Plex Server

[HUSKER222]

anyone here running plex servers on a large scale? and if so what are your rigs for them? Currently im running an AMD Ryzen 1800X i wanted to try it as a plex server. before i was using an i7 3770k ivy bridge 3.5ghz 3.9 ghz turbo

[Fraser Cow]

What do you consider large scale?

 

[HUSKER222]

i have 12 tb of plex

[gamerking]

13 minutes ago, HUSKER222 said:

i have 12 tb of plex

if your talking about large scale transcoding quad socket MB with a ton of cores , but just for general storage for plex you can get away with a dual core or better all you need is HDD's and sata ports/ SAS pci cards add till you run out of pci slots or money to spend on hdd's and port expanders

[AshleyAshes]

3 hours ago, HUSKER222 said:

i have 12 tb of plex

I don't see how the size of the file library is really at all a measure of 'large scale'.  I'd think that the number of concurrent clients would be the measure.

[BethFoster5841]

i use my rpi 3 as my plex server i have 10 tb of hdd drives

[ChuckMaurice]

We recently upgraded a Plex server we share with ~50 people, from a low-end i3 to an i5-4690K (the one I had on my desktop), and we tried simultaneous streaming of big movies (20-30GB) to see when we reach CPU limitation. We reached 14 simultaneous (compressed, transcoded) streams, and the CPU was barely 60°C.

So Ryzen would be mostly overkill and you'll end up limited by either the drives/SATA link or the internet connection.

 

What you need to look for is how many users needs transcoding: if they can't stream the native format of the media (aka "Direct Play"), because of incompatibility with their device or need to compress it, streaming a converted media "on the go" (aka "Transcoding") draws a lot more CPU power. Look for specific devices like Android TVs and see if they are compatible with most of the media you have (I know for example the PS4 has crappy codec support and always need transcoding)

 

If you plan to share the server with less than 20 people without massive transcoding needs, you can get away with anything dual core.

 

Other general advice from my setup: 

- Use Linux (Ubuntu if you're not experienced)

- Get SSH/Teamviewer on it

- Use RAID5 (mdadm)

[HUSKER222]

5 hours ago, AshleyAshes said:

I don't see how the size of the file library is really at all a measure of 'large scale'.  I'd think that the number of concurrent clients would be the measure.

the server itself matters but the concurrent clients ive realized its usually the internet or the app im watching from. plex i notice can be weird on different devices. but yes i have some traffic all me of course :-)

[HUSKER222]

1 hour ago, jldjul said:

We recently upgraded a Plex server we share with ~50 people, from a low-end i3 to an i5-4690K (the one I had on my desktop), and we tried simultaneous streaming of big movies (20-30GB) to see when we reach CPU limitation. We reached 14 simultaneous (compressed, transcoded) streams, and the CPU was barely 60°C.

So Ryzen would be mostly overkill and you'll end up limited by either the drives/SATA link or the internet connection.

 

What you need to look for is how many users needs transcoding: if they can't stream the native format of the media (aka "Direct Play"), because of incompatibility with their device or need to compress it, streaming a converted media "on the go" (aka "Transcoding") draws a lot more CPU power. Look for specific devices like Android TVs and see if they are compatible with most of the media you have (I know for example the PS4 has crappy codec support and always need transcoding)

 

If you plan to share the server with less than 20 people without massive transcoding needs, you can get away with anything dual core.

 

Other general advice from my setup: 

- Use Linux (Ubuntu if you're not experienced)

- Get SSH/Teamviewer on it

- Use RAID5 (mdadm)

yeah more than 20.... i have seen "direct connection unavailable logging insecurely" messages before. i have xfinity best internet as well. 323 down and 12.1 up

[ChuckMaurice]

5 minutes ago, HUSKER222 said:

yeah more than 20.... i have seen "direct connection unavailable logging insecurely" messages before. i have xfinity best internet as well. 323 down and 12.1 up

This bug is unrelated to the streaming protocol (it's about HTTPS iirc).

 

You need to do some tests with a panel of users: install a Plex server on a machine with comfortable hardware, and from the admin account you can see users who are streaming and what streaming protocol (Direct play or transcoding) they are using.

[HUSKER222]

2 hours ago, jldjul said:

This bug is unrelated to the streaming protocol (it's about HTTPS iirc).

 

You need to do some tests with a panel of users: install a Plex server on a machine with comfortable hardware, and from the admin account you can see users who are streaming and what streaming protocol (Direct play or transcoding) they are using.

ok and id want them to be using direct play and not transcoding?

[AshleyAshes]

4 minutes ago, HUSKER222 said:

ok and id want them to be using direct play and not transcoding?

...If you're not transcoding even the 3770K was overkill as a Plex server and an 1800X is disgustingly.

I'm not using Plex, I'm just using normal SMB Shares for a Kodi operation, but even the quad core Intel i5 2300 I have in that box is pretty badly overkill.  Without transcoding, all you're doing is moving data, a toaster could do the job.

