Hello
I need to put together a Plex Media server. It needs to be powerful enough to handle 30 simultaneous streams of 720 & 1080p files.
I usually run Windows so that’s preferred. All the usual downloading apps etc
@jibreela said:
HelloI need to put together a Plex Media server. It needs to be powerful enough to handle 30 simultaneous streams of 720 & 1080p files.
I usually run Windows so that’s preferred. All the usual downloading apps etc
If there is any other discussion similar to this with the similar server requirements please share it. Thanks!
If you expect transcoding on all these 30 simultaneous streams, i suggest you ask for a super computer to China (ought ot be cheaper that the ones from IBM). If it’s direct Play you seek for all then almost any supported machine can handle that, if only your connection allow that much traffic.
What is your budget?
Allow $2-3k just for the CPU :))
And 100+mbps upload speed
If you really have a real big fast upload connection might be worth looking at 3,4, or 5 Nvidia shields as servers
@spikemixture said:
Allow $2-3k just for the CPU :))
For EACH CPU LOL
Every transcode is a stream but not every stream is a transcode.
If what you want is “30 simultaneous streams of 720 & 1080p files” which are all DirectPlay then a high-end Intel CPU might just work but it would be very dependent upon the available network bandwidth end-to-end compared to the collective bit-rates of all these concurrent streams you want to have. A modest 6 Mbps bit-rate times 30 is going to require some attention to network capacity especially if the Internet is involved.
Bottom line is I think you’re probably going to be asking something of Plex in regard to scale it wasn’t decided to handle. The hard limit of 100 individual Plex user IDs per server begs more questions.
AMD card + a few high-end CPU 
might work.
Nice internal network and good upload speed from your ISP.
Have the GFX do some streams with HW, the rest of the streams on CPU software.
but to make things simple run Cayars script on all your media make it streaming friendly = less resource used to stream.
I know my rig can do 15 internal streams with 5 external streams.
As a server I was looking at these specs: https://pcpartpicker.com/list/YHbM2R. But replace the E5-2697 with perhaps E5-2699 or E5-2679. Please advise me on what to change?
In your opinons, how many simultaneous streams can a machine like this handle?
@Ismelda - I currently run off a 2016 iMac dedicated plex server and I max at 6/7 streams.
@spikemixture - I would rather make a one time investment which will fulfill my requirements than continuously upgrade servers every few years. Once I purchase a server I will upgrade my internet to 500MB/s down and 100mb/s up.
How do I get multiple Nvidia Sheilds to work together using the same RAID 1 setup? Is that possible? Will the Sheilds automatically distribute the streaming load?
@dduke2104 - Out of the 30 streams I expect to direct stream around 8-10. Not more. Therefore a lot more processing power will be required. Bandwidth is easily attainable once I upgrade my internet speed.
@buba013 - you sound like a person who knows their stuff! How do I set up Cyaras script? I would love to test it out. Please be advised that I’m not a pro at coding or server related stuff.
What gig do you have? 15 internal could turn into 15 external with the sufficient upload bandwidth right?
@buba013 - you sound like a person who knows their stuff! How do I set up Cyaras script? I would love to test it out. Please be advised that I’m not a pro at coding or server related stuff.
https://forums.plex.tv/discussion/comment/931888/#Comment_931888
What gig do you have? 15 internal could turn into 15 external with the sufficient upload bandwidth right?
Yes it can.
- change the ram to ECC and double it, you have two CPU’s so two sticks of ram per CPU
- 10 Gb networking or get 4 port card and team it
- Managed switch that supports LACP
you maybe able to get away with 2 x E5-2660 v3 save 900-1100 per CPU at cost of what about 1k pass mark per CPU then add a nice AMD GFX for HW encoding
the saving on CPU could be put into networking or better internet speed.
I currently have 200 Mbps upload I haven’t tested how many I can run yet.
