New nas build which software.?

[StevieP]

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

The actual OS boots off a USB drive (although I rarely reboot obviously!) but you can put an SSD in to install programs, plugins, dockers etc to as well as using it as a cache drive which speeds things up!

I love the redundancy (note; not backup!) that having a parity drive gives you!

 

[kvnwds43]

Well so far there's big shouts for Ubuntu and unraid.... Problem is there's too many to choose from.... Im still keen on a raid 5 even though there maybe a big rebuild time! I want to maximise space on the drives while giving me some way to recover a broken drive and building the replacement drive.
I won't be transcoding 4k now I'll either just steam in the house or put 2 films of the same on there for mobile devices when away.
What would you guys say was the way to go.....?
An i5 or ryzen 5 3600.?
Thanks for the info

 

[Avalon]

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

Advice is all well and good, but it’s not a substitute for you taking the time to go and read up on what people are suggesting and understand why and how it relates to your needs. Start by ignoring any preconceptions you have about anything, so far they haven’t done you any favours (spec, 4K/transcoding in general, RAID type, iGPU and how it relates to PlexPass, SSD vs. USB relative to UnRAID etc).

USB is ideal for UnRAID etc. as they literally boot the OS from it, it’s the same with esxi etc. and not like booting a conventional OS in that it benefits from fast IO. 2 concurrent 1080 transcodes is 4K of CPU Mark if you need to do it in software, if you have PlexPass then you can use the iGPU (if available) to do the transcoding in hardware, but even then your CPU requirements are going to be very low. Have you checked any of the CPU’s you keep mentioning to see what the CPU mark for each is? You can also likely get away with 4GB of RAM, 8GB will give you a comfortable margin, 32 is largely pointless. Please, please go and at least try and work out why R5 is a horrible choice, it’s not the rebuild time that’s the problem. Hardware RAID is not easily expandable, if the controller fails, expect to have to replace the controller, ideally with an identical one, running the same firmware (and in some cases the same hardware revision), drive sizes being discussed mean you are almost guaranteed to get a flawed restore and the chance of successive failures while rebuilding are significantly higher, so can you tell us why you are fixated on R5? Have you even looked at what unRAID does and how it works? For a predominantly WORO based usage scenario such as yours, it’s the obvious choice.

 

[kvnwds43]

Advice is all well and good, but it’s not a substitute for you taking the time to go and read up on what people are suggesting and understand why and how it relates to your needs. Start by ignoring any preconceptions you have about anything, so far they haven’t done you any favours (spec, 4K/transcoding in general, RAID type, iGPU and how it relates to PlexPass, SSD vs. USB relative to UnRAID etc).

USB is ideal for UnRAID etc. as they literally boot the OS from it, it’s the same with esxi etc. and not like booting a conventional OS in that it benefits from fast IO. 2 concurrent 1080 transcodes is 4K of CPU Mark if you need to do it in software, if you have PlexPass then you can use the iGPU (if available) to do the transcoding in hardware, but even then your CPU requirements are going to be very low. Have you checked any of the CPU’s you keep mentioning to see what the CPU mark for each is? You can also likely get away with 4GB of RAM, 8GB will give you a comfortable margin, 32 is largely pointless. Please, please go and at least try and work out why R5 is a horrible choice, it’s not the rebuild time that’s the problem. Hardware RAID is not easily expandable, if the controller fails, expect to have to replace the controller, ideally with an identical one, running the same firmware (and in some cases the same hardware revision), drive sizes being discussed mean you are almost guaranteed to get a flawed restore and the chance of successive failures while rebuilding are significantly higher, so can you tell us why you are fixated on R5? Have you even looked at what unRAID does and how it works? For a predominantly WORO based usage scenario such as yours, it’s the obvious choice.

