New nas build which software.?

[kvnwds43]

OK i want to build a new nas, i want to put my collection of mainly blu ray and dvd and about 20 or so 4k films on there, i plan to use the nas in conjunction with my vero 4k player in a dedicated home cinema room but also with plex to stream them as round the house to various tvs and outside the house for example when I'm away.!
I've been contemplating.....
Freenas
Openmediavault
Ubuntu.
Amahi
Now a lot of people seem to think freenas is the one to go with but it seems like hardware wise it's a bit finicky which puts me off.
For my system I'm thinking of.....
I7 9700k cpu
Z390 motherboard
Ddr4 16gb ram
Psu 500 watt
Fractal design r6 case.
Freenas seems to need ecc memory and compatible cpu to Also support ecc which puts me off as limits selection of hardware..
I'm thinking of going with openmediavault as seems less picky with hardware.
Thoughts please.?

 

[kvnwds43]

I might add also that I'm planning to put 4 x 8tb nas drives in a raid 5 . And useing a ssd to boot from

 

[Steveocee]

Ubuntu (ideally server edition) would be perfectly fine and do everything you need with relatively little headache. Effectively you want a file sharing server with Plex.
You haven't mentioned how you will RAID whether it will be OS software or hardware but Ubuntu will do either and isn't precious about hardware requirements.

If you want "point and click" then UnRaid is worth considering as well.

I personally use both, Ubuntu-Server for all my "normal" servers and then UnRaid for the backups, both do just as good a job but Ubuntu is free where I paid £50(or near there) for UnRaid to do very little in the background.

For the requirements, you'd be just as well treating yourself to the new system and using your current rig as the NAS.

 

[kvnwds43]

Ubuntu (ideally server edition) would be perfectly fine and do everything you need with relatively little headache. Effectively you want a file sharing server with Plex.
You haven't mentioned how you will RAID whether it will be OS software or hardware but Ubuntu will do either and isn't precious about hardware requirements.

If you want "point and click" then UnRaid is worth considering as well.

I personally use both, Ubuntu-Server for all my "normal" servers and then UnRaid for the backups, both do just as good a job but Ubuntu is free where I paid £50(or near there) for UnRaid to do very little in the background.

For the requirements, you'd be just as well treating yourself to the new system and using your current rig as the NAS.

Hi, yes i plan to stream around the house and outside of the house with plex, but will use vero 4k+ box for the cinema room, all media will be transcoded to mkv lossless as i need a exact copy.
I am new to nas software operating systems but competent at building a pc..... I want to use the 4x 8tb in a raid 5 and a ssd in for the operating system.
I will operate and set up everything from my Windows 10 pc.
As far as useing my own system for the nas..... Yes I'd do that but when I looked up the cpu passmark score it was way below 17000 score which is apparently needed to transcode a 4k film so thsts why i decided to build a new system.!

 

[Steveocee]

You shouldn't transcode 4K. Plex cannot do it (well documented on their site). If you want 4K you should direct play it and then have a lower res copy (1080p) to transcode when not in the house.

Passmark for 1080p transcode is around 2000 I believe but before even that people on here were using N54L's and transcoding.

 

[kvnwds43]

You shouldn't transcode 4K. Plex cannot do it (well documented on their site). If you want 4K you should direct play it and then have a lower res copy (1080p) to transcode when not in the house.

Passmark for 1080p transcode is around 2000 I believe but before even that people on here were using N54L's and transcoding.

Ah right OK, thanks for that..... Looks like I'd be better off putting 2 copy's on there then...... 4k for cinema room and 1080p for outside when away

 

[Steveocee]

Ah right OK, thanks for that..... Looks like I'd be better off putting 2 copy's on there then...... 4k for cinema room and 1080p for outside when away

That's the recommended way of operating at the moment.

RAID5 - You didn't mention if you will be using a RAID card PCIe device or whether you were planning on using software RAID (motherboard or OS)? Software is quite flexible now, an OS such as UnRaid is as it sounds, not RAID but operates very much like it. Irrelevant though you shouldn't consider RAID a solid solution, always make sure you have a separate backup if the data is precious to you.

 

[kvnwds43]

Wr

That's the recommended way of operating at the moment.

RAID5 - You didn't mention if you will be using a RAID card PCIe device or whether you were planning on using software RAID (motherboard or OS)? Software is quite flexible now, an OS such as UnRaid is as it sounds, not RAID but operates very much like it. Irrelevant though you shouldn't consider RAID a solid solution, always make sure you have a separate backup if the data is precious to you.

Well i did think of getting a amd ryzen 5 3600x but seems they don't support raid 5, so thought I'd have to use a i7 9700k instead..... I'd still like to use the amd chip if possible, i thought to be honest the motherboard would have to support raid 5 before i could install a os such as Ubuntu and set up raid 5, so your saying that's not a so and i can still set up raid 5 without the motherboard and cpu supporting it.?
Forgive me i am a newbie to nas lol.
I would be useing the motherboard as raid 5 but may think different if i can use os instead

 

[Steveocee]

If you use a RAID card, the card does the RAID and presents a "single" drive to the OS.
If you use the motherboard then it is similar to the RAID card however sometimes you need specific drivers to do this (and motherboard RAID can be a bit shonky).
If you use the OS such as Ubuntu, it handles RAID perfectly fine through mdadm BUT takes up CPU process power as it needs to split and create parity for everything you write to it. This is irrelevant to the motherboard "supporting" RAID 5 as the motherboard only needs to present HDD's to the OS, the OS does the hard work.

