Okay so my PC running Plex Server is an i5 4690k Devil’s Canyon Win7Pro x64 with 16 Gb RAM. This is in addition to my comparable HTPC with 12 Gb RAM that runs WMC and extenders as well as my Emby Server which typically has CPU usage less than 25% when Emby is transcoding.
I run Plex Server, Blue Iris Server and have 18Tb of storage on the first mentioned PC. The second is destined to be removed from my Family Room as I now exclusively use the ShieldTV for most content except WMC on a Ceton Echo Extender.
I just got Lifetime a few months ago so before then I wasn’t using the LiveTV / DVR functions. Now I am and my CPU is maxed out at 90% to 100% when recording or running ComSkip with the top process being Plex Transcoder and Plex ComSkip. After that it is BlueIris and BlueIris Tools.
Playback of stored content on this PC is beginning to suffer due to CPU overload I believe so I’m considering moving my Plex Server to either my ShieldTV (2015 16Gb), the HTPC or to barely used 2015 NUC5i3RYH that has a 250Gb SSD and 8Gb RAM.
Thoughts? Recommendations? My gut says to put it on the HTPC or maybe the i3 that is basically never really used over putting it on the ShieldTV.
How to easily move the server configuration from a PC to a Shield or another PC? Of course I know I’ll need to re-do my library and recording drive pointers but what about the rest of the configuration data?
To another PC that is the same OS it is very easy IMO. If you take your time and think about it you won’t have to redo anything. it will be like it is the exact same server. Won’t even have to reshare with anyone
I would use a real computer (even an i3) over a Shield. the Shield can only do like 2 transcodes if decent quality content. and does not do a good job with VC1 at all. (if you have bluray remuxes this may matter to you)
So do I just install Plex on the other PC (They all run Win7x64 Pro SP1) and transfer the Plex Server Settings? I’m not sure how to do that part.
BTW, I’m thinking the second i5 4690k would be the place to put it but am concerned about CPU usage there still. I just looked at Resource Monitory and that machine is at just over 30% right now with the Plex Server Machine “light” at about 80%, about half of that or 40% of CPU ticks being Plex related tasks.
First prepare the new computer by making sure that file paths are exactly the same as the old. If your movies are in F:/somefolder/someotherfolder/movies on old computer then it needs to be exactly that on new computer.
Just out of curiosity what specific settings are stored in the registry?
I reinstall Windows one a year and have never bothered with the registry part and everything always seems to be “as was”.
It’s something I have been meaning to ask for a while.
In particular your plex account and the server ID of your server.
Both are needed for sharing. If you leave out both, you 'll have to re-enable all shares for every friend and managed user.
Some of my folders are network paths. I think I’ll make all of them network paths without regard to whether or not they are on the local machine or not. This will make the server more “portable” on my network.
I have no shares so I think I don’t need to do the registry thing or am I wrong?
What about my folder structure? Should I change them all to network paths before moving the server so that they are the same or should I just move the server and then recreate my folder structure?
BTW, I have looked a little bit further. The issue I am having is transcoding 4k with dts-MA 7.1 to play on a Roku2 4210x which doesn’t support either natively. Emby will do it but Plex won’t. I am pretty sure Plex is capable but I think the machine the server is on is trying to do too much…
Well whether you change everything to network paths or not, just make sure the first thing you do when you set up the new server is to disable emptying trash automatically BEFORE you do ANYTHING else.
I think me mentioned earlier only some of his stuff was using network paths, as he had not got round to changing them on every library.
That’s why I mentioned the disabling emptying trash thing.
A little more testing. I ran the same file through Emby Server and the ffmpeg process is hitting about the same CPU utilization as Plex Transcoder Process does but the file plays smoothly. This is definitely an issue with processor overhead than with Plex.
I NEED MORE HORSEPOWER!
That said, I think moving it to the other PC with less going on will improve things for sure…
@TJB If you are transcoding 4K to anything other than a common aspect ratio, I’m surprised the box is responsive. Get a 250/500G SSD as your $PLEX_HOME and use the built in comskip/comcut instead of post processing, unless you want to batch off jobs with handbrakeCLI.
If you haven’t filled that 18TB of media then it is easiest to just use default $PATHS and reindex all the bundles, and definitely turn off the default indexing piece of garbage background service for the shield, https://forum.synology.com/enu/viewtopic.php?t=124489 the millions of $shared files and useless I/O doesn’t play nice with the monolithic sqlite DB.
My .02
