Well, I provided some detailed info in the form of logs and exact failure modes over a month ago and since then I have not heard a peep from Plex about what was happening and what I should do in the future.
About two weeks ago things improved and I was sometimes able to play things on my Rokus (Most would fail after some playback) and my Shield became almost usable.
I do note that failures happen more often when transcoding is happening but even direct play fails at times.
Since Plex has provided no guidance or further requests and since I do not speak Plex-i-log very fluently I have not pulled a log in some time.
It is at the point where I am waiting for Plex to provide some info and guidance and I only use Plex Cloud enough daily to assure myself that nothing has changed. I am no longer uploading as I have enough on Amazon to test with and uploading more is simply a waste of time and effort.
BTW: Most of what I have on Amazon are simple MP4 files that should direct play on all my devices. They still fail after some time or some number of playbacks.
As I said “Plex Cloud” is not even close to being ready.
Finally: I do not think that transcoding is the only part of Plex Cloud that hits Amazons “rate limiting” feature. (Rate limiting has to do with number of requests per unit of time) But only Amazon and Plex know for sure as I have not heard anything more than generalities or double talk gobbledygook from either major entity involved. Communication has been worse than nonexistent.
Shutting down my Plex server will save me about $40 a month in electricity which would be great!
What the hell kind of server do you have that it costs $40 per month to run? Crap, all my machines don’t burn $40 added together (2 esxi, 3 NAS, 2 desktops). Your electricity costs must be really high.
$40 is about £32. Typical electricity cost here is about £0.15/KWh. So £32 buys you about 213 KWh. There are about 720 hours in a month, so 213KWh/720h ~ 300W average load.
For a decently specced machine running 24/7 that doesn’t seem particularly outrageous.
My 400 W server actually draws a maximum of 60-100 watts when fully loaded by transcoding. That is it does not even seem to come close to the power rating on its power supply.
From: http://michaelbluejay.com/electricity/computers.html
For a real energy hog:
For example, let’s say you have a big high-end computer with a gaming-level graphics card and an old CRT monitor, and you leave them on 24/7. That’s about 200 watts x 24 hours x 365 days/yr = 1,752,000 watt-hours, or 1752 kilowatt-hours. If you’re paying $0.36 per kWh, you’re paying $631 a year to run your computer. (In California, PG&E’s highest tier is $0.33/kWh, and the average in Hawaii is $0.36/kWh. source)
That works out to about $52.58/month. Turning off the monitor in that setup probably saves $10.00 or so. that gets it down to ~$42.00/month.
So that means the $40.00/month is not unreasonable. BUT a server does not need or benefit from a lot of the fancy features listed so the actual cost is, probably, less than any of the calculations. My per month cost for my server (including all the attached USB drives) is probably $25.00 -$30.00/month but, even then, shutting it down would be a good saving.
While that is a long term possibility I would not expect it in the near term. Plex cloud is just not ready and does not look to become ready any time soon.
Have you guys actually measured, for at least 24 hours, what the power usage of your machine(s) are? Check with a Kill-a-watt or something, again for at least 24 hours, and see what it estimates your usage.
@Elijah_Baley said:
My 400 W server actually draws a maximum of 60-100 watts when fully loaded by transcoding. That is it does not even seem to come close to the power rating on its power supply.
From: How much electricity does my computer use?
For a real energy hog:
For example, let’s say you have a big high-end computer with a gaming-level graphics card and an old CRT monitor, and you leave them on 24/7. That’s about 200 watts x 24 hours x 365 days/yr = 1,752,000 watt-hours, or 1752 kilowatt-hours. If you’re paying $0.36 per kWh, you’re paying $631 a year to run your computer. (In California, PG&E’s highest tier is $0.33/kWh, and the average in Hawaii is $0.36/kWh. source)
That works out to about $52.58/month. Turning off the monitor in that setup probably saves $10.00 or so. that gets it down to ~$42.00/month.
So that means the $40.00/month is not unreasonable. BUT a server does not need or benefit from a lot of the fancy features listed so the actual cost is, probably, less than any of the calculations. My per month cost for my server (including all the attached USB drives) is probably $25.00 -$30.00/month but, even then, shutting it down would be a good saving.