With Ryzen you need to add a small discrete GPU to it as they don't have internal iGPU like most Intel chips do. As it is a server you most likely won't be overclocking either so you can save a "bit" by not buying a K series Intel chip as well.

There would be no reason not to use a 3600 in this use case as the price difference even plus a small GPU would likely come in less than an i7 & Z390. I'd personally be tempted to check performance of a 2700 against the 3600 as the extra cores may help in some cases such as transcoding.

 

[Quartz]

I might add also that I'm planning to put 4 x 8tb nas drives in a raid 5 . And useing a ssd to boot from

Before you do this, check on rebuild times. Personally I would suggest RAID 1.

 

[StevieP]

I can't recommend UnRAID enough to be honest - it's been seamless for me since I swapped from my Synology NAS and it does pretty much everything as far as I can see!

 

[Avalon]

CPU seems an odd choice for stated usage (pointless overkill unless you forgot to tell us something significant), RAID5 is a horrible idea - please don’t, UnRAID (while not free) is a very easy to live with solution. As has been pointed out, don’t transcode 4K, separate libraries and use Tautulli scripting to prevent transcoding of 4K.

 

[kvnwds43]

I can't recommend UnRAID enough to be honest - it's been seamless for me since I swapped from my Synology NAS and it does pretty much everything as far as I can see!

Doesn't unraid boot only of a USB pen drive...? I wanted to boot off a ssd.!

 

[kvnwds43]

If you use a RAID card, the card does the RAID and presents a "single" drive to the OS.
If you use the motherboard then it is similar to the RAID card however sometimes you need specific drivers to do this (and motherboard RAID can be a bit shonky).
If you use the OS such as Ubuntu, it handles RAID perfectly fine through mdadm BUT takes up CPU process power as it needs to split and create parity for everything you write to it. This is irrelevant to the motherboard "supporting" RAID 5 as the motherboard only needs to present HDD's to the OS, the OS does the hard work.

With Ryzen you need to add a small discrete GPU to it as they don't have internal iGPU like most Intel chips do. As it is a server you most likely won't be overclocking either so you can save a "bit" by not buying a K series Intel chip as well.

There would be no reason not to use a 3600 in this use case as the price difference even plus a small GPU would likely come in less than an i7 & Z390. I'd personally be tempted to check performance of a 2700 against the 3600 as the extra cores may help in some cases such as transcoding.

If I'm not going to transcode 4k and only maybe 1080 to maybe 720 to mobile devices then shouldn't a i5 be enough.?

 

[kvnwds43]

CPU seems an odd choice for stated usage (pointless overkill unless you forgot to tell us something significant), RAID5 is a horrible idea - please don’t, UnRAID (while not free) is a very easy to live with solution. As has been pointed out, don’t transcode 4K, separate libraries and use Tautulli scripting to prevent transcoding of 4K.

maybe a i5 will be enough then if i don't transcode 4k and just transcode 1080…?
I liked raid 5 as it'd still give me 2tb of hard drive space if i use raid one I'll only have 16tb.....

I've heard that rebuild times are long with raid 5 but is it really that bad an idea.?

 

[kvnwds43]

CPU seems an odd choice for stated usage (pointless overkill unless you forgot to tell us something significant), RAID5 is a horrible idea - please don’t, UnRAID (while not free) is a very easy to live with solution. As has been pointed out, don’t transcode 4K, separate libraries and use Tautulli scripting to prevent transcoding of 4K.

 

[kvnwds43]

Sorry i meant 24tb hard drive space

 

[Avalon]

Wow... how many replies? Why do you want to boot from SSD? I suspect you haven’t grasped why it’s largely irrelevant in UnRAID. Incidentally with UnRAID you choose how many parity drives you want, so you’d still have 24TB on a 4x8TB and could easily expand based on the best £/TB when required. With R5 it’s not just the rebuild time that’s an issue.

Plex wise i’d suggest having a look at the accepted metrics for transcoding, 2K of CPU Mark per 1080 transcode, so how many concurrent transcodes are you planning on? Remember if you transcode to 1080/8 for example and have 80/20 FTTC you’re only going to be able to support two remote streams anyway, again, don’t transcode 4K, it’s just a bad idea in software. Are you going to use a PlexPass? If so then iGPU HW transcoding is a thing.

 

[kvnwds43]

Wow... how many replies? Why do you want to boot from SSD? I suspect you haven’t grasped why it’s largely irrelevant in UnRAID. Incidentally with UnRAID you choose how many parity drives you want, so you’d still have 24TB on a 4x8TB and could easily expand based on the best £/TB when required. With R5 it’s not just the rebuild time that’s an issue.

Plex wise i’d suggest having a look at the accepted metrics for transcoding, 2K of CPU Mark per 1080 transcode, so how many concurrent transcodes are you planning on? Remember if you transcode to 1080/8 for example and have 80/20 FTTC you’re only going to be able to support two remote streams anyway, again, don’t transcode 4K, it’s just a bad idea in software. Are you going to use a PlexPass? If so then iGPU HW transcoding is a thing.

 

[kvnwds43]

I just thought it'd be better and maybe more reliable booting from a old ssd than a USB stick, yes i do plan to use plex pass..... So I'd be better off using a graphics card too.?
I probably wouldn't be transcoding to more than 1 device at a time.!
I won't be transcoding 4k now after all the advice on here I'll make 2 streams if necessary