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    NAS for Plex use... Again

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    • brandon220B
      brandon220 @1337
      last edited by

      @Pete-S I turned off the R410s and 510 last year. I'm currently running a newer "entry-level" server as my VM host. It has a low-end Xeon and maxes out at 32G of RAM. I have been shopping around for a while for a more robust host but can't decide on anything.

      The ReadyNAS units were free and new from a relative's business that shut down. They are EOL now and slower than I would like. I plan on a similar setup to what I have now - Plex as a VM and the new storage server as a VM with an NFS share for Plex. I don't believe I will need hardware transcoding for Plex.

      GreyG 1 2 Replies Last reply Reply Quote 0
      • GreyG
        Grey @wirestyle22
        last edited by

        @wirestyle22 said in NAS for Plex use... Again:

        @brandon220 said in NAS for Plex use... Again:

        @DustinB3403 My wife ripped all the DVD and Blu-Ray discs. It is pretty much her "project". I just maintain it. I believe we have about 460 movies or so. I ripped all my music to flac files and have it on there as well. Works great for my needs.

        Even if you buy the media the act of breaking the DRM is illegal, so there doesn't seem to be any legitimate way to do it outside of non-DRM content.. Netflix, Disney+, Hulu, Crunchyroll, etc are really not a replacement for Plex. I deleted my Plex server when we moved into the house and moved over to streaming services. It feels very limiting. I also hate having to search for content in multiple applications. If someone developed a website that shows you a single pane for all of your streaming services I bet a lot of people would use it.

        Roku's search feature allows you to sub to services and search across them to find what you want and go straight there.

        1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
        • GreyG
          Grey @brandon220
          last edited by

          @brandon220 said in NAS for Plex use... Again:

          @Pete-S I turned off the R410s and 510 last year. I'm currently running a newer "entry-level" server as my VM host. It has a low-end Xeon and maxes out at 32G of RAM. I have been shopping around for a while for a more robust host but can't decide on anything.

          I don't believe I will need hardware transcoding for Plex.

          You will need some transcoding, no matter what, so plan for it, and if you want to share your libraries, you'll need more cpu/gcpu.

          1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 1
          • GreyG
            Grey @marcinozga
            last edited by

            @marcinozga said in NAS for Plex use... Again:

            Plex needs lots of CPU power if your clients require transcoding. I have a 4 core E3 Xeon, 1231 I think, running Fedora on bare metal, but Plex and others run in docker containers. All my media is sitting in Google Drive, I have that mounted with https://github.com/plexdrive/plexdrive , some use rclone too. Google Drive for business cost me $12 a month and comes with unlimited storage, I think I'm pushing close to 100TB now. I've had way too many drive failures, I even had LSI SAS controller flipping on me, and after spending close to $1500 on storage alone, I said screw that. There's even Plexdrive docker image to keep your base system kosher, I think it comes with option of UnionFS and MergerFS, but that's more advanced topic.

            See https://cloudbox.works/ for some ideas, I built by server in similar way. Cloudbox is a set of Ansible roles to setup completely automated media server. Mine is a bit different, I use Traefik as reverse proxy, with added OAuth2 authentication layer.

            Has anyone priced out storage and/or services through Vultr?

            M travisdh1T 2 Replies Last reply Reply Quote 0
            • M
              marcinozga @Grey
              last edited by marcinozga

              @Grey said in NAS for Plex use... Again:

              @marcinozga said in NAS for Plex use... Again:

              Plex needs lots of CPU power if your clients require transcoding. I have a 4 core E3 Xeon, 1231 I think, running Fedora on bare metal, but Plex and others run in docker containers. All my media is sitting in Google Drive, I have that mounted with https://github.com/plexdrive/plexdrive , some use rclone too. Google Drive for business cost me $12 a month and comes with unlimited storage, I think I'm pushing close to 100TB now. I've had way too many drive failures, I even had LSI SAS controller flipping on me, and after spending close to $1500 on storage alone, I said screw that. There's even Plexdrive docker image to keep your base system kosher, I think it comes with option of UnionFS and MergerFS, but that's more advanced topic.

