Media Server Question

[Haywood]

I need more storage and I want to set my media server off of the family PC, so I am looking at several options. The one that is the most attractive to me from a stability, power consumption, space efficiency and overall elegance is to just buy a nice NAS and run Plex and Logitech Media Server from there. I am getting some very conflicting feedback. Some say that Plex should run fine on a quad-core Celeron with 8GB of DDR3L (which is what I'm looking at for a NAS). Others claim it is woefully under-powered and will not have to juice to do any transcoding. I tend to call BS on that last bit, as I used to transcode on a Core2Duo box with 4GB memory. The other option is to buy a cheaper, less powerful SAN and get another Intel NUC with an i5 CPU to run my server on.

This is the NAS I am looking at. The plan would be to run my software on an Ubuntu Linux VM on the NAS rather than on the NAS directly, although I could just as easily use a Windows VM.

http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00MEVR77C/ref=ox_sc_act_title_1?ie=UTF8&psc=1&smid=ATVPDKIKX0DER

 

[yromj]

I've had a QNap NAS for a few years now. I use it as my host for my media and use Twonky as my DLNA server. I can't comment on the transcoding but I can on other aspects of the unit.

It has been VERY reliable. The support has been excellent in a variety of ways. First there is a strong QNap user community. Then the support for firmware updates and new apps from QNap has also been very good. I highly recommend QNap.

Also, I completely agree with your reasoning for doing this because it closely mirrors my reasons for doing the same thing.

John

 

[Haywood]

I also tend to rip my discs to the mp4 codec in mkv containers, which is a format that most of my devices have native support for. That reduces the amount of transcoding quite a lot. I may need to get around to converting some old avi files I have here and there, but the bulk of what is on my server is 720p and 1080p mp4. I am planning to start out with three 4TB hard drives, which will give me 8TB of initial space. I can add two more 4TB drive later to bring the total to 16TB. I plan to use bay 6 for an SSD, so I can do caching. I highly doubt I will ever use more than 16TB, because I abandoned the idea of getting all of my movies on Blu-Ray and then doing full, uncompressed rips a long time ago. I recently calculated that doing that would cost roughly $2000 just for the drives and over $2000 for the hardware. I am mainly going to use this for high quality rips of Blu-Rays for movies I do not yet have on Vudu, for rips of DVDs that I either have not upgraded yet, cannot upgrade or have no plans to upgrade, the K-Pop music videos my wife downloads from YouTube, our music collection, audio books, TV shows I archived off of my DVR and content that I acquire from other sources. I am sizing big on the off chance UltraViolet ever agrees on the Common File Format so that I can download my UV library and insulate myself from streaming problems.

 

[Haywood]

I can get a 4-Bay box with a dual-core Celeron for $500 or I can get an 8-Bay box with a quad-core Celeron for $1000. I'm torn between not wanting to waste money on overkill and being afraid I'll end up with an under-performing box or insufficient storage a few years down the road.

 

[Towen7]

Better to have it and not need it, than to need it and not have it.

 

[yromj]

Better to have it and not need it, than to need it and not have it.

:text-+1:

John

 

[Haywood]

My wife and I talked it over and decided to go with the QNAP TS-853 PRO, which has 8 hot-swappable drive bays, a quad-core 2.0Ghz Intel Celeron, 8GB DDR3L 1600, hardware transcoding for up to five concurrent streams (sadly not used by Plex), HDMI output, four gigabit Ethernet ports and support for multiple virtual machines. I'm thinking that should do it.

 

[Haywood]

I just pulled this trigger:

 

[lulimet]

Storage solutions are still expensive for people with massive collections but when you think that some people pay $4k+ for amps, a nice 8 bay NAS doesn't sound bad

Do you rip your content 1:1?

 

[Haywood]

I could not afford to rip everything one-to-one. If I had my entire collection on Blu-Ray (a lot of mine is UV now), it would cost over $5,000 to rip everything uncompressed. A lot of what I need to rip is DVD content. I have a lot of Asian films that are either not available on Blu-Ray or simply not worth upgrading. A lot of those low-budget Hong Kong movies actually look pretty bad in HD because you can see all the wires and such. I also have a lot of family movies that I either haven't upgraded yet (no disc-to-digital program for Disney) or are just not worth upgrading. I don't really need Herbie Goes Bananas in 1080p, for instance. I also have a few DVDs that were never released on Blu-Ray or UV, such as Zorro, The Gay Blade. Those are all easy to rip and will convert to a roughly 2GB MP4 with no loss of quality at all. I may rip some of my Blu-Rays uncompressed, but this would be reserved for movies where it REALLY makes a difference. Where I do compress, I still maintain a high enough bit rate to get results that are as good or better than Vudu HDX. That typically results in a 10-12GB file. My ultimate goal is to have all of my movies available on demand, so the NAS will supplement my UV library.

One of the reasons I bought this NAS is that I can run both the Logitech Media Server that my Squeezeboxes run on and the Plex Media Server that drives everything else directly on the NAS. That should make for a much more reliable media server than stuff running in the background on the family PC, especially since the Logitech Media Server does not run as a Windows service.

 

[Haywood]

My NAS arrived today, along with the 8GB memory upgrade and two 8-Port gigabit switches. The hard drives should arrive tomorrow. I'm hoping to have time to set it up sometime soon, but my schedule over the holidays is a bit nuts this year.

 

[yromj]

Cool!!! Keep us posted. I'm looking forward to following your progress.

John

 

[Haywood]

I got the NAS set up a few days ago, moved all my media and set up both Plex and Logitech Media Server. Everything works great so far. Next will be to build an Ubuntu VM to run SABnzbd and Sonarr. Once I get my final round of Ikea furniture built and unpack my media I will start ripping discs to the NAS. Right now, it is mainly music, photos and TV shows.

So far, the NAS is rock-solid stable. My only gripe is some moderate fan noise. It is no worse than my old desktop PC, but I'd gotten spoiled by a cabinet full of near-silent devices. This is not a surprise, considering the number of discs and the amount of heat that can generate.

 

[yromj]

That's a fun holiday project.

I was a little curious about the fans, too. I know mine is dead quiet but i don't have nearly the drives nor the processing power you do, though.

John