Movie / Media server to Plex

pioneer2000 · 8 Mar 2018 at 23:30

Considering getting a NAS for home use, been looking around and think something like a Synology DS918+ / DS418play / HP Microserver might be the best bet?

How does a Microserver compare to these Synology boxes?

Would I actually benefit from moving from hosting all my MKV's etc from my i7 pc to a NAS?

Thanks

bremen1874 · 8 Mar 2018 at 23:39

Which Microserver? There have been quite a few different models released.

What OS would you intend on using with the Microserver?

Is your PC always on at the times you're wanting to view the media? If it is you won't gain much from a Plex point-of-view.

pioneer2000 · 8 Mar 2018 at 23:46

I guess the Gen10? Doesn't look to be big differences between them? Wondering mostly how they compare on features / speed as they seem similar money.

OS, unsure, whatever the equivalent is again to a home NAS.

My PC can be, just wondering why most seem to opt for a NAS when you can get the same functionality in that case.

Also, Christ! Since when did hard drives get so expensive?! Swear they've gone up a good 50% at least since a few years back.

bremen1874 · 9 Mar 2018 at 00:10

NAS devices in general, or NAS devices for Plex?

pioneer2000 · 9 Mar 2018 at 00:57

Plex mostly

bremen1874 · 9 Mar 2018 at 01:10

For many people if makes sense to have Plex running on a low(-ish) power consumption device that can be left on 24/7.

There are other reasons to be running a NAS. Look at the feature list on one of the manufacturer's websites and see if any of the claimed benefits are of interest.

Conanius · 11 Mar 2018 at 20:49

Huge thing you need to recognise here.

In my experience, if you intend on doing almost any transcoding, NAS boxes can be a bit lacking. Transcoding a 4k or even 1080P stream takes a decent amount of CPU grunt.

So consider things like
Are all your clients wired or do you have brilliant AC WiFi with little congestion/interference?
Will you ever want to use the Plex App on your mobile when you have 4G/A Hotel WiFI connection?
Will you ever expect the server to be doing more than just Plex (CCTV/Newsgroup Downloader/etc)

Persoanlly, I don't rate NAS boxes. I'd be using a microserver with FreeNAS/UNRaid ro something like that.

The Dell T20 with the Xeon option was ideal if you wanted something that can have the ability to do transcoding. The new model (T30) is out now with the Xeon CPU, but its not appeared yet with the great deals the T20 used to have.

I've got a *slightly* overkill option and have an ML350 G6, with Dual X5650's and 92GB RAM. I run out of devices to transcode to before I run out of CPU power.

All of this said, if you are going to do everything as direct play and never need to transcode, you can get away with a NAS if you dont want it to do much else at the same time.

pioneer2000 · 11 Mar 2018 at 21:11

Got excellent AC around the house but the primary usage will be gigabit Ethernet to a Nvidia Shield running Plex (so 99% of content is direct play as the Shield seems to run everything I can throw at it).

If the answer is to use a big server, I might as well leave my PC on as I tend to do now (I7 Xeon, 24GB ram, 980ti).

I imagine because the Shield can play most things, I don't necessarily need a NAS with the grunt to transcode. Just want something extremely easy to setup and manage as don't have the time to tinker about constantly.

Another spanner to throw in the works is that I currently have two 4TB external Hitachi Touro drives and 2x 2TB internal WD drives that I would want to move over to the NAS (and have an 8TB WD external attached via USB 3.0). This is purely because I don't mind cracking open the Hitachi cases but want to keep the 8TB WD intact. From what I understand the Synology NAS can run mixed drives with hybrid RAID... HDD seem crazy expensive lately so don't want to migrate over quite yet.