Xeon Server Advice

General Discussions
1

Found a refurbished Xeon server which has 2x Xeon X5550 and 16GB of RAM.

Requirements:

  • I’ve only got 1080p content
  • Some content will be transcoded when requested and some will be Direct Play.
  • May start having 4K content soon.

Maximum of around 3-4 people using the server at the same time.

Do you think this server is capable of what I require or do you think it’s just going to use lots of electricity with two Xeon processors inside of it?

Any comments and suggestions will be helpful. Thanks :slight_smile:

cpubenchmark.net/cpu.php?cpu=Intel+Xeon+X5550+%40+2.67GHz&id=1300&cpuCount=2
ebay.co.uk/itm/142306615216

2

Should be OK for 3-4 people if you are not storing full bitrate BluRay remuxes.

Avoid VC-1 content if possible

Avoid HEVC content

4K - no chance for transcoding, only Direct Play with special, local clients
https://support.plex.tv/hc/en-us/articles/203810286-What-media-formats-are-supported-

@“Jacob Tammadge” said:
Found a refurbished Xeon server which has 2x Xeon X5550 and 16GB of RAM.
“https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/142306615216”)

This thing will burn through electricity and make quite some noise. If you use it for ~3 years the savings on electricity may offset the higher price of a better suited computer.
(a single Core i7 CPU will have more processing power with lower electricity requirements than this 2 cpu machine)

3

If you have a good Internet connection before getting a dual Xeon space heater you really should look at Plex Cloud . It has a limit of three simultaneous transcodes which should suit most domestic arrangements. The only cost is Plex Pass plus $10/month for G Suite Business which gives you unlimited storage on Google Drive.

It’s not true that there is no chance of transcoding 4K media as Plex Cloud does an absolutely outstanding job of transcoding 4K. I have uploaded several 65GB 60Mbps 4K UHD Blu-ray rip & they happily play on all my devices (Roku 3, Roku Ultra, iPhone 6s Plus, Amazon Fire TV 4K, web app on my Retina MacBook Pro etc). They even play nicely on the iPhone on 3G/4G cellular when away from WiFi. Plex Cloud does all the transcoding without breaking a sweat or costing me a penny. I already had Plex Pass & a G Suite Business subscription so Plex Cloud literally costs me nothing.

Plex Cloud is a game changer. Anyone thinking of buying hardware for their own Plex Server should think again. provided you have a decent Internet connection Plex Cloud can provide a better Plex experience than local hardware & the cost saving is enormous.

4

@“Jacob Tammadge”, be sure to take a stroll through the Plex Cloud forum before coming to a conclusion about it…

5

@dduke2104 said:
@“Jacob Tammadge”, be sure to take a stroll through the Plex Cloud forum before coming to a conclusion about it.
By the very nature of support forums you will find people with problems rather than the vast majority like me who have Plex Cloud running without any problems.
Just try it out. It’s quick & easy & free if you use a 30-day trial of G Suite for Business with an existing Plex Pass. If you don’t already have Plex pass then you can punt $4.99 on a one month subscription. It’s really worth trying out Plex Cloud before making any commitment to hardware purchase as not only will it save a load of cash but Plex Cloud does a better job of transcoding than any hardware you purchase.

6

@nigelpb said:
If you have a good Internet connection before getting a dual Xeon space heater you really should look at Plex Cloud . It has a limit of three simultaneous transcodes which should suit most domestic arrangements. The only cost is Plex Pass plus $10/month for G Suite Business which gives you unlimited storage on Google Drive.

It’s not true that there is no chance of transcoding 4K media as Plex Cloud does an absolutely outstanding job of transcoding 4K. I have uploaded several 65GB 60Mbps 4K UHD Blu-ray rip & they happily play on all my devices (Roku 3, Roku Ultra, iPhone 6s Plus, Amazon Fire TV 4K, web app on my Retina MacBook Pro etc). They even play nicely on the iPhone on 3G/4G cellular when away from WiFi. Plex Cloud does all the transcoding without breaking a sweat or costing me a penny. I already had Plex Pass & a G Suite Business subscription so Plex Cloud literally costs me nothing.