              See https://cloudbox.works/ for some ideas, I built by server in similar way. Cloudbox is a set of Ansible roles to setup completely automated media server. Mine is a bit different, I use Traefik as reverse proxy, with added OAuth2 authentication layer.

              Has anyone priced out storage and/or services through Vultr?

              It really depends how much storage and CPU you need. If you need lots of storage, nothing beats unlimited, and I think only G Suite Business is viable option. I know lots of people host Plex with Hetzner, Vultr is probably attractive option too.

              1 1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
              • travisdh1T
                travisdh1 @Grey
                last edited by

                @Grey said in NAS for Plex use... Again:

                @marcinozga said in NAS for Plex use... Again:

                Plex needs lots of CPU power if your clients require transcoding. I have a 4 core E3 Xeon, 1231 I think, running Fedora on bare metal, but Plex and others run in docker containers. All my media is sitting in Google Drive, I have that mounted with https://github.com/plexdrive/plexdrive , some use rclone too. Google Drive for business cost me $12 a month and comes with unlimited storage, I think I'm pushing close to 100TB now. I've had way too many drive failures, I even had LSI SAS controller flipping on me, and after spending close to $1500 on storage alone, I said screw that. There's even Plexdrive docker image to keep your base system kosher, I think it comes with option of UnionFS and MergerFS, but that's more advanced topic.

                See https://cloudbox.works/ for some ideas, I built by server in similar way. Cloudbox is a set of Ansible roles to setup completely automated media server. Mine is a bit different, I use Traefik as reverse proxy, with added OAuth2 authentication layer.

                Has anyone priced out storage and/or services through Vultr?

                I'd imagine that a smallish Vultr instance with Wasabi storage would be about ideal if you want everything online.

                dafyreD 1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 1
                • dafyreD
                  dafyre @travisdh1
                  last edited by

                  @travisdh1 said in NAS for Plex use... Again:

                  @Grey said in NAS for Plex use... Again:

                  @marcinozga said in NAS for Plex use... Again:

                  Plex needs lots of CPU power if your clients require transcoding. I have a 4 core E3 Xeon, 1231 I think, running Fedora on bare metal, but Plex and others run in docker containers. All my media is sitting in Google Drive, I have that mounted with https://github.com/plexdrive/plexdrive , some use rclone too. Google Drive for business cost me $12 a month and comes with unlimited storage, I think I'm pushing close to 100TB now. I've had way too many drive failures, I even had LSI SAS controller flipping on me, and after spending close to $1500 on storage alone, I said screw that. There's even Plexdrive docker image to keep your base system kosher, I think it comes with option of UnionFS and MergerFS, but that's more advanced topic.

                  See https://cloudbox.works/ for some ideas, I built by server in similar way. Cloudbox is a set of Ansible roles to setup completely automated media server. Mine is a bit different, I use Traefik as reverse proxy, with added OAuth2 authentication layer.

                  Has anyone priced out storage and/or services through Vultr?

                  I'd imagine that a smallish Vultr instance with Wasabi storage would be about ideal if you want everything online.

                  I already have my video library synced up to Wasabi too, so I could probably build a Plex server on my Hetnzer box and see how that works.

                  1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 1
                  • 1
                    1337 @marcinozga
                    last edited by 1337

                    @marcinozga said in NAS for Plex use... Again:

                    It really depends how much storage and CPU you need. If you need lots of storage, nothing beats unlimited, and I think only G Suite Business is viable option. I know lots of people host Plex with Hertzner, Vultr is probably attractive option too.

                    I had a look and it looks like you need 5 minimum users on G Suit Business to get unlimited TBs. If it's $12 per month then that becomes $60 per month. Under a five year period that's $3600.

                    Not saying it's the same thing but for the exact same money you can buy 9 x 16TB enterprise drives with 5 year warranty. That's about 100 TB of actual storage.

