PMS location with QNAP 453Be as network drive

[leoleung19]

Hello All,

I recently bought a QNAP 453Be, I plan on using it as network storage drive only to store all my movies. It will not be use for transcoding. I will install the PMS on one my of desktop to do all the heavy duty work.
I will connect the QNAP directly to my router.

Here are couple questions:
I’m currently have two desktop in my house, one in the basement and one in my office.

Right now, I have all my movies store in the basement desktop, it has the PMS installed in it. This desktop also directly connected to my projector, it does direct play all the movies.

Since I’m moving all my movies to the network drive, what does it matter on which PC I should install the PMS?

I would prefer to run my PMS on my office desktop, where I can organize my movie and run the plex player on my basement desktop. For this setup, will it affect the Plex performance? (If both desktop is equal)

[tom80H]

That sounds like quite a common setup.
Not sure what troubles you expect…

The only potential issue I see is a poor network…
In your setup, the connection between your router and the desktop hosting your PMS needs to have sufficient bandwidth (and stability) to deal with:

1. loading the actual media file from the NAS
2. sending the media stream to your client(s)

That being said… again… that’s pretty much the standard setup you’ll use when working with a dedicated Plex server and network storage. Which means you should be fine

[leoleung19]

Thank you for the quick reply.

If I use the above setup, how does it work when using Plex Player (client) on local network?

Does the data go thru the PMS first, then from the PMS to my network storage? Or does it go direct between PMP to network storage?

[tom80H]

@tom80H

In your setup, the connection between your router and the desktop hosting your PMS needs […] to deal with:

1. loading the actual media file from the NAS
2. sending the media stream to your client(s)

Or from your client’s perspective:

1. client requests the playback of a media item in a library
2. the server verifies if the given video can be played natively or needs transcoding
3. the server loads the video file from your NAS
4. the server prepares the media for streaming (depending on #2)
5. the server sends the media stream to your client

All communication goes through the server as Plex does not just hand down the file location to the client.

[leoleung19]

Thank you very much for your help.

All my connection will be thru hardwire ethernet. Do you think that would be fast enough to handle all of the work? Does physical distance matter?

[tom80H]

Wired connections are definitely preferable.
In a common setup you should be fine.

While distance matters it should not impact your performance in such a common setup (w/ regards to Ethernet/LAN we’re talking about 100+ meters that will be ok)