Current server 1x E5 2697v3 M.2
@buba013 said:
- change the ram to ECC and double it, you have two CPU’s so two sticks of ram per CPU
- 10 Gb networking or get 4 port card and team it
- Managed switch that supports LACP
you maybe able to get away with 2 x E5-2660 v3 save 900-1100 per CPU at cost of what about 1k pass mark per CPU then add a nice AMD GFX for HW encoding
the saving on CPU could be put into networking or better internet speed.
I currently have 200 Mbps upload I haven’t tested how many I can run yet.
Current server 1x E5 2697v3 M.2
Should I stick with the same PC Case? Or should I switch it to a server rack case? If your existing system can handle around 15-20 streams, best case scenario how much would this be able to handle?
What kind of networking should I be looking into? I am a noob at networking so bare with me! I was advised to buy a layer 3 network switch. What is that even used for?
Thanks mate
Question: are you adding storage to this server or is attached via network/USB?
if you plan on having 30 people transcode at once you may want to add more SSD storage for temp space
Get a managed switch that supports LACP (check compatibility lists).
You already have 2 network ports on that motherboard just team them if possible that would give you 2gb link from the server to the switch then do the same with the NAS if you are using one. (switch ports need to be configured )
Several servers can all pull from the one Storage location (NAS).
How you manage them I don’t know. But you could just set 5+ clients to each server
look into the hardware encoding version.
playing with it today 8 HW streams no issues but that was on a I7 4790S
@buba013 said:
Question: are you adding storage to this server or is attached via network/USB?
I was thinking of attaching a hard drive bay/rack to the server. This way I can expand my storage at any time with ease. Should I configure it with RAID 1 so that it can process data quicker? What would you recommend?
Could you perhaps provide links of network storage devices I require for this set up? Is the PC case I have picked good? Or should I go for the server rack cases?
@spikemixture said:
Several servers can all pull from the one Storage location (NAS).
How you manage them I don’t know. But you could just set 5+ clients to each server
This would probably be ideal because I could easily expand streaming requirements when required and for much lower costs. Let’s say I start with 5 NUC’s capable of handling 6 streams each. That’s 30. If later down the line I need to use more I can simply add more NUC’s etc. But managing is going to be difficult. That’s why I’m considering a much more powerful server.
Much appreciated @buba013 & @spikemixture
@jibreela said:
As a server I was looking at these specs: Part List - 2 x Intel Xeon E5-2697 V2, NZXT H630 ATX Full Tower - PCPartPicker. But replace the E5-2697 with perhaps E5-2699 or E5-2679. Please advise me on what to change?
@spikemixture - I would rather make a one time investment which will fulfill my requirements than continuously upgrade servers every few years. Once I purchase a server I will upgrade my internet to 500MB/s down and 100mb/s up.
How do I get multiple Nvidia Sheilds to work together using the same RAID 1 setup? Is that possible? Will the Sheilds automatically distribute the streaming load?@dduke2104 - Out of the 30 streams I expect to direct stream around 8-10. Not more. Therefore a lot more processing power will be required. Bandwidth is easily attainable once I upgrade my internet speed.
Transcoding 20 concurrent 1080p streams in SW might be possible with the right CPUs. My dual E5-2665 workstation managed to do that something close to that but you can forget about 4K/HEVC on-the-fly transcodes in SW. Disk space is cheap so an intelligent choice source of source media format and prudent use of PMS Optimize could still take the transcode count close to zero.
I don’t think there’s enough experience from the HW transcoding preview just yet for anyone to make a prediction. But no matter what, the more high-quality source media you attempt to transcode on any one server, the sooner you induce buffering.
Syncing multiple PMS boxes with multiple users - with or without shared storage - is going to be a ongoing administrative and management burden which I don’t recall seeing anyone actually accomplish.
@dduke2104 - What do you mean by HW and SW transcoding? What’s the difference?
Convince me this isn’t for commercial purposes
@sremick - It’s for friends and family