                    Using Drive makes sense in your case but if someone only needs say 10-15 TB, I'm not sure it does. And 10 TB may not sound like a lot but if we are talking about H.264 video it's more than 3000 movies/5000 episodes. Even if you binge watch 5 hours a day, every day, it will take about 3 years to get through it.

                    scottalanmillerS M 2 Replies Last reply Reply Quote 1
                    • 1
                      1337 @brandon220
                      last edited by

                      @brandon220 said in NAS for Plex use... Again:

                      @Pete-S I turned off the R410s and 510 last year. I'm currently running a newer "entry-level" server as my VM host. It has a low-end Xeon and maxes out at 32G of RAM. I have been shopping around for a while for a more robust host but can't decide on anything.

                      The ReadyNAS units were free and new from a relative's business that shut down. They are EOL now and slower than I would like. I plan on a similar setup to what I have now - Plex as a VM and the new storage server as a VM with an NFS share for Plex. I don't believe I will need hardware transcoding for Plex.

                      Why can't you just put some drives in your VM host and use that as storage? Or do you want a host with more RAM / cores as well?

                      brandon220B 1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
                      • scottalanmillerS
                        scottalanmiller @1337
                        last edited by

                        @Pete-S said in NAS for Plex use... Again:

                        If it's $12 per month then that becomes $60 per month. Under a five year period that's $3600.
                        Not saying it's the same thing but for the exact same money you can buy 9 x 16TB enterprise drives with 5 year warranty. That's about 100 TB of actual storage.

                        That's how I feel. Some of these services get absurdly expensive. For even tiny use cases, cheaper to build and host your own! The "zero cost" management is not true either, I bet it's easier to build that server than to deal with G Suite issues for several years.

                        jmooreJ 1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 1
                        • jmooreJ
                          jmoore @scottalanmiller
                          last edited by

                          @scottalanmiller said in NAS for Plex use... Again:

                          @Pete-S said in NAS for Plex use... Again:

                          If it's $12 per month then that becomes $60 per month. Under a five year period that's $3600.
                          Not saying it's the same thing but for the exact same money you can buy 9 x 16TB enterprise drives with 5 year warranty. That's about 100 TB of actual storage.

                          That's how I feel. Some of these services get absurdly expensive. For even tiny use cases, cheaper to build and host your own! The "zero cost" management is not true either, I bet it's easier to build that server than to deal with G Suite issues for several years.

                          Thats how I feel. I usually don't do whats cheapest in most cases, I do what makes the most sense for me. In a couple months I want to get a supermicro server and build it out. Yes I know about power and hosting things online is cheap. I enjoy building things and like the control I have. I also understand issues quicker when I can take a look at the machine. I know some won't agree with that but its how I am lol.

                          1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
                          • brandon220B
                            brandon220
                            last edited by

                            I prefer to host at home due to cost and bandwidth. The closest colo is about an hour away. I can run a pretty good amount of equipment at home for the cost of a colo. Yes, I don't have redundant ISP, generators, a/c, etc, but I get a better ROI on my equipment. I have dedicated circuits to my rack. Redundant UPSs, and a room that is unoccupied. I don't share my Plex with users outside my home. I don't see the need to stream my own media over the internet when I can do it locally. Power is cheap enough too.

                            1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
                            • brandon220B
                              brandon220 @1337
                              last edited by

                              @Pete-S said in NAS for Plex use... Again:

                              @brandon220 said in NAS for Plex use... Again:

                              @Pete-S I turned off the R410s and 510 last year. I'm currently running a newer "entry-level" server as my VM host. It has a low-end Xeon and maxes out at 32G of RAM. I have been shopping around for a while for a more robust host but can't decide on anything.

                              The ReadyNAS units were free and new from a relative's business that shut down. They are EOL now and slower than I would like. I plan on a similar setup to what I have now - Plex as a VM and the new storage server as a VM with an NFS share for Plex. I don't believe I will need hardware transcoding for Plex.

                              Why can't you just put some drives in your VM host and use that as storage? Or do you want a host with more RAM / cores as well?

                              I probably have enough CPU cores and my host is maxed out at 32G ram. I do have 4 spare drive bays. I probably should do some tests and see if it could work.