Plex Cloud is a game changer. Anyone thinking of buying hardware for their own Plex Server should think again. provided you have a decent Internet connection Plex Cloud can provide a better Plex experience than local hardware & the cost saving is enormous.

Nigel obviously likes plex cloud as he posts this reply in many forums.
He is right you can get unlimited storage for $10 a month - even though the google setup page says you can’t .
What he forgot to mention was you need a domain of your own or you must buy one.
Next the trial is 2 weeks not 4.
I have a 100up and down connection and I reckon it will take 2 weeks to upload half of my library!
My brief experience Plex Cloud does not like subtitles to the point it won’t play until ST r turned off.
For me if I continue after the trial, Plex Cloud will only be used as a backup server. (but I can still use the unlimited storage to back up everything else)
Nigel says
"Plex Cloud can provide a better Plex experience than local hardware "
I say “no way!”

7

@spikemixture said:
Nigel obviously likes plex cloud as he posts this reply in many forums.

I do like Plex Cloud & as I haven’t invested thousands in hardware I don’t feel the need to justify my investment by dissing Plex Cloud. Plex Cloud may not suit some but in terms of the basic Plex operations of displaying & playing my collection of TV shows & movies it does an outstanding job for me. It’s simple enough for anyone to test Plex Cloud for minimal cost & anyone contemplating hardware purchase would be foolish to dismiss it without testing.

@spikemixture said:
Nigel says
"Plex Cloud can provide a better Plex experience than local hardware "
I say “no way!”

Plex Cloud evidently does a better job of transcoding 4K media than any hardware you can purchase.

8

for me only on direct stream works on some files most the time it fails.

all transcodes fail for me.

In time plex cloud will be usable. but it is far from that today.

I’m a 200\200 Mbps link and yes location plays a factor.

for me, it’s far from on par of any of my current local servers or my own managed VPS.

but if you want to transcode 4k without issue anything over 15k PassMark or hope cloud works for you, it doesn’t for me.

9

@nigelpb said:

@spikemixture said:
Nigel obviously likes plex cloud as he posts this reply in many forums.

I do like Plex Cloud & as I haven’t invested thousands in hardware I don’t feel the need to justify my investment by dissing Plex Cloud. Plex Cloud may not suit some but in terms of the basic Plex operations of displaying & playing my collection of TV shows & movies it does an outstanding job for me. It’s simple enough for anyone to test Plex Cloud for minimal cost & anyone contemplating hardware purchase would be foolish to dismiss it without testing.

@spikemixture said:
Nigel says
"Plex Cloud can provide a better Plex experience than local hardware "
I say “no way!”

Plex Cloud evidently does a better job of transcoding 4K media than any hardware you can purchase.

Firstly i did not mention transcoding 4k media.
I was commenting on your “better experience” statement. Local hardware = local software.

Is “Plex Cloud evidently” the name of your server?
And Plex Cloud has
No plugins
No subtitles.
No access to PMS folder.
No Channels.
Keeping the library updated is far from simple like home setup does.

I agree new plex users should give it a go.
And also if someone is going this path they likely have several TB of media and drives already!.
Also not everyone has a domain they can use.- so really not that simple to trial

10

@spikemixture said:

@nigelpb said:
Plex Cloud evidently does a better job of transcoding 4K media than any hardware you can purchase.

Firstly i did not mention transcoding 4k media.

@OttoKerner said “4K - no chance for transcoding, only Direct Play with special, local clients” in reference to local hardware whereas I pointed out that Plex Cloud does an outstanding job of transcoding 4K

I was commenting on your “better experience” statement. Local hardware = local software.

Is “Plex Cloud evidently” the name of your server?

Not sure what you mean here. Plex Cloud is the service offered by Plex.

And Plex Cloud has
No plugins
No subtitles.
No access to PMS folder.
No Channels.

