What should I use to run Plex Media Server?

General Discussions
1

Hiya,

I’m fairly new to Plex and haven’t posted in the forums before - hopefully, I’ve put this is the right place! I also apologise for the wall of text below.

I’m not completely inept when it comes to technology but I’m not far off.

I recently decided to digitise my DVD/Blu-Ray library. I’m in the process of ripping all of these and have already signed up for Plex Pass.

At the moment I am using my 5-year-old Dell laptop (with Win 10 OS and Core i5 processor) to host Plex Media Server as well as store all my media. I have an Xbox One and have managed to successfully set that up with Plex and have had no issues with streaming the content I currently have.

However, the laptop is the only one I have and I use it as my main PC. I also have a fairly huge film/TV collection and I feel pretty certain I will run out of space on my laptop by the time I’ve added the lot (I have about 500gb left).
I would like to find a suitable alternative before this becomes a problem. I also would like to have something that I could leave on all the time. I would prefer to not have my laptop turned on 24/7.

Basically, my ideal system would have plenty of storage for my current collection with lots leftover for future film/tv additions or with the option to upgrade the storage at a later date. Ideally, it would be able to handle 2-3 users at once as I would like to be able to share this with my family and friends (although if this drastically limits my options then I can live without that). And as an inexpensive as possible. I realise this might be a lot to ask!

All of my media is currently in mp4 format and I have no idea how important transcoding would be for me. I haven’t tried to access plex remotely yet but other than the Xbox one, it would be accessed remotely by ipads/iphones, Roku and potentially the odd Smart TV.

I’ve spent ages looking at the different options but it’s all a bit overwhelming and I don’t want to buy something only to find out that I’ve made the wrong choice.

Initially, I thought that the NVIDIA Shield Pro seemed like a good option, as it’s an all in one - but the 500GB storage won’t be enough for me and I don’t think you can add much extra to that? Correct me if I’m wrong! I’ve also seen a few people discussing performance/bug issues with the Shield.

I looked at NAS servers but I understand that although these are great for storage, they aren’t so great at hosting the plex server. Also, it seems like the best NAS servers for plex are pretty expensive and I can’t really afford that at the moment.

I’m thinking that an Intel NUC might be the way to go but there are so many and they don’t seem easily available over here in the UK. I was looking at something like this:
http://www.intel.com/content/www/us/en/products/boards-kits/nuc/kits/nuc5i3ryh.html

To those who use something similar, do you think this would work for me? Is an i3 processor enough or should I be looking at i5? I understand I’d need to buy storage that would go with this. Is there a limit to how much storage I could add?

Any and all advice would be much appreciated! I don’t want to go ahead and buy something like this if there’s a better option out there for me.

Thanks, guys!!

2

depends for what you want to use, i personally have a Dell Inspiron 5040 (dual core) as server, for personal use and sharing with some friends is look to be ok, i have a external HDD 2 TB that i find it on promotion on TESCO some time ago. if you want to run some tests pm and you will see how my server perform

3

I have a bunch of 2.5" 4TB and 2TB drives hanging off a cheap Lenovo laptop. I let the drives be spun down by Windows as per normal in the hope it lessens wear. I do no transcoding right now but I have a miniPC i7 on order to act as a drop in replacement and that will do both on the fly and optimised versions for me.

My logic behind not having a NAS with RAID or any other backup is that all my rips are from discs that will be stored away. Any major failure and I have to spend a week or so re-ripping a drive’s worth of films/TV series. I have had two minor drive failures on much older drives and in both cases I could recover 90%+ of the contents. Given the video files are so large it’s much easier to drop replacements in for these than a system where I may have lost hundred of files.

As an aside I keep my Plex metadata on a 120GB SSD - it was a simple 128GB USB but that failed after not long, lesson learnt.

I would also note that I only run Windows as it appears to be able to cope with many more USB HDDs than Linux. I would prefer a UNIX-like OS for this, but I haven’t yet had the time or inclination to dig into the minutiae of Linux to see where the kernel memory / resource limits are set.

4

I have a more traditional approach to my PMS.
I’m running Windows Server 2016 on a custom Dual CPU Xeon X5650 server.
My storage is mostly done through an Adaptec RAID card with three mirrored arrays (6TB, 3TB, and 1TB).

I’ve never had issues with CPU bottlenecking (unless transcoding PGS subs).
But my setup isn’t exactly the most cost effective way of doing it.

