Hi all,
I've been staying back at my mothers lately for some work stuff and have been streaming from my plex box at home, anything native is fine but when it needs to transcode, CPU is hitting 100% and I'm probably not using my kit as effectively as I should. I'd like to try and move from the 3 boxes I currently have at home, ideally into 1 but that makes me wince a little on redundancy but I'll talk you through what I have below and hopefully you can help me with moving forwards....
Box 1 - Main home unit - Fractal Node 804 - i7 2600K & 32GB DDR3 RAM - OS is ESXi 6.7 with a quad Gb Nic ethernet card - Storage is mixture of drives explained below. VM1, 2&3, 4 and 5 each have their own Gb port uplinked into my switch.
VM 1 - Plex server - 4c/4t - SSD1 although no media stored on this, Plex is pointed at Box 2 and mounts storage over LAN.
VM 2 - CCTV - UniFi Video 4c/4t - Has it's own 2TB WD Purple, is ok but if I go to look at any footage it doesn't like scrubbing.
VM 3 - mFi controller - 2c/2t - Runs an old Ubuntu image on SSD2 - serves a purpose.
VM 4 - Torrent box - 2c/2t - Has it's own 250GB HDD, used to be a 2TB but that failed.
VM 5 - PiHole - 2c/2t - SSD2 and is used regularly by my kids devices.
Box 2 - HP N54L 16GB RAM - SSD for boot and 4TB WD Red for storage, runs Ubuntu server, is almost exclusively a file server. Incrememental back up via rsync to Box 3 daily.
Box 3 - HP N54L 16GB RAM - 3x3TB WD RED and 1x3TB WD Green, runs Unraid and is also "just" a file server, nothing directly reads from this, is my "emergency backup" box.
Plex mostly serves to Amazon firesticks on the LAN, most content is 1080p that I get. Recently gotten "good" internet so may stream more when I'm out and staying out.
File servers mostly house downloaded content, nothing too horrendous if it was lost, lots of baby pics of the kids (hence the crazy filestore and backup so as to try not and lose any).
I would like to try and swing as much into cloud as I can however some things can't co-exist on the same box (unifi-video and mfi for example) so I kind of need separate box capability.
Any help would be really greatfully received here, my previous thinking was ECC memory for file servers and then something a bit quicker for the doing which it has done pretty well I think but I'd like to look at upgrading soon for faster kit that can handle more demand, starting to get 2 TV's sreaming same time now and throw in me being away that won't help.
Would like to cloud base a lot more as well so as ot have less running in the house as well (spin a box down at £10 per month and spend £5 on cloud is fine).
Finally - I need simple, when I started nerding out I had 1 child and 1 on the way. I now have 5 and 1 on the way so I can't sit for hours setting up and tweaking like I used to, I need stuff to work well and quickly,
I've been staying back at my mothers lately for some work stuff and have been streaming from my plex box at home, anything native is fine but when it needs to transcode, CPU is hitting 100% and I'm probably not using my kit as effectively as I should. I'd like to try and move from the 3 boxes I currently have at home, ideally into 1 but that makes me wince a little on redundancy but I'll talk you through what I have below and hopefully you can help me with moving forwards....
Box 1 - Main home unit - Fractal Node 804 - i7 2600K & 32GB DDR3 RAM - OS is ESXi 6.7 with a quad Gb Nic ethernet card - Storage is mixture of drives explained below. VM1, 2&3, 4 and 5 each have their own Gb port uplinked into my switch.
VM 1 - Plex server - 4c/4t - SSD1 although no media stored on this, Plex is pointed at Box 2 and mounts storage over LAN.
VM 2 - CCTV - UniFi Video 4c/4t - Has it's own 2TB WD Purple, is ok but if I go to look at any footage it doesn't like scrubbing.
VM 3 - mFi controller - 2c/2t - Runs an old Ubuntu image on SSD2 - serves a purpose.
VM 4 - Torrent box - 2c/2t - Has it's own 250GB HDD, used to be a 2TB but that failed.
VM 5 - PiHole - 2c/2t - SSD2 and is used regularly by my kids devices.
Box 2 - HP N54L 16GB RAM - SSD for boot and 4TB WD Red for storage, runs Ubuntu server, is almost exclusively a file server. Incrememental back up via rsync to Box 3 daily.
Box 3 - HP N54L 16GB RAM - 3x3TB WD RED and 1x3TB WD Green, runs Unraid and is also "just" a file server, nothing directly reads from this, is my "emergency backup" box.
Plex mostly serves to Amazon firesticks on the LAN, most content is 1080p that I get. Recently gotten "good" internet so may stream more when I'm out and staying out.
File servers mostly house downloaded content, nothing too horrendous if it was lost, lots of baby pics of the kids (hence the crazy filestore and backup so as to try not and lose any).
I would like to try and swing as much into cloud as I can however some things can't co-exist on the same box (unifi-video and mfi for example) so I kind of need separate box capability.
Any help would be really greatfully received here, my previous thinking was ECC memory for file servers and then something a bit quicker for the doing which it has done pretty well I think but I'd like to look at upgrading soon for faster kit that can handle more demand, starting to get 2 TV's sreaming same time now and throw in me being away that won't help.
Would like to cloud base a lot more as well so as ot have less running in the house as well (spin a box down at £10 per month and spend £5 on cloud is fine).
Finally - I need simple, when I started nerding out I had 1 child and 1 on the way. I now have 5 and 1 on the way so I can't sit for hours setting up and tweaking like I used to, I need stuff to work well and quickly,