                              1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
                              • M
                                marcinozga @1337
                                last edited by marcinozga

                                @Pete-S said in NAS for Plex use... Again:

                                @marcinozga said in NAS for Plex use... Again:

                                It really depends how much storage and CPU you need. If you need lots of storage, nothing beats unlimited, and I think only G Suite Business is viable option. I know lots of people host Plex with Hertzner, Vultr is probably attractive option too.

                                I had a look and it looks like you need 5 minimum users on G Suit Business to get unlimited TBs. If it's $12 per month then that becomes $60 per month. Under a five year period that's $3600.

                                Not saying it's the same thing but for the exact same money you can buy 9 x 16TB enterprise drives with 5 year warranty. That's about 100 TB of actual storage.

                                Using Drive makes sense in your case but if someone only needs say 10-15 TB, I'm not sure it does. And 10 TB may not sound like a lot but if we are talking about H.264 video it's more than 3000 movies/5000 episodes. Even if you binge watch 5 hours a day, every day, it will take about 3 years to get through it.

                                Google doesn't enforce that limit, and one of their engineers confirmed that, I just can't find the source. I'm paying $12/mo for 1 user and I'm using close to 100TB. My 5 year cost is $720, good luck finding drives for that price.

                                Average 1080p movie is about 25GB, so just 400 will fill 10TB. Unless DVD rips are your thing, then sure, you might fit few thousands.

                                GreyG 1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
                                • dafyreD
                                  dafyre
                                  last edited by

                                  Brand new Plex server up and running on My Hetzner host. It's connected directly to Wasabi at the moment. The browsing is a little slower, and video start up is a little slower (we're talking seconds, not minutes).

                                  GreyG 1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 1
                                  • GreyG
                                    Grey @marcinozga
                                    last edited by

                                    @marcinozga said in NAS for Plex use... Again:

                                    @Pete-S said in NAS for Plex use... Again:

                                    @marcinozga said in NAS for Plex use... Again:

                                    It really depends how much storage and CPU you need. If you need lots of storage, nothing beats unlimited, and I think only G Suite Business is viable option. I know lots of people host Plex with Hertzner, Vultr is probably attractive option too.

                                    I had a look and it looks like you need 5 minimum users on G Suit Business to get unlimited TBs. If it's $12 per month then that becomes $60 per month. Under a five year period that's $3600.

                                    Not saying it's the same thing but for the exact same money you can buy 9 x 16TB enterprise drives with 5 year warranty. That's about 100 TB of actual storage.

                                    Using Drive makes sense in your case but if someone only needs say 10-15 TB, I'm not sure it does. And 10 TB may not sound like a lot but if we are talking about H.264 video it's more than 3000 movies/5000 episodes. Even if you binge watch 5 hours a day, every day, it will take about 3 years to get through it.

                                    Google doesn't enforce that limit, and one of their engineers confirmed that, I just can't find the source. I'm paying $12/mo for 1 user and I'm using close to 100TB. My 5 year cost is $720, good luck finding drives for that price.

                                    Average 1080p movie is about 25GB.

                                    Ehhhh... No. Average 1080p is about 3gb. It really depends on the bitrate used when you encode the ripped data. I have 2 1080p movies and one is 18564 kbps bitrate while the other is 2634 kbps. The second one is 2:40 long and just under 3gb, but the other one is 1:30 and just shy of 16gb. You really have to pay attention to more than just the resolution. Audio can change things a lot, too.

                                    M 1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
                                    • GreyG
                                      Grey @dafyre
                                      last edited by

                                      @dafyre said in NAS for Plex use... Again:

                                      Brand new Plex server up and running on My Hetzner host. It's connected directly to Wasabi at the moment. The browsing is a little slower, and video start up is a little slower (we're talking seconds, not minutes).

                                      All local storage here, but using a plex server and data server as guests on he same VM. My SMB experience was notably slower than NFS.

                                      brandon220B 1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 2
                                      • M
                                        marcinozga @Grey
                                        last edited by

                                        @Grey said in NAS for Plex use... Again:

                                        @marcinozga said in NAS for Plex use... Again:

                                        @Pete-S said in NAS for Plex use... Again:

                                        @marcinozga said in NAS for Plex use... Again:

                                        It really depends how much storage and CPU you need. If you need lots of storage, nothing beats unlimited, and I think only G Suite Business is viable option. I know lots of people host Plex with Hertzner, Vultr is probably attractive option too.

