Help me spec a new Unraid/Plex build

[Randall8686]

Hi Guys

So the time has come to upgrade my server, Currently a Single Socket board with E3-1226 v3 @ 3.30GHz 16GB ECC ram and a 1060 gpu (used for HW encode/decode) HW Decode is still very flakey with plex on unraid with patches needed so its not yet perfect enough in my eyes.

The server is used for a VM (light to medium multi use)
Plex (by far its biggest task can have 3/4 users all needing transcoding at once)
CCTV (not too intensive)
A virtual Synology machine to handle some tasks
File server etc.

However i would like to go a little overkill with ideally some cheaper used hardware. Im thinking of finding a dual socket LGA2011 board and sticking two E5-2690's in in or something along those line. Threadripper and DDR4 is just too expensive at the moment for what i use it for.

I have a 800watt PSU so thats all fine and its in a very large rack mount case with 11 HDD's connected and 2 SSD's for cache and OS of VM's plex library database and images etc.

is there any disadvantage to going dual CPU apart from extra power consumption? What would you do with say a £500 budget? if i can get in below £500 on used hardware im all game. what i really want is lots of thread count. is there a CPU that sticks out for this application? im a bit lost when it comes to server stuff tbh and i know i can move away from server grade stuff but always had the thought it should last. the E3-1226 i have has been on from new for many years now and never once have i had to restart it.

Currently connected by a single LAN cable but i have a 4 port NIC that i would like to pop in. oh and my existing board only has 3 PCI slots that i have completely used up with 1X 1060 and 2X 4 port sata cards so a board with lots of SATA ports would also be great.

 

[Avalon]

A very familiar problem, but a few points you may like to consider...

Hi Guys

So the time has come to upgrade my server, Currently a Single Socket board with E3-1226 v3 @ 3.30GHz 16GB ECC ram and a 1060 gpu (used for HW encode/decode) HW Decode is still very flakey with plex on unraid with patches needed so its not yet perfect enough in my eyes.

Spoken like a true Windows user. GPU passthrough is always going to be slightly more complicated than running bare metal, you are then presumably running Plex in a docker and shoehorning modified drivers to bypass the 2 stream limit into the equation? I ask as I can't see why you'd throw a 1060 at encoding two streams.

The server is used for a VM (light to medium multi use)
Plex (by far its biggest task can have 3/4 users all needing transcoding at once)
CCTV (not too intensive)
A virtual Synology machine to handle some tasks
File server etc.

If Plex has to transcode, you are generally doing something wrong. Exceptions being subtitles, unsupported audio formats that you can use, but clients can't or bandwidth limited devices connected via 4G etc. Either you are making inappropriate media choices, inappropriate client choices (including hers setting non origional as the preferred quality), or inappropriate connectivity choices. It's like people who chose H265, HDR or worst of all 4K H265 HDR media, if it can't be direct played, its useless as Plex outputs to H264 1080p when it transcodes and HDR to SDR tone mapping is broken/much more demanding and as soon as you transcode, any 4K is pointless. Before we go any further, can you tell us why the client's transcoding and what is your actual connectivity here (sync speeds, not profile).

However i would like to go a little overkill with ideally some cheaper used hardware. Im thinking of finding a dual socket LGA2011 board and sticking two E5-2690's in in or something along those line. Threadripper and DDR4 is just too expensive at the moment for what i use it for.

This is the typical response when someone doesn't understand how Plex works, they throw hardware resources at it to compensate rather than making more suitable choices.

I have a 800watt PSU so thats all fine and its in a very large rack mount case with 11 HDD's connected and 2 SSD's for cache and OS of VM's plex library database and images etc.

is there any disadvantage to going dual CPU apart from extra power consumption? What would you do with say a £500 budget? if i can get in below £500 on used hardware im all game. what i really want is lots of thread count. is there a CPU that sticks out for this application? im a bit lost when it comes to server stuff tbh and i know i can move away from server grade stuff but always had the thought it should last. the E3-1226 i have has been on from new for many years now and never once have i had to restart it.

LGA 2011 is a decent socket/platform and running two is relatively inexpensive up-front, but for what you’ll pay for two decent higher end xeon’s, you could move up to a 2011-3 v3 or v4 single chip set-up which is even more efficient, generally quieter to cool and will have potentially higher core count, personally I have a stash of inexpensive X99 boards for just such occasions and DDR4 is under £35/8GB new. ECC and server/workstation class hardware is a little more expensive, but you gain IPMI or iDRAC/iLO etc.

eBay had 30 or so intel dual 2011 based boards for £75 a while back, generally expect to pay a lot more, then the coolers were £23 or so each, you're looking at potentially £200+ on CPU's and that PSU may not be suitable as dual CPU boards can require an extra CPU 12v 8 pin connection. Personally i'd go Supermicro (has wider CPU compatibility) or Fujitsu as they are less popular and unlike say HP (pay wall for updates) don't freak out with a non certified card in the mix. A Dell R720 is another option, but expect to pay quite a lot once you get one to a decent spec, heat, noise and a full depth rack come as part of the deal. Again, seriously consider if this is the route you want to go?

