I am currently thinking of buying a used Dell T20 or T30 with 1x Xeon E3-1225v3 or v5 respectively to use it as a Plex server and for hosting Windows and Linux VMs for my laptops, which are not top-notch anymore in terms of their power/hardware.
What do I expect?
A Plex server which is able to hw transcode, I donāt need a lot of streams in parallel, maybe 1-2, maximum 3 I guess. But it is 0-1 most of the time
I read that hw transcoding would work in an unraid docker, even if not officially supported. No x265 or 4k involved here.
With the VMs I was dreaming to have the laptops as some kind of thin clients while the server does the heavy lifting. Here merely office, surfing and other low power tasks are performed. Sometimes I cut and re-encoded somoe video files.
Tbh I donāt have any experience with unraid, but this solution sounded nice to me as an alternative to buy two new laptops. One of them is nearly impossible to upgrade, so already drive space is an issue.
Do I overrate the power of the Xeon when it comes to hosting the VMs + Plex side by side?
How would that work in terms of core distribution? Do I have to strictly set the respective cores to the respective tasks (VMs, Plexā¦) or can any ātaskā take as many power as it can?
You see I am a newbie in terms of (real) server use, but linux-skilled enough to get it up and running I guess⦠I sense that this solution might be a bit over the top for a small home use, but I just want other opinions before I put it aside
I am currently running a somewhat similar setup with VMware ESXI instead of Unraid on an old dual Xeon 6-Core server. Works great!
I cannot comment on hw-transcoding on Unraid (since I have no idea). Iād still be interested in reading about it. Could you provide a link to your source?
That depends. If you expect to get full performance while stressing both laptops and transcoding on Plex then yes, you do overestimate the power. But since you mention that the laptop will mostly do office tasks etc. and the Plex server wonāt serve more than a few client Iād say you should be fine.
While Iām not really familiar with Unraid, this is usually handled by the hypervisor. It will allocate resources to different VMs/tasks as it sees fit and/or as you tell it to. Most hypervisors allow you to set something like ācore affinityā, meaning that a particular VM will preferably use certain cores - but this probably wonāt be required in your case.
Iād say this can be a fun yet challenging project that will force you to learn a few things.
Well yes that is my main driver I guess
The hw transcoding post I found here:
All comes down to the CPU in the end, as I guess especially the old Xenons should have enough power for CPU-transcoding, but are not supported for hw transcoding at all. Same for power for other tasks in general.
With rack-type servers it seems as one could get old enterprise-type servers with 2x Intel Xeon X5675 (passmark 8400 each) and 16 GB RAM for <400 Euro. Than I only need a rack and a place for it
Good to hear that this would work in principle and thanks for your explanation.
You can get these things in tower configurations as well (eg. Fujitsu Primergy series). The power consuption is pretty bad though. I am running dual X5650s - thatās not really something you want have running 24/7 (I use it mostly for testing etc.). But yes, the parts are pretty cheap. I paid about 220⬠total.
Whether you want to buy used or new comes down to personal preference, price and availability. I got a good price on a used Fujitsu Primergy TX200 S6 and went for it.
I see, didnāt think about energy consumption yet. Is that is better with the E3 Xeons? I really have no clue
Edit:
I just estimated the costs using the tool from the Passmark page: one X5675 would cost me approximately 30⬠per year. That is manageable I would say.
Edit2:
I am more worried about the noise now, since such a thing might be too loud for my living roomā¦
And it seems there are no towers with dual Xeons, so I would need to live with half the power
30⬠per year sounds very conservative. My dual X5650 system uses 150 Watts - at idle. Running it idle 24/7 at 0.3 ā¬/kWh would cost me close to 400⬠a year.
I totally agree. These machines are not built to be silent (though you could build a silent custom server). Also remember that these systems output a lot of heat (especially under load).
Well the assumption was not mine, so 400 would be horror!
Heat and noise really seem a deal breaker for me
Would a NUC with an i7-8650U (4 cores, 8k passmark but with Quick sync) would be a fit for such a use case of mine? Not sure about the coresā¦
The NUC would be rather silent and energy efficient.
Keep in mind that this should all be much less of an issue with a T20/T30 instead of a used (dual) Xeon machine. According to this random post I found regarding power usage of a T20, it uses well below 100 Watts at idle (note that the guy is running 9 3,5" hard drives, which do drive up the usage). You can also set your server up to automatically shut down at night in order to save power.
I would say no. Hereās why: NUCs are not built for continuous loads and are prone to throttling under heavy CPU loads (such as transcoding) since they struggle to keep the CPU cool.
Hereās a few questions in order to help you find a solution:
Storage. How much space do you need for your media? Would you need to store it on the same server thatās running your PMS and laptop VMs?
Whatās your current PMS (Iām guessing you have one since you have a Plex Pass)?
Can your set up your PMS anywhere else than the living room?
Stay clear of rack mount if you want hw encoding⦠those servers tend to come with CPUs that have no iGPU support and they limit the startup wattage of the PCI-E slots to 25W meaning youāre stuck with Quadro p400 as anything else will trip it up without modifications.
The T series stuff on the other hand can be treated like a desktop.