A lot of people use a NAS for the RAW storage and use another device (laptop, PC, etc.) as the PMS, and just use file shares to connect the NAS to the PMS.
This would be an effective way because you can scale the NAS or drop in a new PMS without much downtime.

If you’re going to be transcoding the PLEX recommendation is a passmark score of 2000 for a 10Mb 1080p stream, so you can gauge the effectiveness of anything you’re looking at against that.

A PLEX media server can be whatever you like it to be; it’s all down to your preferences and what you can afford.

5

Plenty of posts here on What to use as PMS.
My suggestion hasn’t changed for a year or so.
Get a 4bay Synology or qnap NAS with an intel CPU.
You can put any mix of drives in initially
If it is too much - wait until you can afford one.
Then down the track if the NAS cannot handle your streaming buy a NUC to be the server and keep the nas as storage.

6

I’ve got an HP Microserver running OpenMediaVault with 4 drives for data. If you’re in the UK, the HP servers are regularly available with cashback. My Plex server runs on an Intel NUC i5, which happily handles everything I throw at it.

7

Forget about sinking money in hardware. If you have a decent Internet connection the obvious solution is Plex Cloud. Try it out with the 14-day free trial of G Suite for Business which gives you unlimited storage on Google Drive (the 1TB limit for a single user is not enforced).
https://support.plex.tv/hc/en-us/articles/226825168-FAQ-Plex-Cloud?mobile_site=true

My experience with Plex Cloud is that performance is great especially transcoding. It’s crazy to shell out for hardware especially when you are ripping your own movies so already have the discs as backups.

8

Thanks for all the useful suggestions/comments!

I had looked into Plex Cloud and gave it a try with the 1TB of OneDrive storage that is included with my office 365 subscription, but it took about 3 hours to upload one movie. I’ll look into G Suite for Business to see if that works any better.
For whatever reason I prefer the idea of owning the hardware instead of relying on a cloud service but it could be a temporary solution.
It also hadn’t occurred to me to get a cheap second hand laptop and a few external hard drives for the server and storage until I’m at a point that I can afford a better piece of equipment, such as a NAS and/or NUC.

9

Use rclone to upload. It’s much faster than the web interface for ACD or Google Drive or OneDrive. If you are ripping your movies one by one then 2-3 hours per movie to upload is probably pretty much keeping pace with the rate that you can rip them. You can always batch them up & upload overnight.

10

I have read that google is/are breaking rclone on gsuite!

11

Another option, depending on your skill level, can indeed result in a NAS that can host the Plex server too. See my setup for an idea (there’d be tweaks if you were to order up-to-date hardware), read up on FreeNAS, and feel free to stop by the FreeBSD sub-forum if you have questions…

12

You sound like a candidate for a NAS. They comes in all shapes and sizes. If I was starting from scratch today, I’d go with QNAP, Synology or FreeNAS (do it yourself).

13

You’re a Plex Pass user so you’re entitled to use Plex Cloud. Get your computer setup for home use. Setup rclone (free and simple) and get yourself a Google Drive unlimited account.

Upload your media to Google Drive as a backup (in case you ever lose a disk) then setup your Plex Cloud to point to the GDrive. Now you have a backup server or a server you can share with a few friends that won’t tie up your internet connection on every use. So a hybrid.

Plus if something ever happens to a disk or computer you have something to use while you fix the problem. Always a good option to have even if it’s not your main server.

14

Welcome to the forums! :slight_smile:
You’ve made a good decision in choosing Plex.

15

@spikemixture said:
I have read that google is/are breaking rclone on gsuite!

No, rclone works fine on Google Drive. However Amazon have banned all 3rd-party apps that aren’t approved by them so rclone no longer works with Amazon Cloud Drive

16

I think using google drive as a backup is a good idea! I will definitely be getting a NAS down the line but for now I think using my home pc for personal use and google drive as a back up might be the best temporary solution.

17

@GabriellaRose5 said:
I think using google drive as a backup is a good idea! I will definitely be getting a NAS down the line but for now I think using my home pc for personal use and google drive as a back up might be the best temporary solution.
If the files will be on Google Drive then do yourself a favour & try out Plex Cloud. I really think this is a game changer as it liberates you from the hardware for Plex. Performance is great especially transcoding. As you already have Plex Pass & Google Drive it won’t cost you a penny to test it out.

18

Amazon just pull the rug out from under us. :slight_smile:

If you’re not using encryption of your files you can probably switch to an “approved” app to still use the amazon drive. If you were using rclone with encryption you have a bit more work ahead of you to continue use of Amazon.

Carlo