I currently have my media server on my PC and direct Plex to pull my movie files from a 2TB USB 3.0 external hard drive. I am now to the point where the external hard drive is full and I need to start looking for a new solution. I want something that can house multiple hard drives and is fast.
I am not sure if that means getting a small dedicated PC with an i7 processor and hooking up something like an 8 bay Drobo. Or if I should get something like the QNAP TS-EC880 Pro NAS server. With the NAS, I know nothing on how that is managed and how I would put my media on it.
Can you guys help me with some suggestions on how to set up a large and fast media server?
I have a Synology 1813+, 8 x WD Red (3 are now Red Pro) 4T . MUCH lower cpu power than that Xeon (in the EC880) and it shovels the bits great. The raid and multiple gigabit ethernet ports do it. (I have 4 subnets, one per adapter)
If you have raid 5, while no substitution for backups, it tolerates single-drive failures well without data loss and you can rebuild (if you don't have another before recovering). Raid 6 (level 6) tolerates two drive failures (same rules apply).
If you want transcoding (real video conversion on-the-fly) in the NAS, I would mandate the higher performing processor (i7/xeon). If you want to simply shovel mp4's around, you may not need as much.
While the PC gives you the ability to do other things, If you don't want another PC and are thinking of an 'appliance' then the NAS might be what you really need.
I mostly agree with Chuck, the only thing that most users will find is if they go the NAS route they find that down the road they up needing something that can actually fully transcode (Say you start to stream via your cell phone remotely) or you find you cant fully sustain a high bit rate via wireless to a Roku or an Apple TV that's on wifi so you limit it to 4Mbps and then you find the NAS just cant cut it. My suggestion is if you need more storage, get a NAS and use it for that, STORAGE. Keep your PMS on a machine with an i3 or higher so that in the future you will be able to just have a seemless use.
Another good example is all the people who use nas's and then were pissed because their NAS couldnt keep up with the transcoding for xbox ones or 360's.
Yup, I used a not so powerful NAS for a bit, but couldn't use sync as that needed transcoding. Moved to an Intel NUC i5 for PMS and NAS for storage and couldn't be happier.
I'm kind of leaning toward building my own PC. I've never done it before but I work for a technology reseller and know I can get RAM and hard drives cheap. The only thing is I have no idea what I need. Is there a good site that can walk me through it? I would want a tower case that can hold 5-8 hard drives
I too have a server with this exact build of case, it's an i7 2600k@4GHZ, 8GB Ram, with 6 WD RED 3TB, I am starting to migrate things to my nas to offset media storage. The raid 5 in the server is for tv shows only now and the Synology Nas has all my bluray rips.
I built a dedicated Plex box with Haswell refresh i3 core and 4gb ram. It can transcode 2 1080i mkvs and 1 480p movie to multiple devices. I spent about 485 dollars on the build. I have a Lacie 1tb NAS with mp4s and mkv’s. Both devices are plugged in a gigabit switch that is plugged into a router gigabit port. Connecting them like that let’s the switch do the network switching and router to manage everything else. Planning on adding a Netgear ReadyNAS with 6tb of drive space. Did not see need for an i7 CPU unless I am streaming to about 10 simultaneous streams.
I really like the Fractal tower case. It holds a lot of drives and is quiet.
For those of you that built your own system, how hard is it to install the motherboard and other parts? The only experience I have is installing RAM, replacing a hard drive, and adding a video card to my HP PC. Are there videos that can walk you through setup?
I went for the Fractal Define XL full tower case, quiet fans, lots of space, 4x5.25 bays and 8x3.5 bays and i7 cpu 18GB ram running server 2012.
If I ever run out of hard drive bays I would probably plug a 8 bay usb 3 enclosure into it.
The i7 is overkill for my plex setup but I run a lot of other virtual machines on the system as well.
I like the Fractal Design cases too, I just purchased the Define R4 for my NAS
I really like the Fractal tower case. It holds a lot of drives and is quiet.
For those of you that built your own system, how hard is it to install the motherboard and other parts? The only experience I have is installing RAM, replacing a hard drive, and adding a video card to my HP PC. Are there videos that can walk you through setup?
For me it's really easy but I have been doing it for years, I don't think you should have any problem from the above that you have already done, I would think installing the CPU might be the trickiest bit for for you but if you take your time and don't rush should all work out fine.
I like the Fractal Design cases too, I just purchased the Define R4 for my NAS
Sent from my HTC One_M8 using Tapatalk
Yeah they are excellent cases, well build and very quiet, I have two of them running in my study and you can hardly hear them, big difference from the cheap no name cases I was using before, the filters on the air intakes also do a great job of keeping the case clean, previously I had problems with the cpu cooler clogging up with dust.
This is an old thread, but I came across and other will probably as well from time to time.
Here is how I do it atm.
I host a dedicated server with an esxi, having plex running in a vm.
As I share the server with some others, the costs come down to an affordable monthly price. some hoster offer to rent reused/refurbished servers for an even lower price.
but, even if i would not be able to share it with others, i would prefer to rent a dedicated bare metal. You get high performance parts for a good price and keep your electricity bill low. plus you don’t have a pc somewhere at home making noises when turned on.
and it is 24/7/365 available. with a decent internet connection at home, you will not notice that you stream your stuff from the outside.
I used to have plex running on an old PC at home. But as the Hardware was kinda old and … crap … i ended up with some bad user experiences. but caused by the crappy hardware, not necessarily the software. So I had to decide between spending a decent amount of money for some new ‘just ok’ hardware or just rent someones really good one.
