Currently I have one server with multiple drives that hosts my PMS and stores the media. I am thinking about buying a NAS for multiple reasons including moving all my media off my PMS and putting it on NAS. I would still use my current PMS as the server, but I am wondering if there is going to be any “slowness” in accessing the data off of the NAS is I move the media there?
I usually have 3-4 transcode streams max at one te that currently are handled without a hiccup. I am worried that moving the media from internal storage to a NAS may cause some issues. What are your thoughts?
It very much depends on the type of NAS you buy, but if you are not playing BluRay remuxes (~30-65 mbps each), then a mid-range NAS should easily be able to handle your kind of load.
Make sure to wire up both Plex server and the NAS. Never use WiFi for this type of thing.
I plan on buying a Sinology DS415 and utilizing link aggregation to help, but didn’t want to buy the NAS and a new managed switched if I will run into issues with concurrent streams.
As long as the single link is GBit Ethernet, you won’t need link aggregation for this type of load.
(1000 mbps link speed vs. 4 x 60mbps per movie stream still leaves plenty of margin)
I seriously doubt that that model of NAS would be able to benefit greatly from Link Aggregation, unless you have many concurrent streams happening or a lot of secondary IO taking place. (file transfers, downloading etc.) The CPU is a little on the weak side for running PMS on it, but that’s not your intention, so enough on that…
Looking at the reviews on the NAS it’s a fairly good, stable device, and one that can be used quite well for the tasks you intend it for.
Adding new media may or may not work correctly. The PMS machine might not detect that there is new media on the NAS, so you will need to set up periodic scans. This could also impact network traffic, as the media needs to be analyzed so PMS knows how to stream it. Making Index files could interfere with other activity, too.
One thing to think about when setting up the NAS as a storage device for any Plex streaming that most people don’t think of is: You are doubling up on all network traffic as a result of a single stream. so a 20Mbps stream could easily produce a 40Mbps network activity. And if the actual media is in a higher bitrate and transcoded down to something else, you still have to transfer that higher bitrate to the PMS machine so it can transcode the media to the lower rate.
That could turn into a lot of network traffic, which at least is all local to the LAN and not WAN. (You aren’t paying for bandwidth locally, except for power to keep them all running.)
There are a number of people that run PMS this way, but if your network starts having issues, this would be one likely spot to come to for troubleshooting. It’s nothing to worry about, just a potential.
@MikeG6.5 said:
I seriously doubt that that model of NAS would be able to benefit greatly from Link Aggregation, unless you have many concurrent streams happening or a lot of secondary IO taking place. (file transfers, downloading etc.) The CPU is a little on the weak side for running PMS on it, but that’s not your intention, so enough on that…Looking at the reviews on the NAS it’s a fairly good, stable device, and one that can be used quite well for the tasks you intend it for.
Adding new media may or may not work correctly. The PMS machine might not detect that there is new media on the NAS, so you will need to set up periodic scans. This could also impact network traffic, as the media needs to be analyzed so PMS knows how to stream it. Making Index files could interfere with other activity, too.
One thing to think about when setting up the NAS as a storage device for any Plex streaming that most people don’t think of is: You are doubling up on all network traffic as a result of a single stream. so a 20Mbps stream could easily produce a 40Mbps network activity. And if the actual media is in a higher bitrate and transcoded down to something else, you still have to transfer that higher bitrate to the PMS machine so it can transcode the media to the lower rate.
That could turn into a lot of network traffic, which at least is all local to the LAN and not WAN. (You aren’t paying for bandwidth locally, except for power to keep them all running.)
There are a number of people that run PMS this way, but if your network starts having issues, this would be one likely spot to come to for troubleshooting. It’s nothing to worry about, just a potential.
Thanks for the good info. I know link aggregation is probably not needed, but configuring it and using it is going to be a good learning experience and definitely won’t hurt.
I am going to be upgrading my network soon and will have gigabit to every device and a switch that can handle it. Hopefully that will help with traffic as well, my thought again will be it won’t hurt and more learning experience. I also plan on putting the NAS, PMS, and my local streaming devices on 1 VLAN to help contain that traffic as well.
