Hi all,
Everything up and running now and sorted with nice artwork. I am probably going to be running out of space in the next few months and was wondering what the best solution is. At the moment I am using the mycloud ex2100 for all my needs. But my needs at the moment are limited to local steaming of 1080p with no transcoding. This is going to increase when I move out and I will need it to be able to handle around 3-4 1080p streams at a time both local and remote. It will still not need to transcode as i usually make sure my files play friendly. Firstly, I do not know if the ex2100 is able to handle this, do you think it could?
And more importantly what should I upgrade to, they have the ever so slightly more powerful ex4100, but they have now released the extremely more powerful pr4100, which is unfortunately a lot more expensive! Would you say the ex4100 could handle my needs or should I try and find the extra money for the pr4100? Or would it be better to go for another brand nas? The Other option would be a pc with das, but if I went down that route I would need a small yet powerful pc that wasn’t obtrusive. Thanks in advance 
I recently built my own headless NAS server from scratch. It has 18TB storage space from 4 x WB REDs with the potential to expand up to 12 hard drives. It uses in Intel Pentium G4400 CPU which only consumes 20w power under load and still powerful enough to do 1080p transcoding. Using Ubuntu Server 16.04, I am able to set up Plex, deluge and SAMBA all nicely working together.
Well, those of us with experience have learned that you don’t go with anything less than 6-bays so you can do RAID6/RAIDZ2 reasonably. Otherwise you’re just giving yourself a false sense of security. Do it right, or don’t bother and save your money (and make sure you have good backups for when drives inevitably die).
Anyone suggesting that 2-4 bays with RAID5 or anything of the “fake” RAID solutions are sufficient hasn’t actually had to deal with real drive failure yet (or their not aware of the true source of their occasional data gremlin and can’t connect the dots). The odds are not in their favor, however.
@sremick said:
Well, those of us with experience have learned that you don’t go with anything less than 6-bays so you can do RAID6/RAIDZ2 reasonably. Otherwise you’re just giving yourself a false sense of security. Do it right, or don’t bother and save your money (and make sure you have good backups for when drives inevitably die).Anyone suggesting that 2-4 bays with RAID5 or anything of the “fake” RAID solutions are sufficient hasn’t actually had to deal with real drive failure yet (or their not aware of the true source of their occasional data gremlin and can’t connect the dots). The odds are not in their favor, however.
Well, if you only serve media files on your NAS, RAID6 or ZFS is probably a bit over kill. They would be useful if you use your NAS for backup jobs. Node 304 is cool though.
@wildkeny said:
Well, if you only serve media files on your NAS, RAID6 or ZFS is probably a bit over kill. They would be useful if you use your NAS for backup jobs. Node 304 is cool though.
Not really. If you’re trying to do RAID5, then obviously you care enough about “RAID” to fuss with it to that degree to even get RAID5. The point is that RAID5 in 2016 is pointless, and makes people feel like they are protecting their data when they really aren’t. One drive’s worth of redundancy doesn’t cut it when you’re looking to resilver a 1+ TB when it comes to surviving an URE during rebuild. The MTBE is just too low and you have no redundancy at that point. So again: RAID6/RAIZ2 or don’t bother.
But I imagine most here haven’t deal with the raw number of RAID5 arrays that some of us have to see the stats play out first-hand. So instead they gullibly invest in and depend on a RAID5 array, partially based upon the assurances of non-professionals giving their anecdotal experience with their single RAID5 array that they’ve just had a few years.
@sremick said:
@wildkeny said:
Well, if you only serve media files on your NAS, RAID6 or ZFS is probably a bit over kill. They would be useful if you use your NAS for backup jobs. Node 304 is cool though.
Not really. If you’re trying to do RAID5, then obviously you care enough about “RAID” to fuss with it to that degree to even get RAID5. The point is that RAID5 in 2016 is pointless, and makes people feel like they are protecting their data when they really aren’t. One drive’s worth of redundancy doesn’t cut it when you’re looking to resilver a 1+ TB when it comes to surviving an URE during rebuild. The MTBE is just too low and you have no redundancy at that point. So again: RAID6/RAIZ2 or don’t bother.