Currently connected by a single LAN cable but i have a 4 port NIC that i would like to pop in. oh and my existing board only has 3 PCI slots that i have completely used up with 1X 1060 and 2X 4 port sata cards so a board with lots of SATA ports would also be great.

What are you planning to do with the 4 port NIC? I ask because that may affect what's suggested, but you left it till the last sentence. Also stop using SATA cards, an HBA such as the H200/H310 flashed to IT mode is £20-40 and combined with suitable breakout cables give 4 SATA connectors per port, or 8 from a single card, not ideal for SSD, but perfect for mechanical drives.

The other question you should be asking yourself is would it make more sense to run remote storage/server with improved connectivity?

 

[Randall8686]

Firstly thank you for for the detailed reply. Below i have added answers i think should help

A very familiar problem, but a few points you may like to consider...



Spoken like a true Windows user. GPU passthrough is always going to be slightly more complicated than running bare metal, you are then presumably running Plex in a docker and shoehorning modified drivers to bypass the 2 stream limit into the equation? I ask as I can't see why you'd throw a 1060 at encoding two streams. Correct, i am running plex in a docker on unraid. removing the two steam limit by patching the drivers. and then patching the drivers again to enable HW decoding as plex only supports HW encoding at the moment. it works fairly well in all honesty but it does flip out at times and falls back to CPU transcoding.



If Plex has to transcode, you are generally doing something wrong. Exceptions being subtitles, unsupported audio formats that you can use, but clients can't or bandwidth limited devices connected via 4G etc. Either you are making inappropriate media choices, inappropriate client choices (including hers setting non origional as the preferred quality), or inappropriate connectivity choices. It's like people who chose H265, HDR or worst of all 4K H265 HDR media, if it can't be direct played, its useless as Plex outputs to H264 1080p when it transcodes and HDR to SDR tone mapping is broken/much more demanding and as soon as you transcode, any 4K is pointless. Before we go any further, can you tell us why the client's transcoding and what is your actual connectivity here (sync speeds, not profile). Family and friends all use my plex library clients range from iphones to 4k TV's i have little control over this. formats also vary but i have tried to keep the majority of the library to a decent format and 50%+ of the time it can direct stream to remote clients. however some family outside of the UK it always seems to transcode i guess due to bandwidth limitations some of them have 2mb connections etc. i do have a few 4k tittles that i like to watch on direct play over the lan. if these are watched remotely my upload is 19mbps so no way will that stream without a transcode.



This is the typical response when someone doesn't understand how Plex works, they throw hardware resources at it to compensate rather than making more suitable choices. Well thats me. although having more power also comes in fairly usefull for other tasks too so its a win win in some respects.



LGA 2011 is a decent socket/platform and running two is relatively inexpensive up-front, but for what you’ll pay for two decent higher end xeon’s, you could move up to a 2011-3 v3 or v4 single chip set-up which is even more efficient, generally quieter to cool and will have potentially higher core count, personally I have a stash of inexpensive X99 boards for just such occasions and DDR4 is under £35/8GB new. ECC and server/workstation class hardware is a little more expensive, but you gain IPMI or iDRAC/iLO etc. Cooling is not so much of an issue the server case this sits in is 4U so plenty of room for half decent coolers. I am also happy to hash together coolers and quite enjoy messing about with this. I was looking around the £100 mark per CPU.

eBay had 30 or so intel dual 2011 based boards for £75 a while back, generally expect to pay a lot more, then the coolers were £23 or so each, you're looking at potentially £200+ on CPU's and that PSU may not be suitable as dual CPU boards can require an extra CPU 12v 8 pin connection. Personally i'd go Supermicro (has wider CPU compatibility) or Fujitsu as they are less popular and unlike say HP (pay wall for updates) don't freak out with a non certified card in the mix. A Dell R720 is another option, but expect to pay quite a lot once you get one to a decent spec, heat, noise and a full depth rack come as part of the deal. Again, seriously consider if this is the route you want to go? The PSU has two CPU connectors sorry should have made myself clear on that. thank you for the tips on boards.



What are you planning to do with the 4 port NIC? I ask because that may affect what's suggested, but you left it till the last sentence. Also stop using SATA cards, an HBA such as the H200/H310 flashed to IT mode is £20-40 and combined with suitable breakout cables give 4 SATA connectors per port, or 8 from a single card, not ideal for SSD, but perfect for mechanical drives. well i have the VM and CCTV and Plex etc all on one port. with the CCTV having 4 i.p cameras its chewing up a fair bit of the connection so my thought was to assign one connection to the cctv and run it through its own switch (it has its own switch anyway as cameras are POE) so that removes that usage from the single port. I have two 4 port pci-e cards laying about thats why i have used them.

