I’m seeking some thoughts and opinions on an upgrade path for my Plex media server. It’s currently running on an Ubuntu 20.04 server with a disk array attached via USB 3.0. I’ve got ~3.5T of storage in the array and it’s starting to fill up. I also experience the occasional problem with transcoding overloading the server or some other process taking up too much CPU.
The most obvious (and cheapest) solution would be to swap out the four drives in the array and be done with it. However, I’m considering upgrading to a NAS solution to address the storage demands and to up the performance for the media server.
What might be my best upgrade solution here? It looks like Synology is the 500lb gorilla in the market. Would one of their platforms be the best choice? Or would it make sense to build something using, for example, Unraid? And what am I missing and/or need to be considering before pulling out the AmEx?
I realize there are a LOT of moving parts here and much of the feedback is likely to be subjective, but I’m interested in the collective hive mind’s thoughts here.
Here’s an interesting site I found: QNAP VS Synology: What Are the Differences & Which One Is Better. “If you built your own PC and want to make a lot of modifications or you need a NAS capable of transcoding Plex requirements into multiple devices, then the QNAP NAS may be better for you. If you don’t care much about technology, then Synology is an easy choice for you.”
I’ve got a QNAP and I’ve been quite happy with it. I’m currently running about a dozen virtual machines in it at once including multiple pfSense firewalls and advanced virtual networking and segmentation and it’s barely moving the CPU. With multiple network ports I’m able to connect different networks with different firewalls rules and VPNs and manage them all collectively through one of the virtual machines inside the NAS with users actively using some of them as well. It also runs containers and many other features that I’ve only started scratching the surface on. Oh, and Plex! It all depends on what you want it to do.