None of the above matter to me. Plex Cloud does all the stuff that I need from Plex i.e. catalogue nicely & pull all the metadata for ripped Blu-rays & downloaded TV shows then play those media files. I don’t need subtitles & never have done. I need neither plugins nor Channels. I’m not sure why I access to PMS folder is important as I have never needed access when running PMS on my NAS.

Keeping the library updated is far from simple like home setup does.

I don’t see any real difference. You put media files into a folder just like you do on a local computer or NAS & Plex does its thing. There are in fact a variety of ways using a variety of tools to copy the media to the Plex folders e.g. mount as a local drive, use a Google Drive app, rclone, ftp etc

I agree new plex users should give it a go.
And also if someone is going this path they likely have several TB of media and drives already!.

Which is why I said that using Plex Cloud depends on a decent Internet connection. However even if it takes weeks or months to upload your library it is a one off operation & provides a useful backup of your media library. Going forward using a VPS seedbox or a service like Offcloud it’s possible to download media via torrents or Usenet directly to your Google Drive so cutting out the step of uploading from home.

Also not everyone has a domain they can use.- so really not that simple to trial

If you don’t already own a domain to use with G Suite for Business then currently GoDaddy offer domain registration for as little as 78p so that’s hardly a barrier.

11

Thanks guys for the suggestions to use Plex Cloud and G Suite. I’ll take a look into that. Does Google allow you to upload all you TV Shows and Movies or does Google show a DMCA notice? Seen a few posts on a few forums suggesting Google does show DMCA notices but then again, they might have illegally downloaded their content. Anyone uploaded all their TV Shows and Movies successfully?

12

@“Jacob Tammadge” said:
Thanks guys for the suggestions to use Plex Cloud and G Suite. I’ll take a look into that. Does Google allow you to upload all you TV Shows and Movies though or does it automatically remove them and show a Copyright Notice? Seen a few posts on a few forums suggesting Google does show Copyright Notices and removes a few files but then again, they might have illegally downloaded their content. Anyone uploaded all their TV Shows and Movies successfully?

Plenty of us are doing this. Google does not remove your files or “show a Copyright Notice” (not sure how this could even happen). Provided you are not sharing media files I don’t see that Google will care at all.

13

@“Jacob Tammadge” said:
Thanks guys for the suggestions to use Plex Cloud and G Suite. I’ll take a look into that. Does Google allow you to upload all you TV Shows and Movies or does Google show a DMCA notice?

Not ‘Yet’.

As soon as the MPAA figures out what is going on this game will change. The MPAA will contact Google/Other and threaten action. Google/Other won’t want to get into a battle with an entity with unlimited resources (even though they pretty much have unlimited resources themselves) so they will ‘bend’ to MPAA’s wishes and that will be the end of that.

Keeping your stuff ‘in house’ will continue to be the most sane way to carry on bidness as usual because law enforcement doesn’t want to get into the bidness of blowing front doors off the hinges to prosecute ‘citizens’ that just want to watch something from their media server on the TV in their living room.

As soon as you start putting your stuff into an ecosystem the MPAA can draw a bead on, taking out millions of ‘law breakers’ with one Mother Of All Bombs this great new thing comes to a screeching halt.

Expect it to happen, know it’s going to happen, because it’s going to happen sooner or later, IMO.

14

@JuiceWSA said:
As soon as you start putting your stuff into an ecosystem the MPAA can draw a bead on, taking out millions of ‘law breakers’ with one Mother Of All Bombs this great new thing comes to a screeching halt.

Expect it to happen, know it’s going to happen, because it’s going to happen sooner or later, IMO.

In your opinion. It may never happen & until it does I will use Google Drive & Amazon Cloud Drive to store my media & Plex Cloud to serve up my media. If it ever happens that Plex Cloud is no longer viable then I shall encrypt my files & use a VPS to run Plex Media Server. I will still have saved a bundle on hardware I didn’t need to buy & saved a load of time I didn’t need to spend in managing local systems & backups

15

I didn’t spend a bundle on my own server in the first place chasing more and more transcoding capacity. Smart encoding choices that results in DirectPlay bypasses all that.

