I’m rebuilding my rack very soon & I thought of slapping a Plex server into my AV rack. I currently own (8) 8TB red WD drives from my previous Plex server that couldn’t fit into an av rack due to chassis. I will also be putting into my rack a 2U rack mountable pc to display on my living room tv with a wireless keyboard and mouse.
Ideally I’d like the 8 HDDs to be able to have 4 dedicated for movie storage and then the other 4 for documents, photos, etc.
With this in mind, my question is what would be the best solution for all of this? Run Plex on the pc or get a dedicated NAS to run Plex? Also, I’ve looked into the cheaper synology ones that just sit on a desk and I could put a shelf on the rack but it’s not as clean as a rack mountable solution. The other problem is ideally I’d like to stay under 1000$ if anyone has any recommendations.
You need to start with “what operating system am I most comfortable with.”
That will determine the directions you can go. If $$$ is the major determining factor, a free OS like Linux or TrueNAS might be an option since you can reuse older hardware. I use TrueNAS because the OS & the ZFS file system is rock solid, but it does have a learning curve.
Research and read to figure out what fits you best.
If you want to stay under $1000 then a higher end nas is not for you. That isn’t to say you couldn’t build one though. There are plenty of rack mount cases around with hot swap bays, backplanes, and power supplies already…
Just stick to an intel that supports quicksync whether bought or built, and you’re golden. If you want / need more transcodes, make sure it can take a discrete gpu as well.
I agree rack mount looks nicer / cleaner. But personally am using a Qnap tvs-h1288x for my plex server that I’ve poured to much money into… . Well over budget but a very nice beasty
