1.1G   1% /boot/efi
/dev/md2        164T  125T   40T  76% /vol/series
tmpfs            26G   88K   26G   1% /run/user/1000
/dev/md1        164T   67T   98T  41% /vol/movies
/dev/md3         11T  8.1T  3.0T  74% /vol/audio
root@apollo:~#

… with plenty of room for expansion :wink:

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Unless you are like @ChuckPa with large data pools usually a back up will restore you quicker than rebuilding a raid drive.

It is also safer as you do not have the risk of the raid failing on a restore. (though I guess ZFS has less issues like that, just never used ZFS so no idea.)

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ZFS wastes a huge amount of space.

  1. If protection of data is key – then use ZFS
  2. If you want a balance of efficiency vs protection – then use EXT
  3. If you want a :bomb: – then use BTRFS :see_no_evil:

I use XFS. It’s currently used in enterprise systems w/HDDs. (ZFS + SSDs are the new stuff).

Unfortunately QNAP doesn’t support XFS else I’d be telling everyone to use it.

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ok @ChuckPa, with that much data, just make me a user, I wont need a plex build. !!!

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:rofl:

How much you willing to Donate ?

:rofl:

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Ill start my build. LOL
It actually just arrived, so I’m off to the races. thank you guys for the quick responses. .

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DO NOT USE THE QNAP MEDIA FOLDER FOR ANYTHING.

And spend some time understanding the proper file naming convention. I recommend FileBot

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@skwor01, thanks Skwor01, Im familiar with Filebot (been using it for a while) and understand the importance of naming convention. Ill defiantly read the article, thanks for the help

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Just curious: why is this? (Question from a Synology user who has set up his NAS with BTRFS).

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I’ve seen too many Syno users lose their entire volume.

BTRFS is a type of RAID & Volume management which can live on a single drive.

If you are partitioning your data volumes 1 driver per volume then BTRFS is far better than nothing.

If you’re creating a real RAID volume of multiple drives then Why RAID on top of RAID ?

Redhat pulled out of BTRFS a few years ago.

BTRFS for SSDs is a No No

Is btrfs bad for SSD?

The btrfs documentation, after a discussion of COW (copy on write), contains a number of warnings on SSDs: Writing “too much” distinct data (e.g. encrypted) may render the internal deduplication ineffective and lead to a lot of rewrites and increased wear of the memory cells.Jun 5, 2023

Most of Plex’s data does not compress well.

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