                                        I had a look and it looks like you need 5 minimum users on G Suit Business to get unlimited TBs. If it's $12 per month then that becomes $60 per month. Under a five year period that's $3600.

                                        Not saying it's the same thing but for the exact same money you can buy 9 x 16TB enterprise drives with 5 year warranty. That's about 100 TB of actual storage.

                                        Using Drive makes sense in your case but if someone only needs say 10-15 TB, I'm not sure it does. And 10 TB may not sound like a lot but if we are talking about H.264 video it's more than 3000 movies/5000 episodes. Even if you binge watch 5 hours a day, every day, it will take about 3 years to get through it.

                                        Google doesn't enforce that limit, and one of their engineers confirmed that, I just can't find the source. I'm paying $12/mo for 1 user and I'm using close to 100TB. My 5 year cost is $720, good luck finding drives for that price.

                                        Average 1080p movie is about 25GB.

                                        Ehhhh... No. Average 1080p is about 3gb. It really depends on the bitrate used when you encode the ripped data. I have 2 1080p movies and one is 18564 kbps bitrate while the other is 2634 kbps. The second one is 2:40 long and just under 3gb, but the other one is 1:30 and just shy of 16gb. You really have to pay attention to more than just the resolution. Audio can change things a lot, too.

                                        That's on the low end, usually ripped from Netfilx, iTunes or some other web source. And most likely with AC3 audio. If you want good quality rip, 25GB is actually conservative estimate, I have some files over 65GB.

                                        GreyG 1 2 Replies Last reply Reply Quote 0
                                        • brandon220B
                                          brandon220 @Grey
                                          last edited by

                                          @Grey I looked yesterday and I'm using SMB instead of NFS between my NAS and Plex. I need to change it.

                                          1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
                                          • GreyG
                                            Grey @marcinozga
                                            last edited by

                                            @marcinozga said in NAS for Plex use... Again:

                                            @Grey said in NAS for Plex use... Again:

                                            @marcinozga said in NAS for Plex use... Again:

                                            @Pete-S said in NAS for Plex use... Again:

                                            @marcinozga said in NAS for Plex use... Again:

                                            It really depends how much storage and CPU you need. If you need lots of storage, nothing beats unlimited, and I think only G Suite Business is viable option. I know lots of people host Plex with Hertzner, Vultr is probably attractive option too.

                                            I had a look and it looks like you need 5 minimum users on G Suit Business to get unlimited TBs. If it's $12 per month then that becomes $60 per month. Under a five year period that's $3600.

                                            Not saying it's the same thing but for the exact same money you can buy 9 x 16TB enterprise drives with 5 year warranty. That's about 100 TB of actual storage.

                                            Using Drive makes sense in your case but if someone only needs say 10-15 TB, I'm not sure it does. And 10 TB may not sound like a lot but if we are talking about H.264 video it's more than 3000 movies/5000 episodes. Even if you binge watch 5 hours a day, every day, it will take about 3 years to get through it.

                                            Google doesn't enforce that limit, and one of their engineers confirmed that, I just can't find the source. I'm paying $12/mo for 1 user and I'm using close to 100TB. My 5 year cost is $720, good luck finding drives for that price.

                                            Average 1080p movie is about 25GB.

                                            Ehhhh... No. Average 1080p is about 3gb. It really depends on the bitrate used when you encode the ripped data. I have 2 1080p movies and one is 18564 kbps bitrate while the other is 2634 kbps. The second one is 2:40 long and just under 3gb, but the other one is 1:30 and just shy of 16gb. You really have to pay attention to more than just the resolution. Audio can change things a lot, too.

                                            That's on the low end, usually ripped from Netfilx, iTunes or some other web source. And most likely with AC3 audio. If you want good quality rip, 25GB is actually conservative estimate, I have some files over 65GB.

                                            Absolutely. It's rare to see a difference unless you're comparing side by side.

                                            dafyreD 1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
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