But I imagine most here haven’t deal with the raw number of RAID5 arrays that some of us have to see the stats play out first-hand. So instead they gullibly invest in and depend on a RAID5 array, partially based upon the assurances of non-professionals giving their anecdotal experience with their single RAID5 array that they’ve just had a few years.
I don’t have any RAID set up…
Thanks for the replies people, definitely some stuff a bit technical for me but alwayd up for a challenge! That looks like quite an expensive system how much would something like that set one back?
@craigyy92@gmail.com said:
Thanks for the replies people, definitely some stuff a bit technical for me but alwayd up for a challenge! That looks like quite an expensive system how much would something like that set one back?
It is quite cheap if you don’t plan to do ZFS or RAID. ZFS is a fascinating file system to have but requires a LOT of memories. If you only plan to serve media files, it is honestly not worth the cost. You don’t need the fancy ECC memories either. The thing I care most for a 24/7 Plex server is its power consumption. Stick with (the latest) Intel for this very reason. My system only costs $250 excluding the hard drives. Here is the link: Part List - Intel Pentium G4400, Fractal Design Node 804 MicroATX Mid Tower - PCPartPicker
And its power consumption in idle in case you are curious (35w with 4 x hard drives intalled): 
@wildkeny said:
It is quite cheap if you don’t plan to do ZFS or RAID. ZFS is a fascinating file system to have but requires a LOT of memories. If you only plan to serve media files, it is honestly not worth the cost. You don’t need the fancy ECC memories either.
You don’t need ECC memory with ZFS either, it’s simply recommended. As for RAM, well, it likes RAM, but how much is all down to your workload. Heck, on my multi-purpose box I’ve capped it to a maximum of 6 GB of RAM and it’s behaving fine.
In my case, the “overhead” of going ZFS was about 10% extra on the price of the RAM for ECC, since my board and processor supported it. I’d already been planning on going for 16 GB of RAM anyway.
@MacGriogair said:
@wildkeny said:
It is quite cheap if you don’t plan to do ZFS or RAID. ZFS is a fascinating file system to have but requires a LOT of memories. If you only plan to serve media files, it is honestly not worth the cost. You don’t need the fancy ECC memories either.You don’t need ECC memory with ZFS either, it’s simply recommended. As for RAM, well, it likes RAM, but how much is all down to your workload. Heck, on my multi-purpose box I’ve capped it to a maximum of 6 GB of RAM and it’s behaving fine.
In my case, the “overhead” of going ZFS was about 10% extra on the price of the RAM for ECC, since my board and processor supported it. I’d already been planning on going for 16 GB of RAM anyway.
I never said that ECC is a requirement for ZFS. I mentioned ECC because a lot of people starting to build their own servers will inevitably look into ECC. But as I said, it is not really worth the cost for home media server use (Keep in mind that the cost increase does not only comprise of the RAM itself, but also the motherboard and CPU that supports ECC). As for ZFS, it does require more RAMs compared to other file systems to behave nicely. You can throw 4GB RAMs to a headless server using EXT4 and it will live happily ever after, not so true for ZFS.
@MacGriogair said:
You don’t need ECC memory with ZFS either, it’s simply recommended.
“Need” here is open to definition I suppose. Will FreeNAS boot without ECC RAM? Sure. But if you care so little about your data that you’d skimp a few bucks on ECC RAM, why are you even bothering with ZFS, FreeNAS and RAID to begin with then? It’s illogical.
And the folks on the FreeNAS support forums won’t even give you the time of day if you skip on ECC RAM. “Recommended” doesn’t do it justice enough.
Don’t disagree at all - if you care about your data then ECC RAM _should _be in the same bucket as RAID, offsite backups and verifying your backups. Pragmatically however some folks may not be able to afford doing everything right, I’d rather they had something rather than nothing 
If you aren’t transcoding you don’t need much power at all. Even with 3 streams transcoding i’ve used some old computers with no problem. Honestly i’d just use the PC you already have. You certainly don’t need server hardware.
I’m just using my desktop PC with a drobo attached. I’ve now done 5 transcoded streams without issue.