Hi yes i have looked at the cpu passmark scores i also read a article on hardware requirements for transcoding 4k and 1080 and 720...... They suggested a i7 with a score of 17000 for transcoding 4k,and a score of 12000 i believe and a i5 for 1080.... All single transcodes, i came across the ryzen 5 3600 x on cpu passmark and noticed it had a good score of 19000 if i remember correctly and is also a good price compared to the i7 9700k which is £160 more i think.
As far as raid 5 goes i haven't used it before but thought it would give me a good margin of error if a hard drive packed in...... I had no idea it was so problematic...... Looks like i may have to look at raid 1 after all or raid 0 even.
I will look closer at unraid since you rate it so highly.!
Also the igpu in plex i haven't looked at either so I'll take a look at that too..
Which processor would you pick if you were picking may i ask...... Knowing what the nas will be used for.....?. Many thanks by the way

 

[Avalon]

Hi yes i have looked at the cpu passmark scores i also read a article on hardware requirements for transcoding 4k and 1080 and 720...... They suggested a i7 with a score of 17000 for transcoding 4k,and a score of 12000 i believe and a i5 for 1080.... All single transcodes, i came across the ryzen 5 3600 x on cpu passmark and noticed it had a good score of 19000 if i remember correctly and is also a good price compared to the i7 9700k which is £160 more i think.
As far as raid 5 goes i haven't used it before but thought it would give me a good margin of error if a hard drive packed in...... I had no idea it was so problematic...... Looks like i may have to look at raid 1 after all or raid 0 even.
I will look closer at unraid since you rate it so highly.!
Also the igpu in plex i haven't looked at either so I'll take a look at that too..
Which processor would you pick if you were picking may i ask...... Knowing what the nas will be used for.....?. Many thanks by the way

A few things are changing in the world of Plex, (new transcode back end with tone mapping support is literally out this month which makes transcoding HDR possible, but inefficient in software terms, it’s in early testing and hasn’t made it to the beta releases yet), but you are still best off working on the basis that you absolutely do not want to transcode 4K in software (CPU) and you don’t want to transcode HDR in anything. Plex themselves publish the 2K of CPU mark metric, your local clients shouldn’t really need to transcode, so you want a CPU that has at least 4K of CPU Mark *IF* you do it in software rather than in hardware (a modern intel iGPU is ideal for hardware transcoding). Based on what you have stated (2 concurrent streams, Plex pass, no other significant CPU requirement), i’d be looking at an i3, it’s cheap, low power, has the same iGPU and enough grunt to do what you need in software if required and has enough overhead for the job.

Storage wise UnRAID will give you vastly more redundancy if you want than R5, you can also increase or decrease the redundancy as you see fit as well as adding mixed drive sizes based on £/TB. R0 gives you no redundancy and 1 is completely out of place for home media storage when you have physical media still. If you don’t believe me about R5 just search this very forum, it’s a bad idea and makes little sense in a home environment. 20 years ago it was a good idea, with today’s drive sizes and what else is available it’s what people have heard of and therefore think sounds like a good idea, but except in very specific usage cases, it isn’t.

 

[kvnwds43]

A few things are changing in the world of Plex, (new transcode back end with tone mapping support is literally out this month which makes transcoding HDR possible, but inefficient in software terms, it’s in early testing and hasn’t made it to the beta releases yet), but you are still best off working on the basis that you absolutely do not want to transcode 4K in software (CPU) and you don’t want to transcode HDR in anything. Plex themselves publish the 2K of CPU mark metric, your local clients shouldn’t really need to transcode, so you want a CPU that has at least 4K of CPU Mark *IF* you do it in software rather than in hardware (a modern intel iGPU is ideal for hardware transcoding). Based on what you have stated (2 concurrent streams, Plex pass, no other significant CPU requirement), i’d be looking at an i3, it’s cheap, low power, has the same iGPU and enough grunt to do what you need in software if required and has enough overhead for the job.

