Need a NAS suggestion - specific

General Discussions
1

Guys, Chuck… I know you are going to see this and go, “another post about what to get?!” lol… bear with me, please.

I get that you guys have some very powerful NAS devices. I cannot afford those heh. What I want to know, if anyone knows, is this:

I have a Synology DS-418. Love it, works fine, but it does not host my Plex MS. I have an Alienware Aurora and while it runs like a boss, it is easily 4-5 years out of warranty and will not support Winblows 10. Crazy since it is an i7 CPU etc… but, is what it is.

So, I need to see if I want to buy or build a PC specifically for Plex or sell the Synology and get something that will handle it all. I do not have a massive budget, but I really want 4 bays.

So, am I looking at a QNap? Is there a Synology that can handle, say… 2-4 streams of… 1080? Is this a pipe dream, or should I look at offloading the Plex MS to a spare PC and just keep the 418?

Ideas and advice?

And, again, I have googled, and read about as much as my brain can take, but I did not really see model numbers I can pop into Amazon or Walmart and compare features vs cost etc.

Just a lowly worker bee that enjoys providing movies for the friends that have less than I do.

Thanks guys

(did not buy that Alienware… heh… got a scratch and dent XPS that broke and Dell gave me that… so no… I would never have paid that price, hence why I cannot afford a 3k dollar NAS)

Russ

2

The main thing is that you are planning to have friends stream which will almost certainly require transcoding and I do not believe your Synology will be able to handle this.

I am sure you will get other suggestions but since I am Jewish $ is always a concern!
I couldn’t afford a 3K NAS either so I ended up building a 3K NAS for about 1K and I have 10T of protected storage.
I used Unraid but FreeNAS is also a popular soft RAID NAS solution.

Both have free trials and are very straight forward and tons of resources online to help add Plex.

Good luck!

3

Oh, I know the 418 cannot run Plex, just seeing what NAS devices do support it with 4 bays and can support 2-4 streams.

I do not share to too many folks, so usually do not have more than 2 at a time, if that… one guy does the sync at night.

So, too confusing trying to figure out which on the plex list is still available, has how many bays. I keep looking up model numbers and they have like 12 bays and I am just looking at 4…and rambling it seems… heh

Thanks for the links, will look at those!:slight_smile:

Russ

4

Not sure your specific budet (aside from as cheap as possible :smile: ) but I can throw in what I did as an option. I used the Plex Pass Western Digital 20% discount code, which is going on again right now here, and bought a WD PR4100.

I went with the full boat 32TB because the price with the discount put the RED NAS drives basically at cost. However you can get an empty 4 bay really dang cheap (cheaper than Synology or Qnap with the discount) and fill it with the drives you have and expand as you can. Just a word of caution it’s the PR4100 you want to look at, not the older EX4100, which can’t handle plex very well.

The PR4100 works great with plex, right out of the box. The Plex server is ready and waiting in the apps section of the NAS admin panel.

Transcoding: not only have several friends streaming from it (I capped it at 4 simultaneous streams), but I used it myself over christmas break to stream when out of state. No issues.

Storage: It also has a “decent” cloud storage option/mobile app that I’m considering using and dropping Dropbox.

Local Direct media server: I use it to stream locally to an NVIDIA SHIELD and to a MI BOX and it serves up my BluRay MKVs directly with no issues.

DVR: using an HDHomeRun on the same network, it records as well as plex allows it to with the buggy DVR, but that’s not the NAS’ fault, that’s a known plex issue.

CONS: it’s not the most user friendly interface, and somewhat limited to what you can install without SSH-ing into it and doing warranty wary things. Not for hardcore NAS environments. Fine for personal server/file storage.

ALTERNATIVE:
If that’s still outside your budget: Install Linux on your alienware computer and use UnRAID like @nokdim suggests and turn it into a NAS. Caveat - it’ll eat up a ton of electricity and not be the most efficient NAS solution. But you have the hardware, so…

5

I figured my budget is about… 800…maybe more, if it is right.

I thought I read that the WD PR4100 had issues with transcoding.

I looked at it and will look at it again if you say it runs fine heh. Nice interface?

Would love to get a trial of the interface to see how that works.

TY!

R

6

Am I seeing this right? Walmart has a diskless WD-4100 for $499.00 and that can run plex fine? (I could put my 6TB drive in to start)

Synology has the SHR raid, so adding a drive at a time works, does the WD handle that too?

