I know there are a lot of posts about NAS devices but I don’t see this particular discussion.
Using a Windows PC (powerful) and NAS as an external storage device just to house content. (Processing and transcoding happening on the PC)
There are many advantages to storing drives externally, less heat inside the PC, easier to physically manage etc but… PC based drives are directly attached to internal SATA ports and each have bandwidth, (of course, the SATA controller is the ‘bottleneck’). As soon as I go external, the SINGLE network connection and switch now constrain bandwidth. with 3 or 4 users streaming 1080 across my home LAN, I’m concerned that there will be problems. Right now with internal SATA, there is never lag due to drive access or throughput.
I would like to ‘unload’ my PC case from all the drives and go external, but concerned about a single path back to the PC. Same thing with external SATA cases etc.
Anyone have any experience with this or done any benchmarking… or have links to analysis?
Don’t worry.
Today’s standard network speed is 1 Gbps, that’s 1.000 mbps
A 1080p movie on Bluray has an average bitrate of 35 mbps (maximum, often less).
With 4 concurrent streams, you are not even close to saturating this network link.
Just make sure the connection between server, router and NAS is wired all the way through (i.e. no WiFi and no powerlan segments inbetween) and all devices are specified for 1GBit ethernet.
Of course there are NAS devices out there, which are so slow that they cannot saturate a 1 Gbps network link. But that is totally the NAS’s fault.
This is the setup I run as well. I’ve had as many as 8 concurent streams without an issue. I’m also hard wired from server to NAS as well.
The primary advantage for me us upgradability. My setup is extraordinarily flexible in this regard. I’ve switched NAS units a few times with zero service disruption to my users.
Yes, I know it should, but sometimes on paper doesn’t = real world. I am considering a 2nd Gb nic in the PC server dedicated for this device just to keep Plex content streaming isolated from file transfers, downloads, backups etc that might hit the network switch.
Thanks.
If you do get a 2nd NIC which I doubt you will really need I would suggest looking into a switch that supports bonding or teaming so you would have a 2G connection from your server.
Plus having 2 separate NICs can be very complicated as far as networking and routing.
Id suggest you listen to Otto and give it a shot with a single NIC and go from there.
Yep, link aggregation is the next best step, as it allows you to upgrade the network speed without making changes to the general network layout or routings.
So how does that work for clients outside of the LAN? Is there any real benefit once the streams go past the router?
I’ve got my server with 2 bonded gigabit connections, hard wired to my managed witch that supports LACP / 802.3ad, and a Synology 1515+ that has 4 ethernet ports (I’ve boded them into pairs, and am not sure if I should bond all 4 together or if 2x2 works better. Need to do some testing).
All of that makes sense to me within my house. Every bedroom can stream 1080p or 4k (if the room has a Roku Ultra) without stressing the system at all.
But what happens if you have 4+ concurrent clients streaming from outside? Does PMS act as a single “connection” to the NAS? Or are all of the individual clients treated as their own?
Hello,
I run a small NAS , with a pc as the server. It was physical server but it has now virtualised.
Everything used to run on 1 port gigabit links.
I watch 4k files at home, whilst family watch other films remotely.
Other than the cpu usage ramming up it never seems to bottle neck.
Yes, all the data is running though the server.
None of the clients can contact the media storage directly.
Even in the worst case if you need 4 x 4K streams, you should be fine with a single 1Gbit/s (that’s 1,000 MBit/s) link, because the highest bandwidth I’ve seen yet in a single 4K stream is ~ 125 MBit/s
Which should be alright to stream directly to 4 devices simultaneously. Of course the available bandwidth of this single link is then almost fully consumed.