[HUSKER222]

3 minutes ago, AshleyAshes said:

...If you're not transcoding even the 3770K was overkill as a Plex server and an 1800X is disgustingly.

I'm not using Plex, I'm just using normal SMB Shares for a Kodi operation, but even the quad core Intel i5 2300 I have in that box is pretty badly overkill.  Without transcoding, all you're doing is moving data, a toaster could do the job.

yeah but ive had a few plex servers. I've had issues with it outside of my home network. Hell I've had issues inside my home network. Originally i ran it on a core 2 duo then a actual rack server that sounded like a car then i moved it to the i7 3770k ivy bridge where it stayed for about a year and it ran pretty good actually that was the best it had ran. But, I knew I could make it run better. I'm not worried about being told its over kill i know its "Overkill" that was the Idea. It mostly does plex but it does other stuff as well and serves as a gaming rig too. But, for the most part this is a plex machine. I wanted it to be "Digustingly" :-) anyways the difference between transcoding and direct connection? I sometimes even in my home network it'll say i cant connect securely and i have to reload the app insecurely. I was wondering if that could be an issue outside of my network. I have really good internet my upload (which is really the part that matters with plex) is 12.1 but remotely i have trouble viewing videos in original quality sometimes.

 

[Lurick]

A 4K stream or original quality 1080p stream needs at least 20Mbps most of the time.

 

If you need stats on what users are doing look into PlexPy, it's an amazing portal that shows you far more stats and information than the default Plex admin panel.

[HUSKER222]

Just now, Lurick said:

A 4K stream or original quality 1080p stream needs at least 20Mbps most of the time.

 

If you need stats on what users are doing look into PlexPy, it's an amazing portal that shows you far more stats and information than the default Plex admin panel.

PlexPy how do i find more information on that?

[Lurick]

6 minutes ago, HUSKER222 said:

PlexPy how do i find more information on that?

https://github.com/JonnyWong16/plexpy/wiki/Installation

 

Been using it for a while and it's pretty simple to install and use

[ChuckMaurice]

48 minutes ago, HUSKER222 said:

ok and id want them to be using direct play and not transcoding?

Yes. With Direct Play all that the computer does is sending data to another. As @AshleyAshes puts it, a toaster could do the job indeed ^^
Transcoding requires your CPU to do video compression tasks, which are really CPU-heavy. Transcoding occurs when:

1) the user's device is incompatible with the native codec of the file (like if you want to stream h.264 media on a PS4)

2) the user has low bandwidth and need to reduce the stream's size (20Mbps -> 12Mbps for example)

 

As I stated, our i5-4690K can do 14 simultaneous transcoding jobs (tested on 20Mbps media) before any user would experience lag. The number of possible simultaneous Direct Play streams is much higher than that, and probably limited by our optic fiber connexion or SATA link anyway

[HUSKER222]

2 hours ago, jldjul said:

Yes. With Direct Play all that the computer does is sending data to another. As @AshleyAshes puts it, a toaster could do the job indeed ^^
Transcoding requires your CPU to do video compression tasks, which are really CPU-heavy. Transcoding occurs when:

1) the user's device is incompatible with the native codec of the file (like if you want to stream h.264 media on a PS4)

2) the user has low bandwidth and need to reduce the stream's size (20Mbps -> 12Mbps for example)

 

As I stated, our i5-4690K can do 14 simultaneous transcoding jobs (tested on 20Mbps media) before any user would experience lag. The number of possible simultaneous Direct Play streams is much higher than that, and probably limited by our optic fiber connexion or SATA link anyway

is that test of 14 simultaneous transcoding jobs done remotely or locally? That actually makes alot of sense now. I utilize an NVIDIA Shield Android TV on all of my TV's but also theres a couple PS4/3 and XBOX One & 2 Roku Sticks on there as well. Roku stick & NVIDIA Shield TV and PC works best i noticed with plex. TV apps and other devices ive noticed issues which lead me to believe it was alot of the the streaming device then the plex computer itself

[HUSKER222]

5 hours ago, jldjul said:

Yes. With Direct Play all that the computer does is sending data to another. As @AshleyAshes puts it, a toaster could do the job indeed ^^
Transcoding requires your CPU to do video compression tasks, which are really CPU-heavy. Transcoding occurs when:

1) the user's device is incompatible with the native codec of the file (like if you want to stream h.264 media on a PS4)

2) the user has low bandwidth and need to reduce the stream's size (20Mbps -> 12Mbps for example)

 

As I stated, our i5-4690K can do 14 simultaneous transcoding jobs (tested on 20Mbps media) before any user would experience lag. The number of possible simultaneous Direct Play streams is much higher than that, and probably limited by our optic fiber connexion or SATA link anyway