All I really use is Plex and storing stuff. I might set it up for doing automatic backups in the future. Not interested in much.

Oh, can it handle security cameras? lol Synology does great, but those licenses… whew… expensive heh… for the average “Joe” that just wants to watch the house.

Thank you for all the great information. Probably should have talked this through before I got the Synology. It is fine… but really would like to offload Plex from my desktop PC.

Russ

7

Why not just install linux on your laptop instead of windows and continue to use it instead of sinking money into a NAS?

8

Well, yea, I have a crappy old cheap laptop running Winblows 7…it is what I carry in my Mavic case for using DJI Assistant. The Alienware has a network bug that will not let me run that small program, go figure.

So, I am in the position of having this Synology DS-418 for like 2-3 weeks. It seems to run fine, but the Alien has had a couple lock ups that required me to reboot.

So, I was debating getting a new PC. I started researching the best CPUs to run Plex, and then figured since the NAS I have was so new, why not trade it in for something that CAN run Plex and offload it from this PC, so my PC search can then focus on what I need besides that.

Thus, I already paid $400 for this NAS, then can back up the files and keep the 6TB drive, send back this NAS, add a little more cash and put it into another NAS that will handle Plex.

I would rather find a NAS that will do everything I need. I really do like Synology and it’s interface.

The CONS of the Synology are: I can monitor 2 security cameras, but more costs money for licenses. This, to me, seems harsh as those are expensive AND I can get a $59 DVR off Amazon to run 8 cameras or more, why the heck do I pay such a high price for their licenses?)
There are other cons, but nothing major. I would be totally okay with staying with Synology, but it appears that using a Synology that can transcode like the WD or QNAP is expensive as hell.

Russ

9

And again, guys… I greatly appreciate the suggestions and input. Long day today… so I wanted to say that before I forget.
I am soaking in all the suggestions etc and looking at the compatibility list and googling everything I can to find a great solution.

Russ

10

Why don’t you get a decent 2 bay Nas and keep the 4 bay Nas as storage only, sharing to the new Nas.

11

That is a very good point, Richard, and not a bad idea. The issue comes down to this:

I have one 6TB drive. If I return the NAS and get my money back on it, that gives me a little over 400 dollars. (warranty was like 44 bucks)

If I keep it, then I have to buy another NAS and another drive.

If I return it, I can use that 6TB drive and, if the new setup is a Synology, probably not need another drive right off the bat. All I pay is the difference in cost.

If I go qnap or WD, then may have to get a second 6TB drive.

I am exploring all options, but the one you give may very well be worth looking at and valid. We will see.

All comes down to cost, what all I have to buy vs return and buy, and what and how well the replacement runs Plex.

Lots of factors, need to understand the options to make a decision.

Russ

12

For the WD option, with the Plex pass 20% off coupon, the diskless 4-bay WD PR4100 is only $399 shipped direct from Western Digital. The 2-bay PR2100 is $319. I’d go that route over Wally mart any day. Save money and get it direct from the source.

Not sure how it would work with only one drive, when you set it up you can choose which version of raid you want to run, so 1 drive might start out ok.

The WD works just fine for hardware transcoding. It had some issues when they (plex) first released the hardware transcoding option, but with updates they figured out how to make it work pretty well. You get a better image with software transcoding, but the hardware option is lighter load on the CPU. I maxed out the RAM from 8GB to 16GB when I got the WD with some notebook ram I had laying around and haven’t managed to max out the load yet.

The WD also includes ARCUS software to allow you to monitor and record up to 16 cameras at once and says it comes with 2 licenses. No idea if it costs money to actually use, I have a few ARLO’s and use that instead.

Not sure how you can play with the admin interface, maybe go to frys and try it out there?

13

Well, the only reason I looked at Wally world is because they have a warranty that you can buy. I wonder if WD has one as well.

I could buy another 6tb drive, or an 8tb…will have to look at that, so I will have two, that is not a huge issue. I was just trying to see how it compares to the SHR raid configuration Synology has. You can add 1 drive at a time with that, vs the standard 2 at a time.

It is not really a show stopper, the drive thing, although I would prefer not to have multiple drive mappings vs adding more drive space.

SHR allows me to just keep adding drives to the same space.