Storage wise UnRAID will give you vastly more redundancy if you want than R5, you can also increase or decrease the redundancy as you see fit as well as adding mixed drive sizes based on £/TB. R0 gives you no redundancy and 1 is completely out of place for home media storage when you have physical media still. If you don’t believe me about R5 just search this very forum, it’s a bad idea and makes little sense in a home environment. 20 years ago it was a good idea, with today’s drive sizes and what else is available it’s what people have heard of and therefore think sounds like a good idea, but except in very specific usage cases, it isn’t.

Sounds like a i3 is good enough for the job then and 8gb ram.... Like i said before i shan't transcode 4k now but may with 1080 to mobile devices if necessary when I'm away.!
I've also looked at getting a graphics card seen one or 2 articles on about that and how people are useing the graphics card doing the transcoding instead..... Although some say the quality wasn't as good but was quicker.!
UnRAID seems very good with what you say about its own version of R5 being able to increase or decrease the redundancy.
If i don't use its own version of R5 what do you suggest to use instead knowing what this nas will be used for.?
Thanks for your help by the way.

 

[Avalon]

Sounds like a i3 is good enough for the job then and 8gb ram.... Like i said before i shan't transcode 4k now but may with 1080 to mobile devices if necessary when I'm away.!
I've also looked at getting a graphics card seen one or 2 articles on about that and how people are useing the graphics card doing the transcoding instead..... Although some say the quality wasn't as good but was quicker.!
UnRAID seems very good with what you say about its own version of R5 being able to increase or decrease the redundancy.
If i don't use its own version of R5 what do you suggest to use instead knowing what this nas will be used for.?
Thanks for your help by the way.

I’m not sure if i’m being in some way unclear, but you will be using the intel iGPU, you absolutely do not need a dedicated GPU for two 1080 transcodes with an i3, you can do them in software (no PlexPass), you can do them in HW (iGPU). AMD GPU’s have historically not been good for HW transcoding, Nvidia has, but consumer GPU’s are artificially limited to two concurrent transcodes, though this can be worked around, some Quadro’s can run ‘unlimited’ streams, but realistically they perform identically to the unlocked consumer chips.

UnRAID does not do RAID 5, the clue is very much in the name, it creates a storage pool of drives of any size and uses the largest one for a parity pool, you can increase the storage pool with drives of any size and increase the redundancy by using multiple parity drives, you can also add a cache drive/pool for things like VM’s and socket use or pass drives through directly. If the worst happens and more drives fail than you have parity, then at worse you can still mount the individual drives and read all data on them. If the motherboard fails, you can literally plug the drives into another board and be up and running again in minutes.

 

[andy_mk3]

The actual OS boots off a USB drive (although I rarely reboot obviously!) but you can put an SSD in to install programs, plugins, dockers etc to as well as using it as a cache drive which speeds things up!

I love the redundancy (note; not backup!) that having a parity drive gives you!

It boots off the USB but runs off RAM, the USB is only written to when settings changes are made, so the USB will not affect speed at all.

I can't recommend unRAID enough either though! I run multiple VM's, Dockers etc and it makes life so easy. I have around 12TB in storage plus a pair of 500GB SSD cache drives which VM's run off plus gives you amazing write speeds to the server.

 

[Bluecube]

Another long term Unraid user here. Highly recommended! I use my server for Plex, VMs, Pihole and various other bits and bobs. The Docker system is fantastic and takes a lot of pain out of setting up a server.

One thing to note though is that as far as far as I’m aware Plex on Unraid can’t utilise hardware decoding

 

[andy_mk3]

One thing to note though is that as far as far as I’m aware Plex on Unraid can’t utilise hardware decoding

It is definitely doable in unRAID

 

[kvnwds43]

I’m not sure if i’m being in some way unclear, but you will be using the intel iGPU, you absolutely do not need a dedicated GPU for two 1080 transcodes with an i3, you can do them in software (no PlexPass), you can do them in HW (iGPU). AMD GPU’s have historically not been good for HW transcoding, Nvidia has, but consumer GPU’s are artificially limited to two concurrent transcodes, though this can be worked around, some Quadro’s can run ‘unlimited’ streams, but realistically they perform identically to the unlocked consumer chips.