I did some more research. Plexpy really just tells you more of what everyone is watching. I have a buddy who also runs a plex server but he is running dual xeon processors. He explained the transcoding and directplay in some more detail to me. I shouldnt have any issues transcoding for multiple devices. From what i understand what you're saying is totally correct. Transcoding is very CPU intensive he said thats why he runs two processors but from what im gathering is that an 8 core processor should be able to transcode multiple streams and be able to do it better than an i5. But the big thing is this and i pretty much already understood this part but the internet is where ill get bottlenecked. my upload speed. Its 12.1 up (last test i did yesterday) so obviously even if i could transcode say 50 streams my internet probably wouldnt let me. Again though i would be interested to know if your 15 was transcoding 14 simultaneous remote streams or locally because locally is no issue at all what so ever its remotely im more interested in. Also, I want to thank everyone for commenting it really helps me alot to be able to look into what im being told on here great community :-)

[HUSKER222]

id probably max out the sata before the processor because the sata from what im reading only will do 6g a second so for example this is what im gathering if Sata only does 6g a second And a 1080 movie stream is like 2 So three streams per drive? maybe mirror the drives to get more out of it before hitting any type of bottleneck?

[AshleyAshes]

2 hours ago, HUSKER222 said:

id probably max out the sata before the processor because the sata from what im reading only will do 6g a second so for example this is what im gathering if Sata only does 6g a second And a 1080 movie stream is like 2 So three streams per drive? maybe mirror the drives to get more out of it before hitting any type of bottleneck?

Uhh, no.  In fact the maximum nitrate of any Blu-ray discs is 54 megabits a second and most Blu-ray rips are lower.  But even accounting for maxbitrate remuxed rips, a SATA connection has sufficient bandwidth for a looooot of concurrent reads.  It's be child's play.  Even a 1000mbit Ethernet connection could handle 17.58 concurrent streams.  Okay, more like 14-15 if you account for overhead and give yourself some headroom.

 

But in short, no, any system has sufficient bandwidth for more that two Blu-ray streams.  A hell of a lot more.

[HUSKER222]

39 minutes ago, AshleyAshes said:

Uhh, no.  In fact the maximum nitrate of any Blu-ray discs is 54 megabits a second and most Blu-ray rips are lower.  But even accounting for maxbitrate remuxed rips, a SATA connection has sufficient bandwidth for a looooot of concurrent reads.  It's be child's play.  Even a 1000mbit Ethernet connection could handle 17.58 concurrent streams.  Okay, more like 14-15 if you account for overhead and give yourself some headroom.

 

But in short, no, any system has sufficient bandwidth for more that two Blu-ray streams.  A hell of a lot more.

yes you are right its more than 2 but how many times can you read the same file? theres only one read head on a traditional drive so having two drives serving plex gives you double the speed = double the amount of video your drives can put out at once

[AshleyAshes]

1 hour ago, HUSKER222 said:

yes you are right its more than 2 but how many times can you read the same file? theres only one read head on a traditional drive so having two drives serving plex gives you double the speed = double the amount of video your drives can put out at once

For the love of...

Welp, here we go.  Here is my workstation simultaneously playing back 10 separate episodes of the 2001 anime Noir.  Now, in the interest of transparency, I admit that these are not full bitrate remuxes, they are re-encoded and only weigh in at about 2GB per 25min episode.  These are all located on a SINGLE hard drive on my server where they are waiting to be sorted into my FlexRAID array.

 

 

The drive in question is a 6+ year old Seagate ST2000DL 5900RPM 'Green Drive'.  Any HDD snob will tell you that that is about as 'potato' of a hard drive as you can get.  Here is my Intel i5 2300 powered server, running Windows 10 Pro, as it serves up the data.  You see the system has many drives but only the ST2000DL is serving this data.  It is serving ten different media files concurrently and it's not even stressed out.  The hard drive has a cache.  The server has a cache of stuff it's serving.  The client has a cache of stuff it's reading.  As a result, the hard drive is able to reliably serve up multiple media files concurrently and not break a sweat.  This is easy peasy stuff for a hard drive.

 

 

You have no idea how any of this stuff works.  You are completely ignorant as to how most of a computer works.  You do not understand enough to diagnose and solve your own problems.  You do not understand enough to engage in conversation in this thread without you making a rebuttal from a perspective of complete ignorance.

 

What ever your problem is, it is HIGHLY unlikely that an 1800X will solve it for you.  An i7 3770k should enough power to drive media for an entire McMansion with 8-12 occupants.  The problem is not the hardware.  The problem is the operator who has no idea how to manage the setup.  I know all of this sounds mean but I'm trying to drive a point home: Spending a bunch of money on high end hardware will not solve your problem.  Your problem can be solved with knowledge and you'll save a lot of money using knowledge instead of buying things that won't fix the problem.

[AshleyAshes]

Correction: The drive apparently has 62410 power on hours on it.  That's 2600 days or 7.124 years.  Keep on trucking little Seagate!

[HUSKER222]

those are played locally though. local isnt the issue to be honest im more interested how that server works for users remotely. If i'm traveling i'd like to be able to watch my content from across the country. i should be clear within my LAN everything works fine.