ARCUS software lets you control 16 cameras, but 2 licenses? So, same as Synology… you need to buy more licenses for more than 2 cameras… nuts. It seems it would be easier to buy a cheap ol DVR and just have it map a drive to the thing heh

So, I assume you can set your PMS to software OR hardware transcoding? I have not gotten that in depth yet. I think I would rather do software for better quality, dunno. I have a 20mbps upload speed max so…curious how adding like 5 people to my plex server might load that down.

Sorry, thinking out loud. heh

Thank you!

Russ

14

I will have to call WD when I get ready. They will not let me buy one online unless it is 8tb or 24tb.

BUT… tyvm.

R

15

Holy cow…I got on the WD forum and asked a question and got Mr. Whytheheckyouwannadoitthatway responding.

Ok, I will ask my WD nas question in the wd nas section… heh

R

16

… And this is what I get for showing up late to the party :smiley:

I’ll cut to the chase, as I see it.

  1. QNAP gives you more processor options for less than Synology. The tradeoff is you don’t have Synology’s pretty gui,. QNAP is more techie oriented (a little)
  2. The Syno can shovel bits like it’s nobody’s business so as a NAS, it’s all there. QNAP and Syno are equal there.
  3. Qnap provided the Big CPU option (does cost though). Synology gives you the “cell phone CPUs”. (yes, you know where I stand there).
  4. My QNAP can pull 400+ MB/sec from the Syno. I did invest a few $$ for a good managed switch (HPE-1820-24G)

Regardless of building or buying:

Software transcoding

ballpark : 2000 Passmarks for each 10 Mbps of video to be transcoded for each H.264 video stream

Example: Two streams 20 Mbps video, H.264 being transcoded for streaming to somewhere.

2000 Passmarks * (20 Mbps/10 Mbps per) * 2 streams => 2000 * 2 * 2 = 8000 Passmarks.

An i7-3740qm (my desktop ) can do precisely that and have a little left over. It’s a good aiming point.

Hardware Transcoding

The video can be HW transcoded. The audio must be done in software. Multi-channel → Stereo can take up a big chunk. Look in the various threads. Folks who could not transcode before on a Synology, now with the J3455 CPU, they are capable and the CPU load is about 40-50% . That’s the audio transcoding and the ‘remuxing’ (packing the audio & video back together for output). It’s also only one stream.

There are no guideline formulas yet. Known hard limits are:

  1. Intel core -6xxx series (SkyLake) is the first to decode 4K SDR in hardware. (PMS does not transcode to 4K)
  2. Intel core -7xxx series (KabyLake) is the first to decode 4K HDR in hardware (Again PMS does not transcode to 4K)

An alternative for you to consider:

  1. Any NAS you choose / have on hand :slight_smile:
  2. An Intel NUC computer, as either stand along server using NFS to the NAS to read your media
  3. Any player of your choice connected which can run the Plex Player app connected to the TV. (This is optional).

You can get NUC computers in the whole range of CPU families (-4xxx through -7xxx)

Just when you thought it was going to get easier to decide.

:slight_smile:

17

Chuck, you had me at hello… heh

Thank you for the info. I know, 2 different posts… I am tearing through as much information on like 8 different sites to make the right move.

I have discounted WD for two reasons:

1 - I went to the forum there and asked 4 questions specific to the pr-4100 and got some chucklehead that decided I was a noob and I could not handle what I was asking for… heh

2 - While it is more impressive than the Synology for less money, I would have to buy 3-4 drives off the bat.

Okay… here is my stickler right now, - I LOVE LOVE LOVE the Synology SHR where I can start with one drive and add one at a time as budget allows.

Does QNAP have that sort of ability? I do not think WD does.

Right now, my choice appears to be Synology 918+ or QNAP “bigger than hell” lol I would rather spend the cash on a super nice system that let me add drives than a medium system because I had to buy drives.

Thanks all… and Chuck, thank you for simplifying it for me. I do understand most of it, but I am in information overload atm… lol

My Alienware is going to need to be replaced, so all of a sudden I was like, "whoa… can I add VMs to this so the kids get “workstations” I can control…?

Yea… so… the scope is growing so I want a hoss… my budget just grew a tad :pensive:
Russ

18

Oh, by the way, you said

“Any player of your choice connected which can run the Plex Player app connected to the TV. (This is optional).”