The other question you should be asking yourself is would it make more sense to run remote storage/server with improved connectivity? it would in ways but i have 11TB of data so far stored with the other half doing video and photo editing on it having it local makes a lot of sense.

 

[Avalon]

Family and friends all use my plex library clients range from iphones to 4k TV's i have little control over this. formats also vary but i have tried to keep the majority of the library to a decent format and 50%+ of the time it can direct stream to remote clients. however some family outside of the UK it always seems to transcode i guess due to bandwidth limitations some of them have 2mb connections etc. i do have a few 4k tittles that i like to watch on direct play over the lan. if these are watched remotely my upload is 19mbps so no way will that stream without a transcode.

Surely you understand that with only 19Mbit uplink the whole Plex aspect of your build just became pointless for remote users? You stated 3-4 concurrent transcodes, that means you can output 720/4 maximum (4x4Mbit gives 16Mbit out of 19Mbit), nothing you can buy hardware wise will alter that simple fact or give you the ability to improve on that. You would be much better moving media to GSuite and Plex to a remote VPS/server than spending £500 on hardware and at least the same again on powering it over 4 years. That same money would get you a lot more than 4 years of much better specified and connected hardware rental, leave your uplink idle, improve peering and connectivity to your users, give you a potential 99%+ up-time and remove the need to buy additional hardware/storage or deal with it's ongoing costs. Make use of a CDN and you are likely to vastly improve your international users experience. As a bonus your uplink becomes free again and you've just removed the most demanding role of your current server making it more than capable of doing what you say you need and not spent £500 up front.

You suggest transcoding is largely beyond your control, I disagree. You control the source media, the server, it's output, it's ability to transcode and if you use a CDN to improve peering, you can also instruct the client's to use appropriate settings or override them. A 'decent format' isn't one I recognise, but as you're presumably outputting at 720/4 then you should be keeping a suitable version locally, If you aren't and for example have 1080 REMUX source material, then you are creating the problem, same way if your clients set to 720/4 and you've set Plex to output 1080/8 then you are forcing a transcode. As for 4K, it's utterly pointless letting anyone transcode 4K in Plex. Plex can only output a maximum of 1080 when transcoding, run a separate 4K library and restrict access to it based on client capabilities, then use Tautulli to prevent anyone transcoding, this is a fundamental basic of running a Plex server - ignore it at your peril.

well i have the VM and CCTV and Plex etc all on one port. with the CCTV having 4 i.p cameras its chewing up a fair bit of the connection so my thought was to assign one connection to the cctv and run it through its own switch (it has its own switch anyway as cameras are POE) so that removes that usage from the single port. I have two 4 port pci-e cards laying about thats why i have used them.

'A fair bit of the connection' is not really helpful, so lets take a step back. You're running a single VM that you describe as being light multi use, given it's a VM and it's running on a VM hosted on the box that has your network storage locally, it's not touching your network port for that. The Plex usage is 19Mbit and that the physical port in question is full duplex gigabit, i'm going to go out on a limb here and suggest that the camera's use a lot less bandwidth than you think and certainly nothing like enough to trouble a full duplex gigabit link. Feel free to come back with 'they're 23MP each and i'm recording RAW footage' etc. but this would be a lot easier if you looked at the UnRAID summary page and posted some actual numbers.

it would in ways but i have 11TB of data so far stored with the other half doing video and photo editing on it having it local makes a lot of sense.

11TB is less than a day's work with GCE deepening on what you spec/pay for (mmmm NVMe RAID), but irrespective I suggested you move your media to GSuite, not AV work or anything else, you obviously do that locally on flash based local storage (eg her workstation SSD) and then write out the results to your local UnRAID server. You could use GSuite as a remote backup as if you follow my suggestion you have a free uplink to do offsite backup's now.

I can spec up/suggest hardware for you, but honestly it really comes across that you'd be much better off giving the whole project more thought, especially the Plex side as from what you've posted just moving that to the cloud would be a much more logical solution and take the majority of the workload off your existing server.

 

[BaldJedi]

Are single users of a Gsuite account uploading more than the 1TB limit and google ignoring it, or is it a case of paying £33/month to get unlimited storage?

 

[BigT]

Are single users of a Gsuite account uploading more than the 1TB limit and google ignoring it, or is it a case of paying £33/month to get unlimited storage?

The former. They don't enforce the policy.

 

[BaldJedi]

The former. They don't enforce the policy.

No know cases where they have? my luck would be to dump 10TB in the account and then lose access to it

 

[BigT]

Don’t believe so. For every one person abusing the policy they must have thousands of corporate customers making little use of it - not worth their while to enforce. Certainly at my employer where we have 250 employees on G Suite with unlimited G Drive legitimately we average only about 7Gb per person. Thus when you look at the millions of customers the “abuse” is a mere rounding error on usage.

 

[Avalon]

Single users are pushing 750GB/day or in some cases 15TB/day or more, 1TB limit is not enforced and several users are into several PB’s of data. This all started a few years back with ACD and when the plug got pulled GSuite stepped in to fill the gap.