UnRAID does not do RAID 5, the clue is very much in the name, it creates a storage pool of drives of any size and uses the largest one for a parity pool, you can increase the storage pool with drives of any size and increase the redundancy by using multiple parity drives, you can also add a cache drive/pool for things like VM’s and socket use or pass drives through directly. If the worst happens and more drives fail than you have parity, then at worse you can still mount the individual drives and read all data on them. If the motherboard fails, you can literally plug the drives into another board and be up and running again in minutes.

I've got a couple of things to also ask you......
Are there disadvantages of useing a home built nas useing it 24 x7 days a week against a prebuilt nas from say synology...... I've watched a few videos and they say a home built pc ain't sposed to run all the time unlike a prebuilt nas!
I've contemplated useing home built nas because of the expense of a prebuilt nas.... But looking at them both there's pros and cons on both sides.!
They're just so expensive prebuilt nas unlike building your own. What do you think of prebuilt nas.?
If i do decide to build my own i think it'll be unraid with a i3 and 8 gb ram i may even chuck in a graphics card too..

 

[Avalon]

I've got a couple of things to also ask you......
Are there disadvantages of useing a home built nas useing it 24 x7 days a week against a prebuilt nas from say synology...... I've watched a few videos and they say a home built pc ain't sposed to run all the time unlike a prebuilt nas!
I've contemplated useing home built nas because of the expense of a prebuilt nas.... But looking at them both there's pros and cons on both sides.!
They're just so expensive prebuilt nas unlike building your own. What do you think of prebuilt nas.?
If i do decide to build my own i think it'll be unraid with a i3 and 8 gb ram i may even chuck in a graphics card too..

You keep referencing ‘a few videos’ and citing very strange ‘facts’, what on earth are you watching as clearly if that is in fact what they are saying, they really shouldn’t be producing videos. You then tend to ignore information and go off on a tangent. Why do you want a GPU for Plex when you’ll be using a maximum
of two streams and already have an iGPU? If you have some sort of other usage scenario that you’ve not mentioned yet, then tell us and the suggested spec can be revised, but as it stands, it sounds like you want to replace a iGPU with a GPU that may we’ll be artificially limited to two streams, suck power and generate heat/noise for no reason.

I’ve run consumer grade and enterprise grade hardware 24/7 since the 80’s, zero issues other than the odd drive/memory failure, in over 3 decades that’s about normal. A prebuilt NAS is usually low end hardware sold at an obscene price because it comes with software support for a fixed period. The underlying hardware is no different to a PC. If you can’t build a PC, need an abnormal level of hand holding, and really like the idea of being utterly screwed if/when it breaks, then consumer grade NAS products are probably for you. If not then you likely understand that even 10 y/o PC’s will obliterate a consumer grade NAS in most scenario’s and are often for next to nothing.

One thing to note though is that as far as far as I’m aware Plex on Unraid can’t utilise hardware decoding

I must be delusional and have been since 2016? when I first started using hardware transcoding in UnRAID.

 

[Bluecube]

I must be delusional and have been since 2016? when I first started using hardware transcoding in UnRAID.

It seems it’s just Nvidia cards that have issues but which can apparently be worked around. I’ve an Nvidia card and have never managed to get hardware decoding to work.

 

[kvnwds43]

You keep referencing ‘a few videos’ and citing very strange ‘facts’, what on earth are you watching as clearly if that is in fact what they are saying, they really shouldn’t be producing videos. You then tend to ignore information and go off on a tangent. Why do you want a GPU for Plex when you’ll be using a maximum
of two streams and already have an iGPU? If you have some sort of other usage scenario that you’ve not mentioned yet, then tell us and the suggested spec can be revised, but as it stands, it sounds like you want to replace a iGPU with a GPU that may we’ll be artificially limited to two streams, suck power and generate heat/noise for no reason.