My goal is to get Plex off “MY” pc… that is the issue. Trying to get the most storage, quality, actually, is #1… period… then most storage… and growth ability being easy, for a state employee’s budget… heh

I can afford to buy the drives etc… I have a good budget due to income tax like a month away. I can get by and get whatever, but what I do not wish to do is have to buy 4 drives at once. I do not want only mirror as we will use it for everything…but, don’t need 12 drives :pensive:

So, 4 bays, and quality. After that, if it has the SHR ability, then instead of buying drives right off the bat, I can throw that money into, better quality and more functionality.

IF I have to get all 4 drives at once, that is fine, but I will probably be stuck with 6TB or… god forbid… 4TB as I am sure the 8 and 10 will be way too expensive unless I beg… lol

You get the picture. So…

Also… I saw some VM ability in these so… was debating making VMs for the kids I could blow away when they got a virus… lol

Thank you Chuckster :wink:

And I am going to spend today looking at QNAP…the big thing may be whether I need 4 drives at once…or I can add them later and still have raid-5

19

+1 on Qnap being awesome. It was my first choice, and still would be today, but budget won out in the end.

I think you really have a couple questions you need to ask, because in the end, plex has its own limitations no matter which system you use as a server/player.

  1. Are you going to do more local streaming to a player inside the house or more for friends and you’re just the nice guy spending the money to store stuff for them?

  2. How willing are you to do the pre-work to make this as light touch as possible regardless of server machine?

If you’re doing more local streaming, or that’s your main priority, then you should make sure that whatever codec you store the files in on the server is something that plex can direct play on the player of your choice.

For instance, my nvidia shield can natively decode mpeg2 streams, so I can do a direct MKV from the DVD without transcoding to h.264 and lose no quality or end up with a struggling CPU on the NAS. It just serves it up 1’s and 0’s like a slow data transfer. BUT, if a friend wants to stream it at their house? Crap. CPU transcoding city, here we come. Doesn’t matter how much upload bandwidth you have, your friend’s system isn’t gonna want that mpeg2 stream 99 times out of 99.1.

Which leads to the #2 question. If you want to be as egalitarian as possible, and your NAS, player and friends will thank you for it, you need to be willing to transcode ALL your files into plex happy codecs. And like @ChuckPA said, audio transcoding can kill an otherwise simple direct stream and choke your CPU, so you need to be aware of what works on your system natively, video codecs and audio codecs.

There are tons of best practices laid out on the forums for using handbrake to optimize your media to be able to maximize interoperability and limit the CPU usage. Regardless of the NAS solution you choose, you should include this step as a necessary evil.

Good luck and have fun (right?!) researching!

20

Awesome input, thanks. So many posts I have read. I was supposed to watch a movie with my wife last night and I started looking and reading and… bam! 10pm… heh

Most the posts on here, and this is not ragging on this place…love the info, can cause a person to get lost as it is so “lake whatever cpu…” etc and I am like, "what cpu is that? So, had to ask directly and you guys hit it on the head, thank you so much.

So, yea, I enjoy the movies locally. I own like… hundreds… HUNDreds of movies on VHS lol… and I just flat out did not want to hook up the vhs player and the transcoding device that has dust on it and turn them all into crappy vhs copied movies so… I downloaded :wink:

When I did that, I had a couple friends that don’t have jack, so I let them watch. I think I have 2 friends that watch the movies… so not a huge load, but you are totally right, I need to factor that in.

Now, the question for me is, can I take all the movies and turn them into something that can be used no matter what before I add them to plex?

If I can do that, then I will just pull them over to my PC and take the time to convert them and then put them back.

So, that leaves me with needing a NAS that can run plex so I can use my PC and not deal with the slowness when it is being watched by Plex.

I would prefer to get something that does not require me to add all 4 drives at once to use it as “one drive”. I have really enjoyed the Synology SHR raid where I can pop a new drive in and just “add it” to the system vs having to buy all the drives at once if I want to have 18tb and not 2 9tb mirrored setups.

Question ---- Does QNAP offer the ability to add drives, or is it like the other NAS systems where I need to add 2 and mirrror or add 3-4 to use Raid 5?

Question ------ If you were to pick the best 4-bay QNAP for Plex, which one would you get?

If you were to pick the best 4-bay Synology that RUNS plex, which would you get?

I will compare those, but based on your input… I think QNAP is the top dog… I just have to figure out if I can and want to bite the bullet and buy 3 more drives as well as the qnap.

Thank you so much guys.

Russ