That said I run unraid on a R610 dual L5640 w/48GB ram⦠itās quiet (server quiet) and uses less juice than itās brothers at the cost of a bit of horsepower. Most Iāve ran is 5 concurrent 1080p transcodes and it didnāt much complain⦠all the streams showed throttled so it was keeping up fine.
Thanks for bringing this up @melrhombus, but I was aware of that. For Plex I would either prefer a massive CPU like the (Dual) Xeons with enough power to do software transcoding or a smaller CPU with hw transcoding capability. That is why I thought of a NUC with i7 as an alternative.
@cetteup: You will laugh when you see my current setup
I run an Asus Chromebox with Celeron CPU as some āfile serverā with two external 3 TB HDDs attached. This sits quietly in my living room, next to my nVidia Shield TV which runs PMS. The Celeron canāt do any transcoding at all. If I would build/buy a new server, in my opinion it would make sense to also include the storage there, currently I use less than 3 TB (the other HDD is for backup) so this shouldnāt be too costly. I delete stuff after watching with the exception of some great movies and the Kidsā stuff.
Locationwise my hands are somewhat tied. The other options are the bedrooms (not a real option) or a storage room or the hallway, but both donāt have a network socket so I would either need to use DLAN (not an option for a server) or pull a cord. The latter wouldnāt be approved by the lady.
Budgetwise I wanted to spent less than one or two new laptops (600-1200ā¬), since I only came up with the idea of an unraid because of the VM capability to relieve the pressure of the laptops. Since I donāt do crazy server stuff, I donāt want to spend a fortune.
The longer I think about it, the more I have the feeling that such a server beast might be too much for me. My Plex usage is not ultra high, I often just watch TV or Netflix and I donāt download. The laptop usage is comparable, maybe some hours per week my wife and/or I do some little ātasksā so the server would most of the time sit around doing nothing. Additionally, I am satisfied with the Shield as PMS due to itās hardware transcoding capability.
So my alternative to the server would be to throw out my wifeās laptop, buy a new one and keep mine until it dies, leaving the rest of the setup as it is. Not as fun as building a server, but maybe more reasonable. Any other alternatives that I miss? NAS, NUC or anything more living room friendly?
According to this support article regarding hardware acceleration, there are some WD NASs that support it. The two-bay one (WD My Cloud Pro PR2100) goes for about 650⬠with two 4TB HDDs. That would get you off off those USB drives and you could set the NAS up in RAID1 for redundancy. However, this would mean that have to either move the PMS over to the NAS or keep it on the shield - which would mean you have a pretty overkill NAS being nothing but a fileserver.
The only downside with the PMS being on the Shield is, that the Shield is not designed as always-on server so there are hiccups and the PMS is not as readily āadjustableā as usual, e.g. Plugins donāt run at all, which is not so important anymore with them being killed
Well storage-wise I am not desperate for a new solution, the Chromebox with the external HDDs does a fairly ok job for my needs. Still, a standalone solution like a T20 or a NAS would be more advanced in terms of fail safety at least, with the advantage of having everything in one place/server.
By browsing these forums I know several other NAS which work with hw transcoding, mostly being sported by modern Celerons or i3-i7. Any chance to get VM usage out of one of these suckers?
I think some of the Synology DiskStations support VMs. The cheapest one to support both hw-transcoding and virtualization seems to be the DS218+ (just over 300⬠without HDDs), but donāt quote me on that.
Probably too cheap
I would spend a bit more if itās a decent solution I can live with for the next years.
Still I donāt know how that Celeron (Passmark ~1000) will behave with the VMs. The DS918+ is sported by a bit better Celeron (PM 2000), but it is not a rocket either.
Which brings me back to my NUC solution
For ~700⬠I would get a state-of-the-art i7-8650U with 9k Passmark and I could run my poor manās āNASā with the external drives on it, using unraid and VMs with more bang for the buck compared to the NAS. I know The NUC sucks compared to the Dual Xeon but it skyrockets compared to the lame NAS. Donāt you agree?
Still, the Xeons would give much better VM performance and are cheaper, but given the horrible energy cost (Germany is expensive when talking electricity) I would accept the NUC for itās more living room friendly form-factor and much lower energy costs. i7 should be also ok for VMs, at least that is what I got from reading.
Haha that is what I originally thought about
Problemo is that she uses some Windows specific software from time to time (e.g. she sticks to MS Office), otherwise I would have installed her Linux to get rid of her space problem. So she would need a decent machine for that. On the other hand the battery of her laptop is completely wasted why she would want a new one anywaysā¦
Have you considered a custom build at all? A Micro ATX system with something like an i3-8100 should do just fine. The i3 has 4 cores, Quick Sync and both VT-x and VT-d (virtualization features). Throw in 8-16 gigs of RAM, an SSD plus a 3-4TB NAS drive in there and you got yourself a rig that is somewhat living room compatible, that has lots of flexibility and that will have proper cooling (so it wonāt throttle like a NUC would under load). Also, you wonāt have a nest of cables with a NUC plus several USB hard drives.
I would stick a cheap GPU in there just to save on possible headaches⦠funny things can happen when two VMs try to use the same GPU and some BIOSes are dicks and disable iGPU when PCI-E is in use so look out for that.