I’ve run consumer grade and enterprise grade hardware 24/7 since the 80’s, zero issues other than the odd drive/memory failure, in over 3 decades that’s about normal. A prebuilt NAS is usually low end hardware sold at an obscene price because it comes with software support for a fixed period. The underlying hardware is no different to a PC. If you can’t build a PC, need an abnormal level of hand holding, and really like the idea of being utterly screwed if/when it breaks, then consumer grade NAS products are probably for you. If not then you likely understand that even 10 y/o PC’s will obliterate a consumer grade NAS in most scenario’s and are often for next to nothing.



I must be delusional and have been since 2016? when I first started using hardware transcoding in UnRAID.

OK i just thought on the gfx card side may give more oomph for transcoding but obviously not from what you said....... I'll just stick with the i3 processor.!
Yes the prebuilt nas from synology and qnap prices are extortionate compared to building your own.... I'm not frightened at all about building another pc for a nas.... I'm new to nas software but I'm sure i can pick it up.!
There's plenty of help out there ! The info I've seen are mainly from a popular video site concerning gfx cards used for transcoding and pros and cons on pre built nas and home built... I'm just after as much info before i take the plunge.

 

[Avalon]

It’s two streams, with an i3 + iGPU you already have more than enough oomph to do several times that if needed, adding a GPU for this doesn’t give you anything extra other than power usage, noise and heat.

Space invader one does some decent video’s on UnRAID, one thing that’s missing from your set-up is a cache drive, it’s technically not required, but a small SSD is ideal for this as your Plex docker can save its metadata on and for any other VM/docker usage, also depending on how much data you want to dump to the array in one shot, it can help.

 

[Kei]

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

I’ve got an i5 9600k in my nas and that quite happily transcoded H265 encoded 4K to 1080p for my old Panasonic plasma on the fly. (As a test as I don’t have much native 4K content) It used nearly 50% of the cpu. FWIW, my nas also runs 7x 2TB drives in raid 5 using a very old lsi mega raid card. Which is the main reason why they are 2TB drives as it can’t address bigger. It also has 10gig lan which appears to work well too. All this is on Fedora 30 workstation which boots off an ssd.

 

[Kainz]

I own a Qnap TVS-682 NAS that has a dual core i3 7100 @ 3.9ghz. It can manage several plex streams @ 1080p without breaking a sweat. I've managed 5x streams in early tests (I am a new owner) in my household.

An i3 is all you require really from the the looks of it but you really need to decide on your requirements and be sure what you need meets them. The advice here is sound and Unraid seems like an excellent platform for what you require.

I went the NAS route because I didn't have time nor space to faff around building my own system. The disadvantage is that I'm stuck with RAID's somewhat inflexibility, that Unraid has none of.

Edit: sorry for any dodge grammar - am plastered in a pub.

 

[killem]

Recently swapped from running a windows 10 machine with all my files shared over the network to UNraid and really i dont know why i did not do it sooner. 16.4 TB of data now with at least some protection against drive failure. SMB shares that my Nvidia shield can access unlike the windows 10 machine after the last major build update. SSD cache drive for fast writes and scheduler to move these files onto slower storage drive over night. I dont really need any other of its features but its still worth the money over a fixed capacity nas box.

 

[Avalon]

Recently swapped from running a windows 10 machine with all my files shared over the network to UNraid and really i dont know why i did not do it sooner. 16.4 TB of data now with at least some protection against drive failure. SMB shares that my Nvidia shield can access unlike the windows 10 machine after the last major build update. SSD cache drive for fast writes and scheduler to move these files onto slower storage drive over night. I dont really need any other of its features but its still worth the money over a fixed capacity nas box.

That’s how it starts... then you start using docker with NZBGet/Sonarr/Radarr to automate your downloads, you need to increase storage, followed by running Plex or emby as they provide a vastly superior result to your Shield+SMB solution, then you get started with the virtualisation, home automation and mounting cloud storage.... then it gets interesting

Joking aside it can be as simple as you like or you can literally have one box to rule them all with a little work.