While that is a long term possibility I would not expect it in the near term. Plex cloud is just not ready and does not look to become ready any time soon.
My server dubs as a high end gaming rig that is over clocked and over volted with liquid cooling, 3 monitors and 1500W power supply. I keep all the monitors off but with all the overclocking and 8HDD’s I have it is a power hog and it would be nice to just turn it on when I go to play games. I’m debating on just throwing my rig up in a data center and even doing the gaming via remote so I don’t have to deal with crappy Comcast as much and I can ditch my high end business internet.
@marcusreuss - So, at the rates mentioned, you are still under $4 per month to run that server. Given the specs the OP listed, I can see how you can get to $40 per month I guess, but yeah - I would definitely be looking at running something lower powered for a 24x7 PMS server. But I seriously doubt that machine listed is pulling 300-400watts idle or that it is busy all of the time - but it is a possibility.
I have a kill-a-watt and I’m pulling 400-500 watts constant at the outlet. I can take a picture.
It’s not just my PMS server(which is a 20 core monster) but a fanless switch, a Sophos rack mount 8 core router and like 3 cisco routers and 2 cisco switches…I’m working on my cisco certs. The cisco gear is 1/2 of my load.
Since my PMS server has BMC, I can track its dedicated load:
@zan79 said:
IMO, a preview of Plex Cloud should come with no transcoding capability at all. Everything should be forced to DirectPlay, both for playback and for sync (and thus sync shouldn’t be disabled as it is alleged to be at the moment), and content optimization should also be disabled. IMO, any and all transcoding should be excluded on Plex Cloud, simply because the resource requirements to have it enabled are simply too mind-bogglingly enormous.
I fully agree. I have all my stuff direct play and it’s to avoid the need for processing. If you have the bandwidth it works perfectly. I am sure Amazon has the bandwidth.
Anyone receive the new plex cloud invites? I’m still waiting for mine but I doubt I’ll get one now considering its been since September and not so much as a reply to my submission for an invite. I check my junk mail every day thinking the invite must have gotten sent there but nope nothing…
@klwolf2000 said:
Anyone receive the new plex cloud invites? I’m still waiting for mine but I doubt I’ll get one now considering its been since September and not so much as a reply to my submission for an invite. I check my junk mail every day thinking the invite must have gotten sent there but nope nothing…
I think they’ve found that the idea in principle is great but in practice it simply doesn’t work and providers of the cloud storage cannot serve the demand coupled with the cloud PMS not being able to provide sufficient transcoding.
I don’t see this beta taking off that quickly unless they make it a ‘direct play’ PMS only.
@klwolf2000 said:
Anyone receive the new plex cloud invites? I’m still waiting for mine but I doubt I’ll get one now considering its been since September and not so much as a reply to my submission for an invite. I check my junk mail every day thinking the invite must have gotten sent there but nope nothing…
I recieved mine yesterday, so yes they do still send out invites! @reddwarfcrew said:
I think they’ve found that the idea in principle is great but in practice it simply doesn’t work and providers of the cloud storage cannot serve the demand coupled with the cloud PMS not being able to provide sufficient transcoding.
I don’t see this beta taking off that quickly unless they make it a ‘direct play’ PMS only.
Yes i do think this will be in beta for a while, but it does work pretty good (far better than i imagined).
@klwolf2000 said:
Anyone receive the new plex cloud invites? I’m still waiting for mine but I doubt I’ll get one now considering its been since September and not so much as a reply to my submission for an invite. I check my junk mail every day thinking the invite must have gotten sent there but nope nothing…
I recieved mine yesterday, so yes they do still send out invites! @reddwarfcrew said:
I think they’ve found that the idea in principle is great but in practice it simply doesn’t work and providers of the cloud storage cannot serve the demand coupled with the cloud PMS not being able to provide sufficient transcoding.
I don’t see this beta taking off that quickly unless they make it a ‘direct play’ PMS only.
Yes i do think this will be in beta for a while, but it does work pretty good (far better than i imagined).