Glad to see @nigelpb helping out a bit on the Plex Cloud forum. It looks like they could use it. For me, that’s another thing concerning Plex I don’t have to worry about.

16

@dduke2104 said:
I didn’t spend a bundle on my own server in the first place chasing more and more transcoding capacity. Smart encoding choices that results in DirectPlay bypasses all that.

That’s me right there.

I have a good gaming rig, always have, always will and I can get my head ripped off in Doom 2016 while Direct Playing several streams so all is well. I create everything in my Plexiverse to Direct Play across all my devices and all the possible remote devices (not hard to do). If something doesn’t Direct Play when it gets here, it will when I’m done with it.

17

@nigelpb said:

@spikemixture said:

@nigelpb said:
Plex Cloud evidently does a better job of transcoding 4K media than any hardware you can purchase.

Firstly i did not mention transcoding 4k media.

@OttoKerner said “4K - no chance for transcoding, only Direct Play with special, local clients” in reference to local hardware whereas I pointed out that Plex Cloud does an outstanding job of transcoding 4K

I was commenting on your “better experience” statement. Local hardware = local software.

Is “Plex Cloud evidently” the name of your server?

Not sure what you mean here. Plex Cloud is the service offered by Plex.

And Plex Cloud has
No plugins
No subtitles.
No access to PMS folder.
No Channels.

None of the above matter to me. Plex Cloud does all the stuff that I need from Plex i.e. catalogue nicely & pull all the metadata for ripped Blu-rays & downloaded TV shows then play those media files. I don’t need subtitles & never have done. I need neither plugins nor Channels. I’m not sure why I access to PMS folder is important as I have never needed access when running PMS on my NAS.

Keeping the library updated is far from simple like home setup does.

I don’t see any real difference. You put media files into a folder just like you do on a local computer or NAS & Plex does its thing. There are in fact a variety of ways using a variety of tools to copy the media to the Plex folders e.g. mount as a local drive, use a Google Drive app, rclone, ftp etc

I agree new plex users should give it a go.
And also if someone is going this path they likely have several TB of media and drives already!.

Which is why I said that using Plex Cloud depends on a decent Internet connection. However even if it takes weeks or months to upload your library it is a one off operation & provides a useful backup of your media library. Going forward using a VPS seedbox or a service like Offcloud it’s possible to download media via torrents or Usenet directly to your Google Drive so cutting out the step of uploading from home.

Also not everyone has a domain they can use.- so really not that simple to trial

If you don’t already own a domain to use with G Suite for Business then currently GoDaddy offer domain registration for as little as 78p so that’s hardly a barrier.

Good answer and I appreciate your time.
But what you don’t need/want I do - so at this stage Plex cloud will be a play thing and maybe back up.
You do mention thousands of $$$s spent on hardware . Yes you can but for the people you are saying Plex Cloud is an alternative they can probably set up a home plex server for $500!

18

@spikemixture said:
You do mention thousands of $$$s spent on hardware . Yes you can but for the people you are saying Plex Cloud is an alternative they can probably set up a home plex server for $500!

$500 is still $500 though & it can be done even cheaper than that :slight_smile: My other PMS is a 4TB Seagate Personal Cloud which cost the equivalent of about $150 & serves all the media without the need for any transcoding as I use decent clients (Roku 3, Roku Ultra, iPhone 6s Plus). I tested it simultaneously streaming five 1080p files without a hitch. (all Direct Play of course).

19

It’s not like most of us wouldn’t have a home PC or server for any reasons other than Plex. I purchased a Lifetime Plex Pass long before Plex Cloud in no small part simply to support Plex. It’s consequently difficult to say exactly how much Plex costs and especially how much more Plex Cloud costs.

What I haven’t needed to do is spend any money (or time) acquiring on-the-fly transcoding capacity because of how I setup Plex at home.